Flutterby™! : Six decades of centerfolds

The New Yorker looks at "The Playmate Book: Six Decades of Centerfolds":

In the nineteen-eighties and thereafter, the artificiality only increased, as did that of all American mass media. The most obvious change is in the body, which has now been to the gym. Before, you could often see the Playmates sucking in their stomachs. Now they don’t have to. The waist is nipped, the bottom tidy, and the breasts are a thing of wonder. The first mention of a “boob job” in “The Playmate Book” has to do with Miss April 1965, but, like hair coloring, breast enlargement underwent a change of meaning, and hence of design, in the seventies and eighties.

(Via Daze Reader). The whole thing is worth reading, and in fact the book may be too, as a chronicle of how our cultural views of sex and nudity have changed over the years, and the article has too many paragraphs that I want to quote.

That, in the end, is the most striking thing about Playboy’s centerfolds: how old-fashioned they seem. This whole “bachelor” world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals. (A more modern-looking avatar of the Playmates’ pneumatic breasts is Robert Mapplethorpe’s Mr. 10 ".) Today, if you try to present yourself as a suave middle-aged bachelor, people will assume you’re gay.

Well worth the read.