The Short Stories of Playboy and the Crisis of Masculinity

The Short Stories of Playboy and the Crisis of Masculinity

The Short Stories of Playboy and the Crisis of Masculinity Men in Playboy’s Short Fiction and 1950s America Pieter-Willem Verschuren [3214117] [Supervisor: prof. dr. J. van Eijnatten] 1 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 4 State of the Art .................................................................................................................................... 4 History: Male Anxieties in the 1950s ............................................................................................... 5 Male Identity ................................................................................................................................... 7 Magazines ........................................................................................................................................ 8 Playboy ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................................... 9 Gender ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Masculinity .................................................................................................................................... 12 Identity .......................................................................................................................................... 13 New Historicism ............................................................................................................................. 14 Media ............................................................................................................................................. 16 Sources .............................................................................................................................................. 17 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 19 Structure ............................................................................................................................................ 19 CHAPTER 1 – The United States in the 1950s ........................................................................................ 21 A White-Collar Economy ................................................................................................................... 21 Women and the Feminization of the Workplace .............................................................................. 24 The Consumer Society ....................................................................................................................... 28 Suburbia ............................................................................................................................................ 32 The Men of Tomorrow ...................................................................................................................... 35 The Cold War ..................................................................................................................................... 37 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER 2 – Notes on Playboy’s Editorial Practices............................................................................. 41 The Magazine Industry ...................................................................................................................... 41 Esquire Magazine .............................................................................................................................. 43 Hugh Hefner ...................................................................................................................................... 44 The Playboy Philosophy ..................................................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER 3 – The Short Stories of Playboy: A Content Analysis ........................................................... 49 Method and Coding Scheme ............................................................................................................. 49 Results ............................................................................................................................................... 51 Age ................................................................................................................................................. 51 Appearance ................................................................................................................................... 52 2 Dress .............................................................................................................................................. 53 Marital Status ................................................................................................................................ 54 Number of Children ....................................................................................................................... 55 Residence ...................................................................................................................................... 56 Housing .......................................................................................................................................... 57 Economic Status ............................................................................................................................ 58 Occupation .................................................................................................................................... 59 Education ....................................................................................................................................... 59 Leisure ........................................................................................................................................... 60 Plot................................................................................................................................................. 61 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 62 CHAPTER 4 – The Short Stories of Playboy: A Closer Look .................................................................... 66 Work and Women: A Very Good Sidewalk Story .............................................................................. 66 Unfulfilled Promises: The Eighty-Yard Run ........................................................................................ 68 Excessive Consumerism: A Classic Affair ........................................................................................... 71 Suburban Troubles: The Distributor .................................................................................................. 73 Juvenile Delinquency: Drop Dead ..................................................................................................... 75 The Cold War: Walk To The Station................................................................................................... 76 The Cold War: The World of Heart’s Desire ...................................................................................... 78 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 78 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 80 History and Masculinity ..................................................................................................................... 80 Society and Playboy ........................................................................................................................... 82 Playboy and Masculinity .................................................................................................................... 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................... 88 3 INTRODUCTION We look at the world through media. They bring us the news; they bring us entertainment, science, art. They influence the way we view the world. In a way, they influence who we are. This does not mean that they change a person from one day to the next, but they co-determine structures of thought. One specific area in which the role of media becomes clear is gender – perhaps best described as the culturally defined and self-defined aspects of one's identity relating to being a ‘man,’ a ‘woman,’ or perhaps something else. Different media propagate ideal images of what it means to be a man or a woman, and in our daily lives these ideal images are not often questioned. This observation lies at the foundation of this thesis. My initial plan was to examine the ways in which media (re-)present gender identity. In particular, I wanted to examine male gender identity. The first ensuing issue was that as a historian, the historicity of gender and media needs to be acknowledged.

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