It’s like I overheard this lady say yesterday, apropos of a Thelma Houston song playing at a cafe: “Everybody was just so beautiful in the ‘70s! Everything was so shiny and sparkly!” And there’d been plenty of penises in Playgirl’s pages, since its second issue, in the summer of 1973 (readers had complained when there were none in the debut), sandwiched softly between ads for Summer’s Eve and fashion spreads flowing with macrame.īut a full erection! That was something else. Jimmy Carter was president, cigarettes were mainstream, air travel was exotic, and for another year or so anyway, sex wasn’t gonna kill you. It’s not like the late ’70s were some kind of disco Camelot, but there was something kind of soft-focus about them. In one shot - in pointed contrast to the afternoon light on the drawn venetian blinds, the purple flowers on the bedside table - his penis just stands there, like, yeah? He reclines, shinily, on a set of clean white sheets.
This month, the centerfold is a sun-kissed California blonde named Geoff Minger. It’s clearly hit some kind of cultural nail on the head, borrowing Playboy’s patented aspirational hedonism and appropriating it for the fun ’n’ flirty feminist set. Playgirl is eight years old and boasts a circulation of 10 million. For the first time in history, there’s an erection in the pages of a glossy magazine. It’s the dawn of a new decade, and while the polyester may not be packed away just yet, change is in the air.
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