The Playboy Bunny Is Back: No worries?
Harold Hark
10 February 2004

On the weekend my almost 13-year-old daughter took in a movie and a little shopping afterwards with her friends. What she bought was not revealed to her parents until last night. She slipped quietly into the kitchen wearing a pair of black trackies with a white Playboy bunny logo on the front. Her parents interrupted their pre-dinner discussion on John Howard's free trade cave-in to exhibit mild indignation accompanied by only slightly frightened smiles. However, when the model stated her intention to take the trackies to school camp at the end of the month, the indignation rose a notch, to "Oh, no you're not!" swiftly followed by an "Oh, yes I am!" This roundelay might have continued long into the night but for the appearance of the slogan on the back of the trackies, inadvertently exposed to the view of the gawping mother. The case was then closed and the model stormed out of the kitchen. I hadn't seen the slogan and no one would tell me for fear of an eruption of trademark anger. For the rest of the evening I only saw the model's front as she danced sideways past me like a footy player warming up, or walked backwards until she was out of sight. It wasn't until this morning, when I snuck into her room after she went to school, that I came to view the offending words: Play Girl.

Should I care? Should I make of this a mountain in a teacup? A storm on a molehill? Trouble is, I remember when Playboy was the only easily available wankzine for teenage boys. (An honourable mention should go to National Geographic and its bare breasted African beauties.) A generation of bursting malehood spilled its seed to America's idea of airbrushed female perfection with their mega bazookas. I soon grew out of this weird obsession with unblemished pulchritude and went on to discover the endless delights of the little imperfections to be found in God's ultimate creations. Imperfections such as a scar on the knee, a small gap between incisors, a slightly enlarged vein on the throat, eyes not quite true...but I digress.

Point is, from those days to these the female body has become an advertiser's dream. Sex sells vacuum cleaners, hubcaps, fishing tackle, you name it. Advertising in magazines, newspapers, and television are inevitably accompanied by the come-on of a gorgeous babe. Advertisers rule, and when they run out of new ideas they recycle old ones.

The bunny is back like history repeating itself. Every generation is now doomed to repeat the whims of men and women whose careers mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Especially the young who are hooked like junkies to the world of advertising; the suckers of gimme-more-land who prostrate themselves before the coke-snorting shadows, one of whom must have found an old Playboy in pop's attic and said, "Hey, roll those hundred dollar bills, here's the down payment on the Lamborghini!"

Am I being over protective? Yeah, it's her life to live, after all, with mum and pup around to caretake the self esteem and instill values. It's just that I have this sneaking suspicion (I'm male, after all) that advertising is "aimed at conditioning girls to obey the signals of the men in charge who are booking motel rooms in advance for the moment when an entire generation of willing sex slaves reaches the age of consent."

Read Lesley Cannold Why are young women welcoming the return of the Bunny? from January 14, and the letter below from a 17 year old girl. Her rebuttal to Cannold's article frankly scares me to death. To her the symbol of the Playboy bunny is meaningless beyond being a "cute little bunny," and she sounds like she intends to regard all symbols similarly. The problem is, The Playboy bunny is not "cute" in the way Hello Kitty is cute. It holds other connotations, as Cannold expresses eloquently. The swastika is also a symbol and a very powerful one. Regardless of the evil associated with it, one cannot deny that it is "sexy". Yes, it may still be taboo today, but in advertising anything goes and there is always tomorrow.

IT'S SO SIMPLE: WE LOVE BUNNIES

As a 17-year-old woman, I am amazed that Leslie Cannold has time to ponder remotely interesting issues such as why young women are welcoming the return of the Playboy Bunny (Opinion, 14/1).

It is not because they are trying to say they are "proud of their womanly curves", or because they want to "embrace their femininity and sexuality". It's not because they are trying to "reflect their sense of disillusionment with - rather than empowerment within - the post-industrial world" and it's definitely not about "girl power", as Leslie Cannold suggests.

The reason that young women are increasingly buying Bunny products is because they don't give a toss what it represents to people such as Leslie Cannold - to them, it's just a cute little bunny.

Stephanie Wulf, 17, letter to The Age

Bunny Shooting?
A reply from Doug Steley
11 February 2004

Sorry Harold, I agree more with Stephanie than you :-( .

Being the father of boys I probably have a different outlook but remember that Playboy was one of the first mainstream publications to question and oppose the Vietnam war and to inquire into the CIA et al. Yes the photos were airbrushed perfection but they were good photos! (Being a photographer I only bought it to look at the photos not to read the articles.) They did provide a forum for the avant guard writers of the time, supporting them financially and morally. They broke taboos and brought sex out of the closet, they supplied information to men that most women should be eternally grateful for.

Yes sex sells but only because it is forbidden and taboo, the same as drugs or anything else. Our boys would try to bait us into responding by wearing shocking clothing ("Soldiers of death", "Speak English or die", "Vagina with teeth" etc.), but we refused to even comment and withdrew the desired reaction response: end of problem. One just finished his honors year in economic journalism, the other is a police officer in North Queensland.

Neither are firebrand revolutionaries yet they both slowly reflect the input given over the years.

I was at McDonalds with youngest son (yes I know but they dust the chips with heroin so we keep going back). He's 30 years old, not married so no kids yet. There was a teenage carwash for a netball team of young girls in skimpy shorts and skirts washing cars with wet T shirts. He said: "You would NEVER see my daughter dressed like that so pervs can look at her! Any man who comes near my daughter gets a simple warning, she is MY Princess that makes me the KING, you hurt her, your head is coming off."

Try buying your daughter every label she loves and you hate, encourage her to wear them, say they make her look good, forbid her to shop at Vinnies for cheap second hand clothes. Good luck, I'm glad I had sons :-).

Cheers, Doug