The Playboy Club is About Women's Empowerment?

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• judybrowni | October 5, 2011 7:57 AMReply

  Woo hoo! Playboy Club cancelled! Turns out that badly-written TV series don't find an audience, even if the women are "empowered" by high heels and a bunny tail. Hey, Amber you can use those three-inch heels to walk home! Gloria Steinem, on the other hand, is still working at her profession.

• brooke | August 29, 2011 10:20 AMReply

  Jeez, David Green, what on earth do you watch on TV? I don't see any of those shows. The League certainly isn't one, or do you consider it to be one? And what about all those cheesy shows on Discovery ID about women who kill. Too feminist for you? I have a feeling that you think anything with a woman who is different from June Cleaver is a man-hating feminist. Which is probably why you go home and watch crap on tv.

• Tyler Foster | August 19, 2011 10:18 AMReply

  Wow. I may not have any interest in this show, and I see why people are disagreeing with what she said, but there's an alarmingly high amount of personal attacks on her going on in here from people who know nothing about her, mostly based on a) the fact that she's on this show and b) the fact that she's blonde. Seems kind of...off-point. I believe she may have just picked her words poorly. She seems to be a feminist, and I assume she'd be sensitive to any sort of lecherous sexism, seeing as she came out at some public thing last year. But maybe that's a short-sighted assumption on my part.

• judybrowni | August 13, 2011 11:26 AMReply

  Gloria Steinem, on the benefits going undercover to research Bunny life in 1963 (and no, the pay rate wasn't one of them): “At first, it was such a gigantic mistake from a career point of view that I really regretted it. I’d just begun to be taken seriously as a freelance writer, but after the Playboy article, I mostly got requests to go underground in some other semi-sexual way. It was so bad that I returned an advance to turn the Playboy article into a paperback, even though I had to borrow the money. Even now, people ask why I was a Bunny, right-wingers still describe me only as a former Bunny, and you’re still asking me about it — almost a half-century later. But feminism did make me realize that I was glad I did it — because I identified with all the women who ended up an underpaid waitress in too-high heels and a costume that was too tight to breathe in. Most were just trying to make a living and had no other way of doing it. I’d made up a background as a secretary, and the woman who interviewed me asked, ‘Honey, if you can type, why would you want to work here?’ In the sense that we’re all identified too much by our outsides instead of our insides and are mostly in underpaid service jobs, I realized we’re all Bunnies — so yes, I’m glad I did it.”

• judybrowni | August 13, 2011 10:18 AMReply

  As for Playboy Bunnies playing "an integral part" in the Sexual Revolution - hah! No, that's credited to the Birth Control pill, first available in 1960, which for the first time in history, gave women control over when they would have children. Margaret Sanger, was an early feminist who had been battling for reproductive rights since early in the 20th century, sponsored the development of a hormonal birth control bill. To the best of my knowledge, Margaret Sanger never appeared in bunny costume.

• judybrowni | August 13, 2011 10:09 AMReply

  Maybe Playboy Bunny paid more than teacher or nurse in that period, or maybe not. In Gloria Steinem's article about her stint undercover as a Bunny, she wrote that her salary -- and what the other bunnies reported to her as their pay -- was a fraction of what the club was then claiming in the media. One of my high school classmates became a bunny in the '70s, and she confessed it was nothing more than a glorified waitress job, which didn't pay much better than any other waitress job. Keep in mind also: nursing and teaching were then considered "women's work" and were historically underpaid because of that. My college roommate began teaching in 1972, and her weekly salary was exactly half of her husband's starting job in construction. But teachers and nurses also received benefits and earned pensions, and heir pay increased with experience. None of which applied to bunnies, who I imagine would also be retired early in comparison, without a pension. -- I can't imagine Hef keeping on any 50 year-old bunnies, can you? Bunnies would be retired, young, without any experience other than waitressing on their resume. There's a reason some women went on to accomplish much after being bunnies: the feminist movement had opened up careers for women. But I doubt that "Bunny" on their resume was a factor in their new careers.

• The Shytrovert | August 10, 2011 5:28 AMReply

  First it was Ad Men, then Pan-Am now the Playboy Club. I see a pattern here. Sugar-coated retro crap being served up as salacious entertainment. What’s next? A reboot of Beulah? Amos and Andy? Birth of the Nation? These new shoes are the equivalent of racist programs from the 40s and 50s, only for women. It’s bad enough we live in a world that is taking on the look and feel of porn day by day, where beauty pageants still go on and Hooters, the modern day equivalent of the playboy club is going strong. The feminist backlash is in full effect, sadly so. Of course, TV executives aren’t social scientists and they aren’t thinking in terms of a cultural war on women. That’s the job of the extreme right wing. No, this, my friends, is all about money and the surest way to make it, which is copy a formula that has worked in the past. It’s entirely possible that the Playboy Club could offer up something of redeeming artistic value if presented in a historically accurate way. But who are we fooling? This is network television, and appealing to the lowest common denominator is the best way to ensure robust ratings. Needless to say, I won’t be watching any of this shit, and my sisters, you shouldn’t either.

• Simone | August 9, 2011 2:44 AMReply

  I read the pilot - and while the writing isn't great, it does show that being a bunny pays better than being a teacher or a nurse (in fact there is a scene where one of the character says that she makes more money as a bunny than her husband does at his job). It does contextualize it within the period and Amber's character Maureen is no dummy - in fact I would make the argument that none of the other bunnies are dumb, most especially the leader of the bunnies (whose name escapes me) who has a tremendous amount of power within the club. I think that we are accusing this show of sexism just because there happen to be women in bunny costumes. On Mad Men the men go to strip clubs (and playboy clubs) and Joan Holloway and other female characters have various indiscretions but Mad Men is considered a pretty feminist TV show. I would say the show's big problem is not it's sexism but it's lackluster writing, and to ignore that Playboy did play an integral part in the sexual revolution is pretty naive.

• Allison | August 8, 2011 3:15 AMReply

  Uh, oh. It seems Pan Am is trying the we-are-not-sexist-but empowering spiel, too: http://www.tvline.com/2011/08/abc-pan-am-sexism-mad-men-mimicry/ And EW critic Ken Tucker is all upset at the supposed scary female empowerment on ABC: http://watching-tv.ew.com/2011/08/07/abc-charlies-angels-revenge-tim-allen/ As some of the commenters point out, are these shows actually about female empowerment in reality?

• judybrowni | August 6, 2011 12:38 PMReply

  We have a winnah! See below for a butt hurt male supremacist: Playboy Club was made for his kind, he says! See, Playboy Club is about "empowerment": glorifying the days when white males had oh, so much more power over women! Such a shame that women can't be kept out of the professions any more to the degree that being a glorified waitress was the best they could do. But nevermind, a misogynist woman-hater has finally, finally got the show built for him about the good ol' days.

• David Green | August 6, 2011 10:54 AMReply

  Actually what they are trying to do is bring back the male audience that has stopped watching television in droves because of the networks feminist driven anti male ideology that insist men are bad and women are superior. A lot of men like myself - who have stopped watching regular tv - are simply sick and tired of working hard all day only to come home to have the untrue and bigoted stereotypes of the male gender shoved down our throats by a feminist driven media.

• judybrowni | August 6, 2011 9:04 AMReply

  The reason Amber Heard is experiencing well-deserved criticism is that she went beyond the bizarre party line of the male producers who claimed bunnyhood "empowered" women. Amber made it her business to slag the very feminists who had successfully fought to give women the opportunity for careers beyond Bunny.

• Allison | August 6, 2011 3:10 AMReply

  Yeah, women being portrayed as sex objects is SO empowering. Just like the ladies of Sucker Punch shooting crap up wearing tiny schoolgirl outfits, high heels, and fishnet stockings. What's with all the '60s nostalgia? We also have Pan Am with its stewardesses and X-Men: First Class with a stripper mutant and most the other female mutants and the CIA agent running around in underwear and skimpy clothes. Are we pining for the good old days of sexism?

• Susan Bernofsky | August 6, 2011 2:12 AMReply

  I read the article Gloria Steinem published in 1963, and she clearly reports that there is nothing, NOTHING, empowered or empowering about being a PB bunny. You can read an excerpt of her article here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5c51b41e-602c-11dd-805e-000077b07658.html#axzz1UG2ZGe84. "Please, sir, you are not allowed to touch the bunnies." Empowered my ass.

• PrivilegeBingo | August 5, 2011 12:52 PMReply

  Playboy empowering? What a joke.

• judybrowni | August 5, 2011 8:12 AMReply

  Another critic damns Playboy Club with faint, well, not exactly praise: “The pilot is silly and full of bad dialogue, but it’s cheesy more than offensive…the show is mostly just silly. Stereotypes are thrown into a big furnace and that furnace drives a big engine of pretty, goofy television” But she also does an excellent job of dissecting the argument for the show’s claim of “Bunny empowerment.” http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/02/138924658/the-bizarre-pitch-for-the-playboy-club-its-all-about-female-empowerment

• Katherine Bowman | August 5, 2011 4:09 AMReply

  Amber Heard is an idiot for what she said, but I think we're missing the big picture. Shows like this one have been created by men, and right now the actress is getting all of the criticism. It's men's faults for making so many women believe that female empowerment comes with wearing heels and skimpy clothing. Heard is just an actress taking a paycheck. Maybe she shouldn't open her mouth about things she doesn't understand, but where's the criticism for the creators of the show?

• julie | August 4, 2011 12:22 PMReply

  Thank-you for the interesting read (article AND comments). Young women around 20 (give or take a few years) in my country think prostitution and porn is glamorous. It's very sad to see. Good on you all for doing so much for women - and thanks again.

• Valerie Meachum | August 4, 2011 12:17 PMReply

  "Bimbo?" Wow. You sure you don't want to throw in "slut," "whore," or maybe "witch" while you're at it? I stand by my first impression, that Heard chose her words unwisely, but that I'm not entirely unsympathetic with the statement. There is exactly nothing inherent in the quote above to suggest that she isn't aware of where her freedom to choose comes from. She expresses surprise at being criticized for taking the gift of that freedom and running with it in the way that makes sense to her, and awareness of the enormous advantage that freedom gives her. At her age, I was more than surprised. I resented the living hell out of it. I heard the message loud and clear, over and over: "We didn't fight for your right to choose your own path so you could choose the WRONG one!" Accusations of "setting women back" were tossed around for the slightest infraction of rules we didn't understand because we hadn't lived through what made them necessary, and we were "ungrateful" because we didn't understand. The only conclusion possible was that we couldn't be "real" feminists without trading one prescriptive set of choices for another, so too many of us relinquished the word entirely. Twenty years later, not much has changed. It's still easier to take offense and dismiss than to listen. And then wonder why the next generation thinks you don't want them. http://divababble.blogspot.com/2011/08/bunnies-and-buzzwords.html

• judybrowni | August 4, 2011 11:40 AMReply

  It's been -- at least -- two decades since the slur "combat boots" was used to describe feminists. If an actress on the -- apparently -- crappy show can only sling outdated, baseless insults in order to get a headline, maybe she should shut up. Or more likely, she's trying to deflect attention from a lousy show. Basically, she's only been asked in the above post, or in the thread, to shut up with the bimbo insults. Not a general shut the fuck up. But hey, making baseless generalizations about shoes got her some press. However, it may be the last relatively good press. I've been to a number of TCAs, and the critics don't pile on in the general interview like that unless the pilot episode they've seen is ginormous bit of crapola. The U.S. TV critics are usually constrained from publishing their critical reviews until just before the season starts: so their attitude in the general interview is a telling indication of the quality of the show. The bimbo actress may be revelling in the attention now, but if she can't read between the lines, she should prepare for the muslide of bad reviews that will be barrelling downhill in September at Playboy Club, similar to the one below that sums it up as "cheesy" "banal" "a mess" and "mediocre TV." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/john-doyle/the-playboy-club-a-cheesy-tv-show-is-marketed-as-empowerment/article2117217/

• Valerie Meachum | August 4, 2011 10:08 AMReply

  I mean that the same people who taught her not to sit down and shut up for anybody might want to think twice before being the ones telling her to do it now. As for your choice of terms, it's not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last, that the dictionary has been behind the curve in catching up to a usage shift. It's been at least a decade since someone felt the need to coin "himbo" because the dictionary usage no longer applies in popular parlance. But what do I know? I'm just a bimbo who pretends for a living.

• judybrowni | August 4, 2011 8:09 AMReply

  No wonder the producers had to trot out a bimbo actress to make baseless insults against feminists. They needed "controversial" articles to counter the coming bad reviews. The first review is in: A male reviewer who proclaims that Playboy Club is "banal...a mess...mediocre TV." See below for more.

• judybrowni | August 4, 2011 6:03 AMReply

  One of the first reviews of Playboy Club is in, and it's not a rave: "The Playboy Club: A cheesy TV show is marketed as ‘empowerment’ On the evidence of the pilot episode, The Playboy Club... is all surface and not much substance. The show is set in the first club founded by Hugh Hefner in Chicago in 1961. Everybody smokes and drinks with abandon. Men make sexist remarks with blithe ignorance of the social rules that would evolve and rule us today. Anyone who has seen Mad Men would find it all very banal... The real issue, however, that ignites extreme wariness about the series, and some outright hostility, is a central tenet of the production – the suggestion that the Playboy Club was “empowering” for the women who worked there... Many critics were not buying the hard sell. And it’s easy to see why. The show is a mess of melodrama, gangsters, skirt-chasing rich guys and musical numbers... But the debate about whether Playboy – in all its emanations – empowers or exploits women is not what will draw viewers. It’s the jiggle and the controversy that will achieve that. The show isn’t Mad Men, it’s mediocre TV." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/john-doyle/the-playboy-club-a-cheesy-tv-show-is-marketed-as-empowerment/article2117217/

• judybrowni | August 4, 2011 5:45 AMReply

  Finally looked up Amber Heard on IMDB, and it turns out I've seen her in two films and a TV series. (Can't remember any nudity, but also didn't remember her, which can't be a good sign.)

• judybrowni | August 4, 2011 5:32 AMReply

  You mean that after this actress insulted feminism (and Gloria Steinem) with that false “combat boot” analogy, we're supposed to be polite? Fuck that. I’d never heard of the actress before, but from what I read later in one thread she may be known, primarily, for appearing nude. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter to me, I don’t think nudity earns anyone a “bimbo,” but her empty-headed insults did. Whatever. She’ll be history in a decade, or two: it’s the Meryl Streeps, Helen Mirrens and Gloria Steinems who continue to work after 40 (and into their 60s and beyond!), not the bimbos. By the way, according to the Miriam Webster Dictionary "bimbo" is genderless: "Bimbo slang : man, woman —used as a generalized term of disapproval especially for an attractive but vacuous person http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bimbo

• KT | August 4, 2011 4:12 AMReply

  This is more evidence that young American women are going backwards. When I see young women trashing feminism while taking advantage of its gains, I almost wish I hadn't done any activism. This show looks like it's going to be a Mad Men ripoff.

• Deborah Arapa | August 4, 2011 1:16 AMReply

  WOW! Am I glad to see this. I've been alarmed and furious about not just this show but the culture that is sexualizing younger and younger girls. Unfortunately this actress is probably already a role model for her . . .uh . . . independent choice.

• judybrowni | August 3, 2011 8:48 AMReply

  By the by, Gloria Steinem is still working in her profession, fifty years later. The likelihood is that in a decade or two this blonde bimbo actress will be as irrelevant as the Playboy Bunny. But if even one of the five actresses pictured still has an acting career 20 years from now, in her 40s, it will be because "older women" constitute an audience the entertainment business will want to serve more than it does now. And if any of them are able to extend their career by producing, directing or writing, it will be because the "feminists" fought for that the last 40 years. Thanks for the gratitude, you who pretend for a living.

• Loren | August 3, 2011 8:44 AMReply

  Melissa - You are right on!

• judybrowni | August 3, 2011 8:30 AMReply

  If "foot in mouth" includes deriding strawfeminists as wearing "combat boots," I'd just call it not only an insult, but a stereotypically inaccurate one. Never wore a combat boot in my life, and I met Gloria Steinem in the '70s: in her 40s then still a more glamorous woman than this empty-headed 20-something actress. If being a bunny was so empowering, why is it that writing about her experience, even as an expose, got Steinem labeled as the "Bunny writer" and constituted a serious set back in her (up to that point) serious journalism career? That's right, the image of the Bunny at the time was so salacious, that Steinem's undercover brush with it alone blackened her work prospects. Which I believe may have been one of the triggers for Steinem to start looking at things from a feminist point of view. Which bimbo actress might consider the next time she opens her yap.

• Valerie Meachum | August 3, 2011 6:13 AMReply

  admit she’s on a show that’s about women wearing bunny costumes trying to get by in the world where it was really difficult for single women to get jobs that would pay a decent wage. You see if they framed it that way, I could potentially be interested. Funny, that's exactly the impression I've gotten, and exactly the reason I do intend to watch it. (Above and beyond -- disclaimer here -- the fact that I have good friends working on the show.) Given the above, I have to agree that Amber Heard put her foot in her mouth, but I guess I've been too busy paying attention to Laura Bernanti, who's more experienced and more articulate about the in-between position of these women and of the part they played that was something in progress, and about which they can only be really aware in hindsight. Ms. Heard's generation doesn't always know how to talk effectively about there being more than one way to be a feminist, but I can't say I blame her for being defensive about how some feminists dismiss the way she's chosen. Calling earlier generations out as "doing it wrong" (or at least appearing to do so) isn't right either, of course, but I have to wonder if she's encountered any other way of engaging. Given that the very first comment on this post invokes "anorexic" in a way that too many people still seem to consider okay, I'm going to guess probably not.

• judybrowni | August 3, 2011 5:24 AMReply

  Well, cross this one off my list. I was iffy about it: seemed like just another Mad Man rip off (Pan Am, anyone?) without acknowledging the realities of the period. But a know-nothing 20 something anorexic actress dissing an entire generation of women (who lived through that period?) Honey, we were there, and the only reason women are where they are in the professions is because we were there and fighting for them. You want women to take two steps back while you pretend for a job? Fine, but we did something about real careers for real women, so shut the fuck up.