This comment is not trying to be politically correct or aloof or discerning or anything, but what is weird is how few of these women in the early decades I find really attractive (maybe one per year?). Obviously, a big committee of people all agreed they were the hottest they could get to pose at the time, but I am really struggling to see why. I find it difficult to believe that it’s just that the hairstyles seem dated, or something that keeps them oddly unattractive. Obviously all have nice figures, but the yawning gap in facial attractiveness between the most conventionally beautiful women and those willing to pose for Playboy has obviously shrunk over time. There are some exceptions, but its almost a rule. Maybe a reflection of the magazine as serving mostly old men and adolescents, both of whom are just looking for some breasts for 30 seconds?
Also, man the eighties were terrible for hair and lighting. Can’t even look at them.
I hear your pain. Although, I paid a price in high school for the music I listened to. In suburban Adelaide it was all about Cold Chisel and AC/DC (Both bands whose music has aged very well actually), and the kid with the crazy haircut who listened to New Order and Siouxsie and the Banshees copped a lot of shit.
I love tan lines. They make erogenous skin seem even more peachy, on either gender. But hey, that’s just me - I can see the attraction of an all-over glow, too.
I also think a bit of forearm hair can be quite sexy. At least on women it often lies quite sleekly.
Mine looks like part of a halloween costume - except for the patch I shaved to demonstrate how sharp an axe was. At Christmas.
Maybe it’s something about photography. Our something about our brains, or both. When I look at some of the centerfolds from that era, I thought to myself that the models’ faces look like how I’d imagine they appear now. It’s nothing against the models.
There’s a similar effect when I used to look at my parents’ school yearbooks, I would think how they looked older (i.e. like parents) even back then. Well into my own adulthood, the pictures of my parents (and their cohort) as adolescents looked older than I (or my cohort) looked as adults. I say a similar effect, because the centerfolds also have some kind of retouching that reminds me of record album covers from that same era.
The effect diminishes (for me) by the time of the early- to mid-1960s centerfolds.
My first memory of playboy was 6th grade or so. I would have been 11. Waldenbooks at the mall had some. A friend and I were bold and stupid enough to think we could look at them there unnoticed. At one point he said to me, confused but certain, “Every time I look at one of these my dick gets bigger.” I wish I could remember my reply was but I remember thinking he might be on to something there.
There’s also something about Hair, Makeup, and Wardrobe that, when applied to standards of a bygone era, make me think someone is much older than I am. Rarely could I watch Mad Men without looking at Don Draper as some square dad who might hire me to mow his lawn… and Jon Hamm is nearly a year and a half younger than I am. Even Season One Don, when Hamm was 36, looks older than I, myself, perceive myself to be. Which is strange, I realize. I’m 46. I have plenty of gray in my beard, and a regrettably decent-size spare tire. But look at my avatar: that’s me. And yet I look at young Don Draper and see, essentially, my dad’s generation, due mostly to wardrobe styling and good acting. And the fact that men of Draper’s generation weren’t encouraged to wear jeans and concert tee shirts, drink Dr Pepper instead of scotch and soda, or let their hair grow out. Apparently those pre-Baby Boomers became the Square In The Gray Flannel Suit at 22 or thereabouts.
Most of the old ones (up to mid-60s by my particular yardstick) look to me like they’re firmly of that older generation, born between the World Wars, and the youngest of which would be entering her 70s now. But I was struck by how Connie Cooper (Miss January '61) looked like she’d stepped right out of a time machine from twenty years in her future. She’s styled like a dead ringer for Phoebe Cates circa Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And the look of that era (1982ish) is right around the time I really began to appreciate the female form, and that aesthetic has always worked for me ever since. Could be that just as the music we love in our high school years often stays our favorite, so do the body shapes and styles we first got turned on by during puberty.
I was reminded of this when Brütal Legend came out. Those Razor Girls? Totally do it for me. Takes me right back to 7th grade.
[quote=“anon81034786, post:151, topic:74411, full:true”]
Made it to July 1984 before I hit the first one that I distinctly remember seeing for the first time as a pubescent teenager. [/quote]
Late 70s here; my dad kept his in the bookshelf.
I definitely remember a few others from that area. They left a rather deep impression on my psyche.
Wow! That’s a blast from the past. I was a devotee of his gallery of regrettable food back in the day. I would have even placed it as earlier than '97.
You would need to show that this wasn’t a consequence of simple evolutionary energy considerations. Larger structures require more energy to maintain, so they tend not to develop unless there is an actual need for them, We would expect noses and vocal chords to be as small as practical unless they served some other purpose, such as sexual display. This explains the ridiculous horns on deer which have evolved beyond a defensive purpose to act as fitness signallers.
In short, men with deep voices and prominent noses - sign of plenty of available energy, sexual signaller, perhaps relationship to airflow needed for peak effort. But women with smaller noses and vocal chords - efficiency given that childbirth requires all available energy, so any display-oriented features are likely to be unsuccessful.
As an example, many songbirds in winter actually lose brain mass to conserve energy. The brain gains cells in the spring to manage the song functions (and perhaps others) then shrinks again later in the year.
The four images do contain some interesting information. Look at the hair colour and how it gets paler with each decade. Body colour initially gets browner, then paler.
They also look like very old stained glass windows with the predominantly blue background and the predominant browns and yellows of the foreground. Truly there is nothing new under the Sun.
