The Multiple Legacies Of Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner died this week at the ripe old age of 91. I wouldn’t have normally written about Hef until I saw some surprising praise of his life in places you wouldn’t expect. And it made me realize just how many conflicting legacies the man left behind.

Hefner’s challenge to the Puritan sexual mores of the 1950s was in many ways responsible for helping break the ground that led to the sexual revolution in the 1960’s and 1970s and, accordingly, Hefner was reviled on the right for his corrupting influence on the morals of the country. The ever-bombastic William F. Buckley decried the Playboy as a “sort of a hedonistic utilitarianism” and, perhaps jokingly, blamed population growth on the availability of Playboy. Yet, within years, Buckley was a semi-regular contributor to the magazine.

By the later 1970s and 1980s, the revolution that Hefner had in some ways helped spark had already left him behind. After all, the Playboy image reveled in the objectification of women and Hefner made his fortune through their sexploitation. The resulting feminist backlash turned the tables on Hefner as he became the defender of antiquated notions about sexuality. And, in fact, Hefner and Playboy never really supported the gay, lesbian, and trans fight for equality, remaining focused on the traditional relationships between men and women.

But, because he provided the vehicle for the exploitation of women to the masses, Hefner also became a stalwart for free speech and more libertarian influences. This was probably as much a matter of necessity as ideals, as Larry Flynt made a similar transformation. Of course, this libertarian streak is countered by his abusive and authoritarian control over the stable of women he kept running through the prison of his Playboy mansion.

Remarkably, in death, Hefner’s legacy took another more contradictory turn. For conservatives, Hefner had become a John Wayne like creature, a real man’s man. Conservative Ben Domenech, founder and publisher of the Federalist, had this to say about Hefner, “What separates him from the more lurid members of his industry is an appreciation for manners and a particular form of American masculinity: he advised you to be a gentleman, not a cad, in your pursuit of the centerfold or the girl next door…So while he was derided as selling prurience and stereotypes to the profane and stereotypical, he was actually celebrating the sexual complementarity that has bound men and women together since the dawn of time. The fact this idea has become a problematic one in some pockets of American culture is one Hefner would doubtless find absurd.”

In other words, for some on the right, Hefner has now become an embodiment of the power and privilege that white men used to have and, in retrospect, that may have been all he ever was. The loss of that power and privilege, however, is what drives conservative resentment today.