Playboy
April 1972
Let's take a trip back in time to fifty years ago, and look through the April 1972 issue of Playboy magazine.
One thing readily is apparent: the magazine is thick. Two hundred and fifty pages, much of it advertising: liquor, shoes, clothing, hair spray, automobiles, motorcycles, cigarettes. Some 'hippie' and counterculture gear makes its presence known via the 'Marboro' mail-order poster vendor. The April issue is a reminder that 50 years ago print media was a major venue for marketing. The only magazine on the stands nowadays with a similar advertising page load is Vogue.
Also apparent: Playboy in April of 1972 was rated 'R'. No Private Parts on display. The young woman profiled below, Tiffany Bolling, was 25 at the time (at present, she is 76 and presumably in good health).
In the Letters pages, we have a missive from the inestimable Al Goldstein:Much more sobering is a letter to the Playboy Forum from a soldier in Vietnam reminding the country that Americans were fighting and dying there well into 1972 (on March 30, North Vietnam launched its massive 'Easter Offensive' against South Vietnam):
The magazine is crammed with cheesey cartoons. The April issue is a reminder that Playboy was a major outlet for both nonfiction and fiction pieces. An ongoing serialization of Michael Crichton's novel The Terminal Man is a prominent feature in this issue. There also is a California noir short story, 'One Way to Bolinas' by Herbert Gold (b. 1924), who was a very successful novelist and essayist in the postwar era.
The quaint verb 'ball' (i.e., to have sex) is much in use in the pages of this 1972 issue.
There is a portfolio of 'erotic art', which is in fact a portfolio of paintings by Mel Ramos, who at that time was a star of the Pop Art movement. There you have it. Fifty years ago men did indeed look at nudies, of course. But they also read for pleasure, consuming fiction and nonfiction content with a scope and diversity that is quite formidable when seen in the light of today's post-literate culture.
