********* This is a rough, uncorrected transcript *********
HANSON: The first real men's magazine in America, started in 1919, was Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, and it was named after a World War I bomb,, these were bombshells and really just had little line drawings of flappers. It progressed into the 20s and the 20s was a very liberal period. There was a magazine called "Sex Magazine". It had nude women in there, there were artists' magazines that supposedly provided nude studies for artists. There was also a lot of sexual experimentation that went on during the 20s. In the 1930s, really right around the time that prohibition was repealed, they decided to clean up the magazines. Like, ok, they're gonna go back to drinking, we can't have two vices going on, so we're gonna get all these dirty magazines off the stands, and at that point, magazines went to just text, inside were spicy fiction, and on the outside were beautiful painted pinup covers. Into the 40s, people went off to war and even going back to World War I there were high VD rates, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna keep these guys from becoming incapable of fighting by being laid low with VD?” and the US government got the idea, “Well maybe if we give them pinups and magazines and something to keep their little hands busy?" So suddenly girly magazines were very popular. They weren't nude, but the magazines had photographs of women dressed in lingerie, dressed in bathing suits and much more voluptuous women. And when the guys got out of the war after this barrage of pinups, they were kind of missing it all.
BROOKE: And is that were Hef comes in?
HANSON: So you have Hugh Hefner, who served his time in World War II sitting behind a desk stateside because he had writing ability. His favorite magazine and every enlisted man's favorite magazine was Esquire, where you had pinups by George Petty and Alberto Vargas.
BROOKE: Ah, Vargas, who went on to a long career at Playboy.
HANSON: Exactly. Hugh Hefner loved Vargas. But he wanted to see real women in the magazine, that looked like these Vargas girls. And he came up with Playboy. And there were other very popular magazines that had nudity - Modern Man being the biggest competitor, a very well-made magazine. What made Playboy so different than the other magazines of the time was that Modern Man was rough, tough guys involved in tough, manly, physical activities and Hefner who was the kind of man who wanted to lounge around his little apartment listening to jazz in silk charmeuse pajamas whipping up cocktails, making some o'dourves, he's gonna make a magazine for the urban sophisticate. And as he said in his first issue, we're not gonna be out tramping around in the woods. We're going to spend most of our time indoors, and invite in a female friend to discuss lofty intellectual matters.
HEFNER:
BROOKE: Now, Modern Man, it isn't just that Playboy offered a different idea of masculinity, it also offered a different view of women.
DIAN: It definitely did.
BROOKE: So what was Modern Man's view?
DIAN: Modern Man like most of the other magazines that came up during World War II and after World War II, focused on the women who were easiest to get naked. And those women were strippers and probably prostitutes. They were not necessarily young, they were not necessarily beautiful. They were available. They were all bad girls. They were naughty girls. Hefner had the genius idea to get women who you wouldn't normally see taking their clothes off - The girl next door. And it's an idea that we don't understand quite as well today, how forbidden this was. That the nice girl, the nice girl who worked in the office with you, who you had grown up next door to, who you went to highschool with, who didn't wear a lot of makeup, who didn't wear sexy clothes out in public, that this girl you might get to see naked. This was just a revolution. Nobody had done this before.
BROOKE: As Hannibal Lecter famously said, "you covet what you see every day".
DIAN: Laughter. Exactly. Exactly. This combination of making something that allowed the ordinary guy, the guy who didn't have muscles, who wasn't brave, allow him the fantasy of being able to get women and be cool just by using his mind and by learning how to cook, how to mix drinks, how to buy the right objects, it was very consumerist. It just appealed to a wide, wide audience.
---------------------------------
BROOKE: Well then let's talk about Penthouse and Hustler. Both were created to compete with Playboy.
DIAN: As soon as Playboy's sales took off, everybody wanted to find a way to either be Playboy or knock Playboy off the top, so all the other men's magazines in america started copying the playboy formula. they all got articles and drink recipes and toned down the look of their girls. But the more assertive guys like Bob Guccione, he said, "I see what Playboy's missing. I think that there are guys who want something that's a little more edgy. And they want to see girls who are a little spicier than the girl next door. Not the old prostitutes and strippers, but maybe newer, better, younger, cuter prostitutes and strippers"
BROOKE: Not the girl next door's sexy cousin from New York City?
DIAN: That sort of thing. Exactly. And so he came out with his magazine in England, first, and in 1970 Penthouse arrived in America. People were ready. Men were eager, they wanted to see what this thing was gonna be. And the first thing he did is he showed a little bit of pubic hair.
BROOKE: Mmhm. This sounds like the Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles.
DIAN: It was a lot like that. It was a lot like that. Though probably Penthouse was really not as edgy and naughty as the Rolling Stones were.
BROOKE: Should I bring in Larry Flynt's Hustler at this point?
DIAN: Well, Larry Flynt. Good old boy, Larry Flynt growing up in the hills of Kentucky saw that there was a big group of American men who were never gonna make it to the penthouse, who were never gonna be playboys, who were gonna get married, you know, in high school and have a couple of kids and get a job down at the auto shop, and that they needed a different kind of magazine. And he came out with this rustic, down-home, kind of southern and midwest inflected, dirtier magazine.
BROOKE: Now when all these magazines were confronted with the ready availability of video and internet pornography, Penthouse and Hustler became more explicit.
DIAN: You know, the magazines survived with video. Video offered something a little different. They didn't really hurt sales. What hurt sales was the internet, because then the day your magazine hit the newsstand, people would go, scan every page, put online for free. And in 1997, all the magazines started to see a 10% per year drop in their sales. When Penthouse saw this, because Guccione was very technology oriented he said, "What does the internet offer? It offers hardcore." And he took his magazine hardcore, and managed to get it on the newsstands and was not arrested. All the other magazines followed after except for Playboy.
