"But it’s also worth pointing out, in the spirit of the sort of open cultural dialogue he worked his whole life to encourage, that Hefner’s egalitarian society was one largely envisioned and created for men.
The terms of his rebellion undeniably depended on putting women in a second-class role. It was the women, after all, whose sexuality was on display on the covers and in the centerfolds of his magazine, not to mention hanging on his shoulder, practically until the day he died.
Hef’s notion of the freedom to express sexuality translated largely into freedom to express men’s desire for women, and the fantasy that those women would be always ready and eager to comply.
And it wasn’t just about business: Hefner himself bragged about sleeping with more than a thousand women. In her 2015 memoir, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” former Playmate and Hef girlfriend Holly Madison described the Playboy Mansion as a place where Hef would encourage competition – and body image issues --between his multiple live-in girlfriends. His legacy is full of evidence of the exploitation of women for professional gain. In creating Playboy, and maintaining its brand over six decades, Hef championed a world in which women serve to delight and entertain men, where their bodies are objects, where modification to appeal to male senses often took precedence over comfort (because who really wants DDDs?).
Women were bunnies – the “lucky ones,” anyway. The smart pieces by well-known journalists that he ran in his magazine – even female journalists, like Margaret Atwood – were designed to enrich the intellect of the magazine’s male readers."
