had known when we were children growing up. when we were children, all of these folks used to dress up on halloween as women, and they looked better than the women on the streets, you know? now he was home on vacation from harvard university, and they were doing the same thing so i confronted my brother about that, and we started to fight, and, of course, i beat him up, and that's when my father -- that's when my father got involved in this, and my father jumped me because of that, and i pushed my father away and said don't put your hands on me and i allow no one to put their hands on me in anger anymore. my father ran and got his shotgun, and i ran and got my shotgun. this happened to marvin gay and his father, and that's why his father shot him, killed him.

had it not been for my mother, my father would have killed me as well. .. for my mother, my father would have killed me. >> because your mother intervened. >> you should get out of the way. >> now, what's interesting here, you just described yourself azteccally having been in jail for 20 years, '66 to '85. >> uh-huh. >> but the violence and the whole world of hatred that you describe, you say that's really been a jail for 40-plus years. >> oh, yes. >> let me read again from your book. this is an interesting moment because you say you're going to be 74 years old. you've been in jail and you wrote i was a prize soldier at one point. i was a soldier at one point. i was a convict at one point. i was a jailhouse lawyer at one point. it says here you were the executive director of a group that was called association in defense of the wrongly convicted at one point today you're ceo at the innocence international

group. >> yes. >> and it says, but if i had to choose an epitaph to be carved on my tombstone, remember this is ruben hurricane carter speaking, it would simply reading he was just enough. now, this came because somebody in a high school audience -- you were speaking to these students asked you what you would want for your epithet your a man -- bob dylan wrote a song about you. nelson mandela wrote a forward to you. and i know nelson loves boxing and i remember he was talking to me how he loved boxing and then he talked about someone like him who was in jail and has come out of it. and so here's nelson mandela, bob dylan, even tony bennett, you say. >> muhammad ali. >> and now it comes time to speak about yourself and now your epithet, he was just enough to understand is it a up for his

convictions no matter what problems his actions may have caused him, he was just enough to perform a miracle to wake up to escape the universal prison of sleep to regain his humanity in living hell. he was just enough. just enough. >> just enough. >> so when people hear this, just enough, i'm sure they're going to be thinking to themselves, well, just enough to get off or just enough to escape or survive? why not to make something bolder? >> universally, we are all just enough. that's what that means. we are all universally just enough. we are born with everything that we need to wake up and to become conscious. that is just enough. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. ..

we are back live now with more from the 2011 "chicago tribune" printers row literary festival. up next carrie pitzulo who insist that over the years, "playboy" magazine has advanced the cause of women's rights more than many people realize. >> welcome to the 27 annual "chicago tribune" printers row lit fest. a special k tour sponsors. before begin today's programhon please turn off your cell phone and all other electronic devices.photog photography is notph permitted.. today's program will be broadcast live on broadcast live on c-span2's the. c-spanur watch this you would like to ws beogram again, our coverage will program

and this is a fantastic book, a fascinating top you can and a really entertaining read, so i will be sure to leave time for questions at the end. but my first question is just what led you to focus your dissertation on playboy? it is a fascinating topic, but it's not sort of obvious how you would choose it. so what led you to the topic? >> it certainly wasn't obvious to me. i've been surprised not only by my own conclusions, but by the fact that i came to focus on this topic. i had always been fascinate with the the 1950s, in particular, popular culture. some of my early grad school work was on film, and then i read "the hearts of men," and in

that book she talks about the way masculinity was changing after world war ii, and she has a chapter on playboy. so i began to think did this sexually-explicit magazine some people consider pornography -- i don't -- but how did that become mainstream in what was supposedly a very conservative culture? and that was my initial question, and it started out as a paper in a graduate seminar. and it just grew from there because i realized there was so much research potential many this topic. >> yeah. this is probably jumping ahead a little bit but just because you kind of just touched on it. can you just say why you don't consider this pornography and what definition you use, and i know there are a bunch of different ones out there, but where do you sort of distinguish? is. >> at the time i started out thinking that playboy was pornography although i wasn't quite sure of myself even in the early understanding. as far as a definition, i think

it's something much more explicit. i think pornography is really trying to test the boundaries of explicit sexual portrayal. and hugh hefner was always very, very deliberately not wanting to cross that line. >> uh-huh. >> and he was really trying to make the magazine sexual and sexy, but respectable and classy. a lot of people lose use that word. so he very deliberately stayed far from that line. and, certainly, compared to many of the magazines surrounding playboy in the '50s, '60s and early '70s, they were much, much more explicit. so i came to think of it as a sexy consumer magazine and really not pornography at all. >> was that true even in the '50s, could you talk about playboy as presenting a positive view of post-world war ii images of women, and so it seemed from

my reading of the book that you were viewing playboy as challenging and really as pushing, at least in the 1950s. but in what ways maybe was it not? i mean, were there other magazines out there that were already more sexually explicit, so playboy was challenging images of women many a different way? >> yeah. a lot of the sexually exless sit magazines that existed at the time were much seedier than playboy ever was, and the portrayal of women in some of those sexual magazines were dirtier, if i might use that word, sort of portraying women, um, as wanton, as maybe whores. and that was something that hugh hefner really deliberately tried to stay away from. so i situated playboy as part of the sexualization of american popular culture rather or than a part of that pornographic fringe, and i think that's something that hugh hefner was really, you know, he was trying to put himself in that category

as well. really more in line with the way "esquire magazine" was in the '30s and '40s. >> yeah. and you talk about how hugh kind of looked up to esquire in aceps or sort of looked at them as something of a model might be too strong a word, but he definitely took some cues from them, it sounded like. >> be i think he did look at them as a model, i think he was copying because he was a real gap of that as he was growing up -- a real fan of that as he was growing up. he was disappointed in the way in which esquire by the early '50s had let go of some of its sexual emphasis that had made it popular in the '30s and '40s, so he wanted to redo that in the 1950s. >> uh-huh. i think one of the main themes from the book is this pretty sympathetic take on, um, hugh hefner's, playboy's vision of and the kind of effect on women's sexuality. and i'm particularly interested in you view the centerfolds in

particular as presenting women more as sexual agents than as sexual objects and that as being a distinction between some of the other sort of explicit men's magazines out there at the time. i'm hoping you can say a little bit more about where you see that sexual agency coming from, particularly in the centerfolds, but maybe more throughout the magazine as well. >> uh-huh. my argument act the playmates is very much situate inside the early '50s and '60s in that pre-feminist culture, before women were truly -- well, if we can use that word -- truly sexually liberated compared to the early post-war years. and what i discovered as i started my research in the magazine and another surprise to me, um, was that the portrayal of the may mates, i think, was sympathetic -- playmates, i think, was sympathetic. hugh hefner was with trying to say that the girl next door is sexy, certainly sexually available, and there's nothing wrong with that.

even though she's single, even though she may still be living at home with her parents. and what i'm arguing is that in the 1950s there wasn't a lot of mainstream popular culture that was making that argument about single womanhood, that it was okay for women to be sexual and celebrate their sexuality. and a big part in the way that playboy did that was there were articles and, you know, descriptions of the women accompanying their centerfold pictures. and, granted, a lot of these stories may have been made up, um, but there were little articles describing what the women did in their spare time, what their hopes and dreams were, did they go to college, you know, what cookies they like to bake. and there were secondary photographs that accompanied those essays s. and in some of these layouts it showed the playmate -- fully dressed at that point, of course -- having dinner with her parents or

grocery shopping. and so really i say these accompanying photos and essays said is this girl's parents don't judge her for being actively sexual, and her own parents don't judge her for being a sexual being, why should you? why should american popular culture? um, and so i think that in that way playboy was fairly subversive in the 1950s. that changes after we get to the women's movement and the culture allows american women more active sexuality. but in the '50s i think that was an important message. >> that's quite subversive, yeah. it's interesting, you sort of describe the articles that would accompany the centerfolds. it is still creating quite a particular fantasy for men, a fantasy about -- as you talk about in the book -- the beautiful and sexually-available girl next door. and it's a very, i think, titillating fantasy for men. it gives them all the hope that, you know, their neighbor who is

home having dinner with mom and dad is actually, if you were to undress her, you know, this incredible centerfold. >> right. >> so i can see -- so, it's an interesting fantasy because i can see your argument that it is humanizing the women to some degree. it's presenting them in a broader view, but i can also see why it's a very effective fantasy. >> right. >> that playboy was marketing. that is, it was good business sense for them. >> right. >> because it was saying, um, the playboy centerfolds, the bunnies sort of are everywhere. >> right. >> um, which, you know n some ways is subversive, but you can also see the 1970s feminists' critique of that which is men are looking around and viewing us all as bunnies, how would we look with the little bunny tails on? >> right, right. >> but it's a very kind of savvy, i think, on huffer in's part -- hefner's part business model to use these models that were not professional.

and you talk about that in the book, that they quite deliberately used not well-known models and women, and most of them were just people who were not famous. >> right. >> how did they find the bulk of these women? you talk about some of them send anything pictures, but where did most of them come from? >> a lot of them were submitted by photographers. so photographers who did cheesecake photography or whatever, advertising, a lot of them would submit women's photo for consideration. >> and so most of the women were kind of struggling models, not well known? is. >> absolutely, absolutely. some of them, supposedly, were found, you know, grocery shopping. a photographer happened to pass by a woman he thought was particularly beautiful. but a lot of them had modeled before they appeared in playboy, they just didn't appear in any well known venue. and they didn't appear nude before playboy because hugh hefner didn't want to -- >> that was fascinating. >> -- probe mote anyone who appeared nude anywhere else, and

they weren't allowed to pose nude for two years after. >> that was fascinating, that playboy was providing this glimmer, this kind of view into these women, but they were special. and so you couldn't get this view of them everywhere else. >> right. >> and it really does sort of play into the whole madonna and be whore thing. >> right. >> here you're getting this glimpse into these good girls, and part of a of you you -- part of how you knew was they weren't posing for every other absolutety magazine. slutty magazine. they're still innocent enough for the men to take home to their own families. >> exactly. >> and it also distinguishes playboy from the other magazines. you're not going to see these particular women everywhere. >> right. >> a cut above, which is very interesting. what's also interesting, when you talked about that several of the women and some of the most popular centerfolds worked at playboy.

>> right. >> which is really interesting. did you talk to any of those women about how they felt being approached, you know, if you're the receptionist in a particular office? i guess if you're working at playboy, you already are pretty comfortable with what the magazine is doing. >> right. >> but it was really interesting, and they would keep their jobs, right? it's not like they became centerfolds and then changed careers. i guess in the 1950s and '60s, we didn't have reality tv stars. but did you get to talk to any of those women? >> i did. they very much seem to be just normal, average women, um, who happen to find themselves working at playboy. some of them were dating hugh hefner when they were the receptionist -- [laughter] or, you know, in the copy editing department, whatever. a few of them tell stories, joyce, for instance, who still works at the "playboy" mansion, at least as of 2006 when i

interviewed her, she was dating he was -- as -- hef, as he's known -- dating him and working at playboy, and she didn't think of herself as particularly rebellious, but she also didn't consider herself very constrained by the standards of the day. she and a number of the playmates that i interviewed said that the only thing they were nervous about was their fathers. you know, what might their dads think about them appear anything playboy. and in the case of joyce, her dad okayed her appearance in playboy once he met hugh hefner because he put her parents so at ease. so a lot of these women said they didn't think of themselves as, you know, anything other than the girl next door. one of the women just said i just happened to have a job that was a little bit different than most girl next door. >> yeah. and it didn't change their

lives. >> no, absolutely not. another woman, delores del monte, she didn't know her picture appeared in playboy for 25 years. >> yeah, how was that? you talked about that. her son found it, right? [laughter] how did she not know? >> she was a model, and she had posed nude in the 1950s. she, when playboy was founded in 1953, the first several centerfolds, um, were not women who were posing for playboy. they were just sort of stock nude, cheesecake photos from a local photography company, and hugh hefner bought the rights to those photos. and those were the first playmates. and this one particular woman, delores del monte, she had no idea where this kind of stock, cheesecake photo of her on a bearskin rug or something, where

that had ever ended up. and be many years later her son was looking at the 25th anniversary issue of the magazine in the 1970s and said, that's my mom! [laughter] and he told her, and she was pleased as punch, and she said she became a minor celebrity amongst her family and friends 25 years later. and then once the magazine became much more popular, they were able to get their own models. >> right, right. well, and the models were typically pretty well paid by playboy, even in the early years. >> right. on average the models were paid well, most of them got promotional contracts after they appeared in playboy which paid well, and the bunny waitresses, many of them said it was the best paying job that they could find. >> yeah. yeah, you talk in the book a bit about playboy sort of pushing for liberal causes in a thurm of different ways -- in this a number of different ways, but one is pushing the race barrier, and they have their first

african-american bunny. centerfold, rather. and that's very important to hefner to do, but they do only push so far. when they were talking about the endorsements, i think you said they didn't give her the sort of endorsements they typically did to the other centerfolds. >> right. jennifer jackson, she was the first african-american playmate in 1965, she said that she didn't get the promotional contract because hefner worried he wouldn't be able to provide her enough security. >> oh, okay. normally these folks, centerfolds, would go out to events -- >> right. around the country. and playboy had already had some trouble with clubs in the south. >> uh-huh. >> and southern standards of segregation. and playboy didn't want its clubs to be segregated, so it ran into some trouble there. and according to jennifer jackson, that's why hefner couldn't give her the contract, because he thought if she was traveling around the country, particularly if he wanted to send her into the south, maybe

she wouldn't be safe. >> right. and you excerpt some of the letters that were published after jennifer jackson appeared, and it was quite a mix as was a lot of the controversial stuff playboy did, and they published a real range of letters. how integrated were the centerfolds after her? i mean, so, you know, using her as a centerfold clearly made a statement that the magazine cared about integration and believed in it. but did they then continue with sort of integrated centerfolds? >> a little bit. >> uh-huh. >> um, there's only a handful of non-white playmates after jennifer jackson for the next ten years. i want to say it was four or five or six. >> uh-huh. >> um, so not much. the standard still remained a white playmate and, increasingly, blond playmates because that was hugh hefner's preference, his own personal preference. [laughter] >> with as we can see from his all -- all his wives, although i think there have been some

brunettes. >> not his wifes. he's on his third engagement now. his first wife, millie, i'm not sure if she was -- >> i thought 20 years ago one was brunette. [laughter] they were all pretty much blond. >> yeah. that's definitely his preference. >> okay. well, one of the other things i found really interesting in the book was this contrast between playboy sort of pushing men to kind of liberate themselves from traditional domesticity, not get married early, um, but while simultaneously focusing them on all of these very feminine pursuits. >> right. >> i had no idea that there were, um, recipes, that there were home decorating tips and they were really sort of pushing men to be self-conscious about their appearance. maybe not as self-conscious, but self-conscious about their appearance in the same way women were pushed to be. so it's this really interesting mix between the creation of, in a way, and you get at this in the book a new kind of alpha

male, but who is much more feminine. >> right. >> i mean, did that sort of surprise you before you started really reading the magazine, this mix between you're a real man, and you have sex with all these women, but yet we're pushing you to be really feminine in some ways. >> right. yeah, it was surprising. there's this real blurring in magazines, gender blurring. women being celebrated in terms of their sexuality, allowing women to be more sexual in the way that men had traditionally always been more sexual. but then men being more domesticated. but in a selfish, self-centered, bachelor kind of way. not domesticated in terms of marriage and fatherhood, but in terms of consumption. and really the magazine, i discovered, was much more a consumer lifestyle magazine than it ever was a sexy magazine. and hefner was always interested in sexual liberation. he talked and still talks to

this day about what he considers the repress i puritan -- repressive puritan heritage of america and how this was a big problem for him. so the sexual aspect was always there, but his priority really was to make a consumer magazine. and he has said that the girls were just there to sell the magazine, to make it more popular. and as far as consumerism, he was very interested in getting men, um, to be liberated in terms of their spending. to take advantage of the post-war prosperity. and in that way hefner was really able to make the magazine so mainstream and make it a part of the post-war culture because men were advised on shopping and fashion and told that you can't just get away with two pairs of dress shoes, you need a dozen. and you need all of these accessories to take care of your shoes and keep them shined and

decorating, and the creation of the bachelor pad. >> right. >> so it's a way in which, i argue, that men were really objectified in the magazine because it's really emphasizing or sort of putting pressure on men to look better and to make their surroundings more pleasing and modern. >> right. >> um, maybe in order to get a date and to appeal to women, but that kind of advice is throughout the mag. magazine. and the sexual aspect of it, the heterosexualizing of this kind of very traditionally feminine advice, the usually just tacked in at the end. >> uh-huh. >> so there'd be a long article about, you know, matching your tie with your belt and what colors and fabrics are in for this season, and then at the end there'd be a little sentence like -- and she'll be more likely to go to bed with you. [laughter] you know?

if you wear gingham this season. [laughter] so really a way of feminizing men, but avoiding any accusations of homosexuality. >> right. right, right. um, and the magazine, it was also really aspirational in the same way that the women's magazines are. right? so women will look at these fashion magazines and sort of think, oh, maybe if i wear that dress, i'll look like that person, right? which we won't. but what i thought was interesting with hefner, with playboy is he was so consciously doing this as well. that is a lot of his readers were in college or in their early 20s, and yet he was giving them aspirations and running stories about second homes in the hamptons. >> right. >> and i guess at one point in the book you talk about in the early years he turn down a number of potential advertisers because they didn't fit the image. >> right. >> which i thought was really interesting. so can you just say a little bit more about, you know, what this, what the particular sort of

class aspirations were for playboy, for their readers, and, i mean, was it all just about getting the higher end marketers, or was it a little bit more than that? >> um, i think it's about getting higher end marketers in order to create a middle class, respectable magazine. consumer lifestyle guide, but also a magazine that's going to lift sexuality, commercial sexuality out of the gutter and onto, you know, the coffee tables of average men across the country. >> right. >> so this was a very deliberate priority by hugh hefner. he wanted to make a sophisticated men's magazine. he always argued that men, obviously heterosexual men, he said, are interested in all of these things. they're interested in nice clothe, right? a certain demographic. they're interest inside nice clothes, they're interested in jazz and martinis, and they're also interested in beautiful women. and he said that when he founded

playboy, those things were very separate. you could go to certain places for the sex, you could go to certain places for the jazz, but you couldn't find those two things in one place. so he wanted to join all of that, and he said there's nothing wrong with having these interests. um, so he had to make the magazine sophisticated in order to make the sexual component respectable. to keep it out of the gutter. and what i found in the archive was very deliberate conversations amongst hefner and his editors, particularly his editorial director a.c., about how to maintain the sophisticated kind of approach to the magazine. and in the early years he refused advertising from what he thought were, um, you know, kind of lower class, maybe seedier -- >> what were some of those? you name some of them in the book. >> um, anything that was overtly

sexual, he didn't want anything to do with that, right? so it had to be sex according to his definition and his portrayal. and also anything that he thought would make men feel, would remind men about the ways in which they felt insecurity. >> that's what you talk about, how -- remedies for halitosis -- >> right. >> anything that would make them feel less suave and sexy. wanted them feeling good while they were reading the magazine. >> exactly. he didn't want men reminded of things that made them feel bad about themselves, so he actually shunned advertising for the first couple years until the magazine was respectable enough to get spring made sheets as their first advertiser. and so in the archival documents, there are memos and such. there was a deliberate conversation about this, and he and a.c. talked about the fact that, well, of course, we know many of our readers are never going to be able to, you know,

afford this bachelor pad, but we want to inspire in them aspiration to do that. so he was able to have a certain level of class status in the his magazine and attract very high-end advertisers. >> right, right. um, was the magazine able to start turn ago profit pretty early? i mean, this is kind of an unusual business judgment to turn advertisers away. was he able to l become profitable quickly? >> yeah, yeah. the first issue was in december '53, and if i recall in the spring of 1955, thereabouts, they had to skip an issue because they couldn't keep up with production. so the magazine was expanding, they were getting a lot of circulation, so they actually had to skip an issue to sort of catch up. >> wow. >> and expand, yeah. >> that's pretty remarkable. did the readership stay constant over the -- what i mean by constant is the demographics of the readers. so it sounded like most of the readers were in their early

20s. would those people kind of drop off as they got older, or did they stay on so the readership aged as playboy aged? >> the average reader by the end of the '50s was actually around 0, late 20s, around 30. esquire with, the main competitor, was about ten years older, so playboy definitely had a younger demographic. by the late '60s there was a sense in the company that maybe their readership was getting a little bit older and that they weren't keeping up with this new youth culture, and that presented another kind of editorial crisis in the magazine, since they had really constructed their identity as this very dapper 1950s buttoned-up kind of man. there were these conversations with, well, now what do we do, how do we remain relevant to them? >> right. their image didn't focus the

radical '60s at all. so how did they adapt? >> in terms of consumption, i don't think that they did. the fashion features remained, um, inspired by the standards that hefner established in the '50s. sure, they changed a little bit. um, there are these great memos from the archives where hefner's talking about turtle necks as the new fashion statement, a turtleneck with a blazer. but at the same time while some of the editors were saying we have to loosen up a bit, we have to start reaching this younger demographic in terms of consumption, hefner said, nope, i want top -- i want to maintain this class standard identify always had -- i've always had. but in the '60s the magazine became very political. so they introduced the interviews, they started talking really explicitly about contemporary issues of the day, the war in vietnam, civil rights, feminism, things like that. so the consumption, i'm not sure

they remained as relevant, but the politics were what really kept them in the mainstream at that point. >> yeah, it was interesting that they actually reached out to a number of the feminist leaders in the '70s and wanted them to all appear sort of together in a discussion. and i was really interested that they refused because they didn't want to be together in the sense that they didn't want to be sort of paired off against each other. >> right. >> so they all said no. but it was very interesting that may biofelt -- playboy felt they needed to take feminism seriously because they were a serious magazine. >> right. >> um, i think some people within the organization it sounded from your descriptions thought that playboy didn't end up maybe really taking on feminism, women's liberation, was meant at serious as they could have, perhaps, because hefner felt sort of threatened by the radical fringe as you sort of describe it. >> right. >> but the magazine itself really struggled, or the editors

seemed to really struggle in their responsibility to bring feminism to readers, which was really interesting. >> right. well, it was such a political magazine at that point, and they were dealing with all of these other issues, there was no way they could ignore feminism. and many of the editors were young. >> uh-huh. >> and they described himselfs, the various editors and staff members that i spoke to from the late '60s and early '70s, they described the majority of the staff as either liberal or radical in their political views. >> right. so a real tension for the magazine because they're a liberal, progressive magazine, and then here's feminism, and they should all be feminists. and in some ways they are. >> right. >> but only to a point because they're certainly not getting rid of the centerfolds or sort of con ceding that those might be undermining women's ability to be taken seriously as actors and in society more generally. so it is an interesting kind of struggle. and you can kind of sense it from the interpretations, you give us some memos or letters

that hefner wrote his own kind of internal struggle. >> right. >> did you get to talk with him about that, or did you kind of get a fuller sense from the archives about his own reaction to the feminist movement? >> yeah. i was able to talk with him. i found these amazing memos. hefner had isolated himself in his chicago mansion for many years in the 1960, went through a fairly eccentric phase even for him. [laughter] and so he didn't go into the office. so all of his work and communication with his staff members was done on memos, which is a treasure for a researcher. >> uh-huh, right. >> with to be able to find all those memos. and the magazine had by that time, by '69 or '70 when it started really thinking about addressing the women's movement had already been talking about issues relevant to women, reproductive rightses and such. >> right. >> but hefner was hysterical about the radical feminist

critique of playboy. and the way in which some radical feminists, what hefner called the superfeminists, were critiquing heterosexuality and beauty culture. and that's what he reacted to. part of the argument i make in the book is that he missed an opportunity to emphasize the ways in which he and his magazine wholeheartedly supported liberal feminism -- >> right. >> in favor of reacting to this radical critique in a paranoid, hysterical way. um, and he talk about his views of radical feminism in these lengthy memos. and he asks his staff to come up with a piece on superfeminism. and to really rip it apart. he says we can tear down these women. and sort of reveal them for the hacks that they are. i'm paraphrasing, he didn't use that particular word. i think he called them kooks.

[laughter] so there's this great debate amongst editors and staff members, male and female, over how playboy should treat feminism. and at the end of it they get this article that's very critical of feminism, very dismissive of feminism. the author, mort hunt, he says that, you know, women shouldn't fly a plane when they're menstruating, and that just opened up i another round of controversy amongst the staff. because a lot of the staff members were really unhappy with the way the magazine ended up treating the movement. and hefner himself then reversed his initial views and said, you're right, i don't think this was the right way to go. we support so much of the feminist movement, that's what we should have emphasized. and so i was able to bring those documents to his attention when i interviewed in -- him in 2006,

and he was really interested in looking at them. he said, whoa, i haven't seen these in 40 years. and i asked him, you know, you contradict yourself, you had actually a record of support for feminism, you know, why did you go this route? and, um, he said that, basically, to this day he refuses to acknowledge that there could be any legitimate critique of his magazine. and he took it really personally. and a lot of his top editors did too, took the feminist attack on playboy very personally. they thought that they were allies, they thought that they were liberal allies of the movement, and they could not and still cannot wrap their minds around the fact that the magazine could be interpreted as anything other than an ally of women. and so he really stuck to his gun on that point. but at the same time he said, well, i guess i'm not the cheaf fist pig that i've been made out

to be, you know? [laughter] i do have this record of support for women. it's that very fact that makes him unable to accept that some feminists can't be friends with him. >> right, right. you really get that ambivalence throughout the book, and an interesting sort of fork in the road as you were highlighting. e mean, the magazine could have just really embraced liberal feminism in its pages which it was doing in its editorial staff, and instead they kind of highlighted or tried to tear down the radical fringe of feminism. >> right. >> and i think your take on it sounds exactly right, it was largely driven by sort of a personal hurt or insult. >> right, right. >> i want to make sure we leave some time for questions. i see we have got about ten minutes, okay. does anyone have any questions? such a great topic. yeah. >> sure. i teach classes on nonfiction books. i thought i ought to coffer some things on -- cover some things on gender issues now, and i

began trying to read a recent postmodern, considered a postmodern, feminist book, and it was analyzing soap opera activity primarily, and it was a little hard for me to deal with, so i picked up a book, "is there anything good about men," that freud had written. and although it's not quite in the feminist genre, it covers gender issues. i wondered if you'd have any suggestions for recent feminism kinds of things that would be more in the mainstream. >> in the terms of masculinity? is. >> well, no. in, in the modern feminist cause, perhaps. >> oh, um, yeah, there's a lot that's been out in the last 10 or 15 years in what's called third wave feminism. um, and really one of the founding books, and this is ten or 15 years old now, but sort of one of the founding books of

third wave feminism is called "manifesta." i'm recalling the title, so that might be a good place to start in terms of the way in which feminism is now interpreted by a younger generation of women. >> hi, carrie. i have a question. i know you said your book focuses more on '70s and earlier readership of playboy. i was wondering, have you looked into if anything has changed with "the girls next door" show on tv f that brought in the readership of playboy to other, just women in general? i'm curious if they were buying playboy a little more, because i know i did when i started watching the show. i kind of realized, well, these girls don't all come from broken homes. that's what i grew up thinking, these girls didn't have families, but on the show, you know, they were happy girls with happy families, and their families supported them, you

know, displaying their bodies in playboy. so i'm wondering if readership changed recently with that show, if you'd looked into that at all. >> um, i'm not aware that the readership of playboy has changed. and as far as i know, it certainly hasn't expanded. because of "the girls next door." playboy, as most mainstream magazines are, has been struggling over the last 10 or 20 years with the rise of the internet. for various reasons, whether it's internet porn or people just reading, getting their information on the internet as opposed to paper magazines. and certainly the consumers of the "the girl next door" and playboy's brand, the t-shirts, the bunny logo t-shirts and purses and jewelry and such are young women. i'm not aware that many of those women have now started reading the magazine. i think that today there are sort of two versions of

playboy's existence. there's the magazine which i think still has a fairly traditional readership. um, if i recall and i could be wrong about this, i think its readership each month, circulation is about two million now down from a high of seven million in the early '70s. so it sort of still has its little niche market, but it's experienced this resurgence in the last five years or so as a brand. as a consumer brand. and "the girl next door" is very much responsible for this. so young women, many young women are consuming the playboy brand but not necessarily reading the magazine system and playboy clubs are now opening around the world again, the new one in this london opened any day now or in the last few days, actually. and i, this is totally anecdotal, i asked some of my students, girls in my class what they think about playboy, and they said, oh, i love "the girls

next door." i've never read the magazine. i don't care about the magazine, but "the girls next door," i love that show. i have a playboy purse, and i said, why, what does it mean to you? and they said, it looks like those girls are having so much fun. they're dating this old guy, whatever, but they're always going to parties and meeting celebrities, and everything they wear is pink. [laughter] and it's just pretty, and their bedroom is pink and fluffy, and it looks like they're having a great time. and so at least with a handful of girls in georgia, that's apparently what playboy means to them today. and so i think that's really where the brand has taken hold. and i, i'm not aware that there's a big crossover to magazine readership. >> it's funny, though, it's gone from the fantasy for men to the fantasy for young women, right? of a pretty pink world. >> exactly. exactly. it's nonthreatening, just some fun. you know, i think that for these

young women having this elderly boyfriend -- >> well, he's probably not threatening, right? >> it's nonthreatening, it's just fun. [laughter] yeah, yeah. >> are there other questions from the audience? >> was there any moment during the war in vietnam when hefner became anti-war? >> oh, yes. the magazine was anti-war pretty much throughout. >> like, from 1965 on? >> yeah. >> oh, really? >> they were one of the first mainstream magazines to come out against the war in vietnam. certainly one of the first mainstream magazines to come out in support of abortion rights in the mid '60s. so playboy was very liberal on all of those social issues of the day. >> what about his, you know, the competitors? i don't know when they started being published, like penthouse and so forth. >> right. >> it seems like the editorial voice of the magazine always was supercool and never got

foresterred about -- flustered about anything, but i recall the publisher of penthouse using his fingers and saying, reciting these milestones of how he had photographically proceed today get more and more intimate in the to have my of women. i won't mention any examples. but did playboy, like, try to play catch up with this, or how were they feeling about all of that? >> yeah. you talk about the very cool voice, the editorial voice of the magazine. well, in those years, late '60s and early '70s, the founder of penthouse who came to the u.s. from england in '69, if i recall, and then hustler appeared in '73 or '34. '74. much more explicit magazines. and the cool editorial voice behind the scene there was crisis amongst hefner and his editors. the late '60s and early '70s were a time for -- of crisis for

playboy in a lot of ways. they're really being challenged by more explicit magazines like penthouse, in particular, and they're trying to keep up. and there's this great debate -- >> [inaudible] some kind of ethical dilemma? i wouldn't think that hefner would really have a big problem -- >> he did. >> really? >> he did, yeah. certainly, and, you know, i have to say there's a difference between the type of very romantic sexuality that hefner wants to promote in his magazine and his personal life. because, clearly, his personal life was very libertine, very extravagant. but in the magazine even into the '70s, um, it's part of the reason why i end my book when i do, in '73, because the formula's really established, and he doesn't want to waiver from that formula by the early '70s. there's a great debate over how explicit playboy should become in order to keep up with its competitors. and the centerfold images became

a little bit more explicit. they were actually called the pubic wars at the time. the revealing of the pubic area which was very tame. >> like four other stages, and i don't recall what they were. that was just the first stage. >> with right, right. but that's where playboy stayed. playboy went to that line to compete with penthouse, and it was hotly debated amongst the staff and editors if they should even do that, if they should show pubic hair. and then hefner said, that's it, i'm not going further, i'm not doing this, i don't care if our circulation falls behind, this is not what playboy's about, and they stopped. >> and then they lost market share? >> what? , i'm sorry? >> and they lost market share at that point? >> well, yeah, yeah. and then by the mid '70s, for a variety of reasons, playboy readership started to go down. but the culture changed so much at that point, people didn't need to go to playboy for sex

anymore. >> well, the other magazines also suffered. i don't know what the timing was, but hustler and penthouse haven't been doing well, probably have suffered even more long term than playboy. >> right, absolutely. >> did playboy really never push that line? i mean, you have some wonderful descriptions in the book of hefner basically sort of saying, oh, that's smut, you know? >> yeah. >> that's just dirty. >> yeah, absolutely. >> he really did seem to have a very clear, um, aesthetic line, but it also sort of seemed to be a moral line that some things were just improper. >> right. right, right. >> he had a very clear vision of what was okay and what wasn't okay. >> yeah, he absolutely did. >> now, is he still retaining control over the centerfolds? even now? or has everything really been turned over to, i guess, christy and now new leadership after christy? >> right. she retired in the 2009. my understanding is that he still has the final say on everything. >> uh-huh. >> day-to-day stuff he's not involved in, but that he is still the end of the line for

the big decisions in the magazine. >> uh-huh. were there there any significant changes under christy, or did she really -- >> she really wanted to start to appeal to women, so in the '80s and '90s the magazine magazine -- the company, not so much the magazine changing, but the company got involved in core video -- soft core video porn for heterosexual couples. so christy wanted to appeal to women in that way. the magazine did make more of an attempt to appeal to women in the '90s with more celebrity centerfolds. they thought women would like to see certain celebrities. and then a major change not so much necessarily appealing to women, but after 2000, 2001 the magazine -- the company finally got involved in hard core video porn because they needed to make money. and this was, again, a huge, huge decision for hugh hefner

and christy because this was something the magazine had, the company had always stayed away from. >> has the hard core porn been important for the business success since the magazine readership has gone down so much? >> that and the branding, which is huge. yeah. >> right. do we have time for any more? or are we out of time? >> can i ask one more here? >> okay, one more. >> okay. it seems like hugh hefner is teflon. recently "time" magazine had a pig on the cover about men's behavior, and how is this guy able to live at ground zero of, you know, sexual activity and yet we never hear anything untoward about him? not that i'm a real student of him, but -- [laughter] it never seems to get in the newspapers or anything. >> um, we did hear a lot of criticism of hefner and playboy in the '70s and '80s from

the feminists that we talked about, certain aspects of the feminist movement and be particularly as an anti-porn feminist movement developed in the late '70s -- >> [inaudible] it's nothing really perm, it's all about the editorial stance of the magazine. >> right. um, he hasn't gotten himself in a lot of trouble. >> even with all those divorces, he hasn't -- >> he's had two divorces. he's only been married twice. he's engaged now. so, no, not a messy divorce. his first wife who he married just before the founding of playboy, um, she remained friends with him, she was even helping out with the company until her death many years ago. his second wife lived next door with his second round of children. they had a little bit of trouble over some money or something recently. but otherwise, he stays friends with people. a lot of his old girlfriends still speak highly of him, are

still friends with him, some of them still work for the company. i think he's just not gotten himself into trouble. he's never been into drugs. you know, we can say that he may be an eccentric person, you can talk about sexism and, you know, awe f i think all of that is valid, but i think he's legitimately a nice, generous person. >> i'm just a little skeptical. you know f it's too good to be true, it's not? [laughter] >> yeah. i mean, he's not a saint, right? and there have been a few very seedy stories that have come out of the mansion over the years, certain playmates oding and things like that. but those stories are very few and far between. most people who know him say he's just a nice guy, and his biggest addiction other than blonds has been pepsi cola. literally. [laughter] >> that's a great note to end on. thanks so much, carrie. this was a wonderful discussion and thank you all for joining us. >> yes. thank you for attending today's discussion and for supporting

the chicago tribune's commitment to literacy. a book signing will take place in the arts room which is right next door. please exit the room at this time unless you have a ticket for the next program. have a good day. [applause] >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] chiarrie pitzulo from the carrie pitzulo from the university center in chicagoca where we are still covering the several panels live from the 2011 "chicago tribune" printers row of literary festival and we will be back with more in just h moment. >> would it be fair to say there has bn some lvel >> would be fair to say there has been some level of more rect accepted come when you look at

recent scandals and correct me if my thesis here is wrong, but it is the ones not just attached with personal lives and sexual cdals, bu t ones because americans have gotten re a right now politicians. ultimately, we argue that's a good thing because it'll enable us to stop eventually talking and obsessing about the sex lives of presidents and politicians and start focusing on what really matters. >> what makes it so bad is not just the prostitutes in new orleans and washington, d.c., but when you have somebody that hypocritical getting caught up

in a sexual escapade, it just makes it even worse. >> well, instead of talking about this conceptually before we go to phone calls, and our lines are already buzzy for you, let's just give a for instance. what's your favorite story in the book? >> the chapter turned out to be the eleanor roosevelt/franklin roosevelt white house. he had his girlfriend living next to him, she had her girlfriend, lorena hickok, living next to her in the white house. the american public didn't, obviously, know anything about this. the fascinating thing about the story is that the girlfriends turned out to be essential to helping these two figures become the great heros of american history who led us through the great depression and the second world war. it's an essential piece of their story, these extramarital relationships. and it's an important piece

which has been long ignored by historians. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> this june on "in depth," the balance between security and liberty, the difficulties of a climate change treaty, and the limits of international law. your questions for author and university of chicago law professor eric posner. his books include law and social norms and the perils of global legalism, and he'll take your calls, e-mails and treats. live sunday, june 5th, on c-span2's booktv. >> cynthia stewart was a mother in oberlin, ohio, small town, who was a mother of one child, an 3-year-old daughter, nora. she lived with her partner, david prada in a little farmhouse outside of town. cynthia had had become a passioe photographer after her daughter had been born. and she decided to document her

daughter's life in great detail, and she relished doing that, and she took pictures of nora all the time. by the time nora was 8, she had taken 35,000 photographs of nora. these are not digital, these are rolls of film developed at discount drug marts processing lab. all of those picture were numbered and filed and archived in card board boxes in her dining room, stacked up on her dining room wall. and she wanted someday to put together a book, but she was going to have a lot to choose from. on july the 6th, 1999, cynthia scooped up 11 rolls of developed film and took them to the discount drug mart to have them developed. and a few days later ten of those rolls came back, but one did not. cynthia assumed that roll had been lost in the lab, and she began calling the lab to see if they could track it down. it really upset her. she knew some of those photographs had pictures of her daughter in the bathtub, but it

didn't dawn on her to worry about that because she had taken photographs along with nora naked ever since she was born, and most of those had been developed at the discount drug mart lab. a few weeks went by, and on august the 11th the police knocked on her door, and they said they had her pictures down at the station, and she was relieved. she thought they'd found her pictures, but they said there's serious questions, ma'am, and we want you to come down to the station to talk to us about them. she thought there was nothing to hide and she could explain those photographs, and she invited the police into her house, and she pointed out these boxes of photographs and explained what she did. they didn't ask to see the photographs, they just said they wanted her to come to the station. david insisted they get a lawyer before they went to the station, so they informed the police that's what they would do, and the police left. the next day they met with a lawyer, amy werts, who was a specialist in family law.