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I have always marvelled at Christie Hefner. Because of her, it was possible to believe (perhaps for way too long) in Hef's vision of porn as a "lifestyle," something for the pretty girl next door who's won the lottery. And if you read and loved Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife, as I did, you would have in your head the image of Hef as an American pioneer of a sort, instead of the cartoon he later became. Christie was always unabashed about presiding over his empire: She claimed to be a feminist and a businesswoman and an intellectual and not see the contradictions. In that way, she was from the '80s superwoman age of feminism. Now that she's gone, porn is just back to its dismal, daily grind.
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For five years, I worked for Playboy Enterprises. I worked for the cable TV end of the business, but Playboy is like an octopus, its tentacles flailing everywhere, so we were all privy to the inner-workings of what was already a financially struggling company. On the inside, everybody knew the trouble was Hef. While he was proudly taking Viagra to support his love life, he had less to work with when it came to making savvy business decisions for one of the world's most recognized brands. Yesterday, his daughter Christie announced she would be stepping down from her position as Playboy's CEO, a job she's held for the last 20 years. Subscriptions are down, the stock is falling, and the outlook is grim. At this point, it's hard to know who or what's responsible for sending Playboy down the tubes: the rise of adult content on the Internet that rendered Playboy a soft-core throwback to bygone days; Hef's staunch refusal to let the Playboy aesthetic change from his original vision of it in the 50's; or self-described feminist Christie's inability to capitalize on a titillating brand that couldn't compete in today's market, amidst the Pink Tacos and the Hooters. Regardless, it looks like porn has won the sexual revolution that Playboy helped spawn.
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