The first part of Gloria Steinem's report on the Playboy Club, New York, was published in May, 1963. As I have mentioned, it was supremely funny, as it depicted the process of being inducted into Bunny dom, much like David Sedaris describing the initiation into the world of being a Santa's elf at Macy's department store.
The dissonance between the fantasy of Santaland and the reality is what gave a charge to Sedaris's tale; the same is true of being inducted into becoming a Bunny, a group which Hugh Hefner's marketing described as highly intelligent, college educated, beautiful, sexually excitable women who were making three times what they had made in their mundane 9-5 jobs as they played the role of unattainable but ultimately desirable sex objects, waiting tables and serving drinks at the Playboy club.
But the second installment, five months before John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, paints a far grimmer picture. The world of glamour in the Playboy club, was an illusion, just as Kennedy's Camelot was built on superficial glossiness with a seamy underside.
As Steinem talks with the women who came to work at the Playboy Club, it turns out few or none of them were, like Steinem, college educated, with lots of other options. Most of them are uneducated, with no better options, trained for nothing. For some, their highest hope was marrying some body who would provide them with an escape from the dreary, wearying life as low paid waitresses working in Bunny suits.
The club promised big money--$200 a week (in 1963 dollars, roughly $2000 in today's dollars) but few if any ever made anything like that. Like the coal mines, the "girls" find their employer demands they buy certain equipment to the job but the Bunnys were required to pay this stuff, up front: False eyelashes, required makeup, three inch high heels. They were directed to a contractor which was clearly a racket set up with the Club to share in this scheme and, in the end, the girls discovered they were lucky to take home $100 after expenses. They quit in droves and the Club had a difficult time coping with the turnover.
There are some understated vignettes: Steinem staggers out the employees' exit door, feet swollen feet from hours in 3 inch heels, out into the night, where taxi cabs are parked. It is 4 AM and although she lives close enough to walk home, Steinem pauses near a cab. The cabbie waves a dollar bill through his window and tells her there's three more if she'll come and have sex with him.
She rebukes him.
Stung, he says, "Well, you work in there, don't you?"
What he is saying is she is selling her body and her sexuality in one way already, why not another?
She walks home along Fifth Avenue and sees a high class hooker sitting in a Jaguar along the way and thinks, well, the hooker at least is honest about what she is doing.
The Bunnies are not allowed to date or have sex with the customers who are constantly propositioning them, but these are just the hoi polloi customers. They can and do have sex with the "Number one key" members, who are men Playboy wants to cultivate, mainly restaurant and media critics and famous entertainers. Playboy advertises itself as being the hottest club in New York, where the rich and famous live the high life and where everybody who's anybody wants to be seen. The truth is, Steinem rarely sees anyone above the level of visiting businessmen, middle managers from the Mid West or Queens.
Bunnies are also encouraged to go to off premises "parties" at the home of the New York honcho who runs the New York club, who has sex with many of the Bunnies, These Bunnies are frank about their willingness to have sex with the honcho: each hopes to profit eventually, financially from the relationship.
The Bunnies are told repeatedly they don't have to do anything they don't want to do when it comes to sexual services, but woe unto any of them to tries to cheat the Club of money, tips which might come their way, which the Club wants to keep. The Club management constantly nickels and dimes them, does not pay for the 12 hour work shifts they have to do as "trainees."
There is also the very honest revelation that the women, on some level, enjoy the power of being able to titillate the men. Two black janitors remark to Steinem, they feel sorry for the "girls" but they also perceive part of the non cash benefits of the job is the ego boost the Bunnies get from being ogled/ adored.
But, for most of the women, that grows old in a hurry. After all, look at who these men are. The Bunny's privately call them "suckers" and "jerks." Steinem details their gauche behavior tellingly.
Almost all the men who are doing the ogling are turn offs. They make Steve Martin and Chevy Chase in their inane SNL swinging Czech brothers skit look suave.
I was reminded of that scene in "Apocalypse Now" where Playboy Bunnies arrive to entertain the troops, and Vietnamese peasants watch from behind wire fences at the bizarre and grotesque sight of the troops and sailors finally storming the stage and the helicopter which bore the Playmates in, has to whisk them off to safety, while men howl and fall into the water below.
Oddities are quickly mentioned: Some men bring their wives to the club and Steinem sees the wives comparing themselves to the Bunnies who attract their husbands, a competition the wives cannot win. So why would a man bring his wife to a virtual brothel?
Against the work a day, low pay, exploitation, Steinem juxtaposes text from the Playboy philosophy: Bunnies are seeking a place in a very high class world most women would kill to enter; men are entering a world in which beautiful women are simply part of high quality liquor, stereo systems, expensive cars, fine cigars--the good life of the highest quality things which American wealth can offer.
But this fantasy is constantly contrasted with images of laborers in their working clothes, pressing their faces up against the two story glass walls, gawking at the Bunnies who walk down the spiral staircases on display in their working clothes. Steinem is told to walk down the staircase again to "give the boys a treat."
Of course, watching the "bathing suit" contest at the recent Miss America, one wonders what this meat on the hoof tradition in America really says about us.
As for the women, Steinem suggests they need to join the waitresses union but one of them quickly says, "Unions just take your money. And they won't let you work double shifts." In that single scene, we see the rise of the Republican-con party.
One of them says, scandalized, "They treat us like waitresses. We are Bunnies."
Steinem reports the sense of exhilaration she has being hired, plucked from a throng of competitors and when she is told, after several grueling days, she has done well as a Bunny, she admits: "I was elated."
Steinem, of course, makes it clear, she has more options than just about any of the Bunnies she works with. She can go back to her real career. The best they can hope for is a prince charming.
Once in a great long while a Playmate, whose photos have appeared in the magazine, turns up as a Playboy Bunny, but this turns out to be simply a fall from grace. This is where old Bunnies go to molder. In the clubs, they must fend off grotesque overtures from repulsive customers and likely will join the majority of women who, disillusioned, quit Bunny hood and get easier jobs in more conventional restaurants and offices.
 |
| Oh, wouldn't you want to be him? |
The dissonance between the fantasy of Santaland and the reality is what gave a charge to Sedaris's tale; the same is true of being inducted into becoming a Bunny, a group which Hugh Hefner's marketing described as highly intelligent, college educated, beautiful, sexually excitable women who were making three times what they had made in their mundane 9-5 jobs as they played the role of unattainable but ultimately desirable sex objects, waiting tables and serving drinks at the Playboy club.
But the second installment, five months before John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, paints a far grimmer picture. The world of glamour in the Playboy club, was an illusion, just as Kennedy's Camelot was built on superficial glossiness with a seamy underside.
As Steinem talks with the women who came to work at the Playboy Club, it turns out few or none of them were, like Steinem, college educated, with lots of other options. Most of them are uneducated, with no better options, trained for nothing. For some, their highest hope was marrying some body who would provide them with an escape from the dreary, wearying life as low paid waitresses working in Bunny suits.
The club promised big money--$200 a week (in 1963 dollars, roughly $2000 in today's dollars) but few if any ever made anything like that. Like the coal mines, the "girls" find their employer demands they buy certain equipment to the job but the Bunnys were required to pay this stuff, up front: False eyelashes, required makeup, three inch high heels. They were directed to a contractor which was clearly a racket set up with the Club to share in this scheme and, in the end, the girls discovered they were lucky to take home $100 after expenses. They quit in droves and the Club had a difficult time coping with the turnover.
There are some understated vignettes: Steinem staggers out the employees' exit door, feet swollen feet from hours in 3 inch heels, out into the night, where taxi cabs are parked. It is 4 AM and although she lives close enough to walk home, Steinem pauses near a cab. The cabbie waves a dollar bill through his window and tells her there's three more if she'll come and have sex with him.
She rebukes him.
Stung, he says, "Well, you work in there, don't you?"
 |
| Are we having fun yet? |
What he is saying is she is selling her body and her sexuality in one way already, why not another?
She walks home along Fifth Avenue and sees a high class hooker sitting in a Jaguar along the way and thinks, well, the hooker at least is honest about what she is doing.
The Bunnies are not allowed to date or have sex with the customers who are constantly propositioning them, but these are just the hoi polloi customers. They can and do have sex with the "Number one key" members, who are men Playboy wants to cultivate, mainly restaurant and media critics and famous entertainers. Playboy advertises itself as being the hottest club in New York, where the rich and famous live the high life and where everybody who's anybody wants to be seen. The truth is, Steinem rarely sees anyone above the level of visiting businessmen, middle managers from the Mid West or Queens.
Bunnies are also encouraged to go to off premises "parties" at the home of the New York honcho who runs the New York club, who has sex with many of the Bunnies, These Bunnies are frank about their willingness to have sex with the honcho: each hopes to profit eventually, financially from the relationship.
 |
| All the girls love a playboy! |
The Bunnies are told repeatedly they don't have to do anything they don't want to do when it comes to sexual services, but woe unto any of them to tries to cheat the Club of money, tips which might come their way, which the Club wants to keep. The Club management constantly nickels and dimes them, does not pay for the 12 hour work shifts they have to do as "trainees."
There is also the very honest revelation that the women, on some level, enjoy the power of being able to titillate the men. Two black janitors remark to Steinem, they feel sorry for the "girls" but they also perceive part of the non cash benefits of the job is the ego boost the Bunnies get from being ogled/ adored.
But, for most of the women, that grows old in a hurry. After all, look at who these men are. The Bunny's privately call them "suckers" and "jerks." Steinem details their gauche behavior tellingly.
Almost all the men who are doing the ogling are turn offs. They make Steve Martin and Chevy Chase in their inane SNL swinging Czech brothers skit look suave.
I was reminded of that scene in "Apocalypse Now" where Playboy Bunnies arrive to entertain the troops, and Vietnamese peasants watch from behind wire fences at the bizarre and grotesque sight of the troops and sailors finally storming the stage and the helicopter which bore the Playmates in, has to whisk them off to safety, while men howl and fall into the water below.
Oddities are quickly mentioned: Some men bring their wives to the club and Steinem sees the wives comparing themselves to the Bunnies who attract their husbands, a competition the wives cannot win. So why would a man bring his wife to a virtual brothel?
 |
| Can you hold yourself back? |
Against the work a day, low pay, exploitation, Steinem juxtaposes text from the Playboy philosophy: Bunnies are seeking a place in a very high class world most women would kill to enter; men are entering a world in which beautiful women are simply part of high quality liquor, stereo systems, expensive cars, fine cigars--the good life of the highest quality things which American wealth can offer.
But this fantasy is constantly contrasted with images of laborers in their working clothes, pressing their faces up against the two story glass walls, gawking at the Bunnies who walk down the spiral staircases on display in their working clothes. Steinem is told to walk down the staircase again to "give the boys a treat."
Of course, watching the "bathing suit" contest at the recent Miss America, one wonders what this meat on the hoof tradition in America really says about us.
 |
| Having such a good time |
As for the women, Steinem suggests they need to join the waitresses union but one of them quickly says, "Unions just take your money. And they won't let you work double shifts." In that single scene, we see the rise of the Republican-con party.
One of them says, scandalized, "They treat us like waitresses. We are Bunnies."
Steinem reports the sense of exhilaration she has being hired, plucked from a throng of competitors and when she is told, after several grueling days, she has done well as a Bunny, she admits: "I was elated."
 |
| We are the every man's fantasy? |
Steinem, of course, makes it clear, she has more options than just about any of the Bunnies she works with. She can go back to her real career. The best they can hope for is a prince charming.
Once in a great long while a Playmate, whose photos have appeared in the magazine, turns up as a Playboy Bunny, but this turns out to be simply a fall from grace. This is where old Bunnies go to molder. In the clubs, they must fend off grotesque overtures from repulsive customers and likely will join the majority of women who, disillusioned, quit Bunny hood and get easier jobs in more conventional restaurants and offices.
