“花花公子”的性革命 | 大西洋月刊

How Hugh Hefner Commercialized Sex

In 1953, Hugh Hefner was living out a stereotypical version of the American Dream. At the age of 27, he had a job (as a cartoonist and copywriter), a wife, and a baby daughter. As Elizabeth Fraterrigo notes in her 2009 book “Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America,” Hefner’s home life was so picture-perfect that it was photographed for a two-page story in the Chicago Daily News. In one image, Hefner sits on the floor of a tidy, modern living room holding baby Christie, while his wife, Millie, watches from the couch, holding a magazine.

1953年，休·海夫纳过着老套的美国梦生活。27岁时，他有一份工作（插画师和文案）、一个妻子和一个女儿。伊丽莎白·弗拉特里戈在2009年出版的《花花公子和打造现代美国良好生活》一书中写道，海夫纳的家庭生活完美无瑕，他们的故事曾登上《芝加哥日报》，构成两个版面的照片故事。有一张图片中，海夫纳坐在一间整洁、现代的客厅的地板上，抱着婴儿克里斯蒂，妻子米莉坐在沙发上，手里拿着杂志看着他。

By the end of that year, the scene of domestic contentment had been upended. In fact, it was a lie to begin with—Hefner hated his hardscrabble life as a hired creative, his wife had confessed before their wedding that she’d cheated on him, and Hefner, who had married at the age of 23, was increasingly fascinated with the subject of sex, following the publication of the first two Kinsey reports on human sexuality. 

那年年底，天伦之乐彻底颠覆了。事实上，那一开始就是个谎言，海夫纳憎恶替人打工的贫苦的生活，他的妻子在婚礼前承认自己出过轨，而第一本关于人类性爱的《金赛报告》出版以来，23岁就结了婚的海夫纳对性这个话题越来越着迷。

In November 1953, Hefner took $8,000 he’d borrowed from banks and investors and published the first issue of Playboy, featuring unlicensed nude photos of Marilyn Monroe. The magazine sold out its 50,000-plus copies, and Hefner’s vision of a new kind of American dream entered the culture: one where nude women—wholesome, unthreatening, uncomplicated—were part and parcel with the trappings of a modern masculine lifestyle.

1953年11月，海夫纳用向银行和投资人借来的8000美元出版了第一期《花花公子》，主打未获授权的玛丽莲·梦露的裸照。杂志售出五万多本，海夫纳版本的新美国梦进入文化圈：健康、平和、单纯的裸女成为一种现代男性生活方式标志的必要部分。

To say that Playboy was about more than naked women is a cliché, but it’s also true. Through his magazine, Hefner, who died Wednesday at the age of 91, offered an alternative ideal for men from the one he’d performed for the Daily News. After World War II, with America’s economy booming, Playboy proselytized the virtues of consumption—of clothes, travel, food, wine, and, most importantly, beautiful women. 

说《花花公子》不只是裸女已经成了老生常谈，但事实的确如此。周三去世的海夫纳享年91岁，他通过杂志给曾经的日报读者提供了另一种对理想的选择。二战后，随着美国经济繁荣起来，《花花公子》推崇消费的美德，衣服、旅游、食品、红酒，还有最重要的，漂亮姑娘。

But the most important figure in the vision was Hefner himself, with his signature red-silk robe, his private jet, his legions of blondes, and his palatial mansion in Holmby Hills. What Playboy offered to readers went beyond smut; it signaled membership in a tribe of gentlemen hedonists across the globe. 

但这种愿景中最重要的人物正是海夫纳本人，是他标志性的红丝袍、私人飞机、大群金发女郎和荷尔贝山上的宫殿庄园。《花花公子》让读者看到的不是淫秽读物，它标志着全球绅士享乐部落的会员资格。

But the pleasure on display was cut through with consumerism, just as the sexual escapades were distinctively American in flavor. “Bacchanalia with Pepsi,” is how a Time feature on Hefner in 1967 recorded the scene in his home. “Orgies with popcorn. … It is all so familiar and domestic.” Hefner was no Don Juan or Casanova, the story observed. He was “alive, American, modern, trustworthy, clean, respectful, and the country’s leading impresario of spectator sex.”

但对享乐的宣扬包裹着消费主义，性刺激有着典型的美国风味。“百事可乐式的酒神狂饮”，1967年的《时代》特写文章这样记录了海夫纳家里的盛况。“用爆米花来纵欲……如此熟悉，绝对源自本土。”文章说，海夫纳不是西班牙情圣唐璜，也不是意大利浪荡子卡萨诺瓦。他是“活生生的，美国式的，现代的、值得信赖的、干净的、令人尊敬的眼球式性爱的国家首席指挥”。

The success of Hefner’s American dream made Playboy one of the defining hallmarks of American culture in the ’60s and ’70s, contributing to a sexual revolution that challenged the idea that sex was for reproduction alone. By 1960, Playboy had more than a million readers; by 1972, at the magazine’s peak, it had 7 million. But Hefner’s defining role in American sexuality was that he took a private act and turned it into conspicuous consumption. 

海夫纳美国梦的成功让《花花公子》成为六七十年代美国文化的主要标志，那推动了一场性革命，挑战了性爱只为生育的观点。到1960年，《花花公子》读者超过一百万；到1972年，杂志最鼎盛时，读者达七百万。但海夫纳在美国性爱界的关键角色是，他做一件私事，就会转变成一种消费潮流。

Sex, in the Playboy lifestyle, was less about desire than about showing off. It was sanitized (Hefner wanted the centerfolds to exude clean-cut charm rather than exotic allure—women were photographed in barns and beaches, posing next to cars or lounging by the pool). It was demystified. And, above all, it was commodified.

《花花公子》的生活方式里，性与其说是欲望，不如说是在炫耀。性是消过毒的，海夫纳想让裸照插页流露出整洁体面的魅力而非来自异域的诱惑，女人们在车库和海滩拍照，在豪车或游泳池边的躺椅上摆造型。神话被揭穿，最重要的，性被商品化了。

Whether this led to any real sexual liberation is up for debate. Playboy, the 1967 Time feature argued, was actually fairly puritanical in its interpretation of human desire, steering clear of any hints of fetishism, or any explicitly suggestive poses. “None of the nudes ever looks as if she had just indulged in sex, or were about to,” the story observed. Katharine Whitehorn, the British newspaper columnist, told Time that the whole Playboy ideal was “a midwestern Methodist’s version of sin.” 

这是否引发真正的性解放尚有待讨论。1967年的《时代》特稿称，实际上，《花花公子》对人类欲望的解读相当保守，它避开任何拜物教的暗示，也没有任何挑逗性的姿势。“没有一个裸女看起来在享受性爱，或准备去享受，”文章说。英国报刊专栏作家凯瑟琳·怀特霍恩对《时代》杂志说，《花花公子》的全部理想是“美国中西部卫理公会派对原罪的理解”。

But it was symbolized most iconically by Hefner himself, who divorced Millie in 1959 and reinvented himself as the consummate seducer, installing legions of different women in his home like a priapic Pick ‘n Mix. He bragged about having slept with more than a thousand women, including the majority of his playmates. 

可海夫纳自己倒是性爱最贴切的象征，他1959年与米莉离婚，将自己重塑成放荡不羁的纨绔子弟，召各色佳丽到家中翻云覆雨。他夸口自己睡过一千多名女子，大多数是他的玩伴。

Later in life, after Playboy’s power and commercial success had long declined, Hefner fostered his notoriety as the living embodiment of horniness by appearing in pop-culture products like Sex and the City and The House Bunny, always with a different blonde on each arm.

人过中年后，《花花公子》的权力和商业成功早已凋零，海夫纳就在《欲望城市》和《女郎我最兔》等大众文化产品中现身说法，一手一个金发女郎，表演自己如何欲火中烧，以此制造人气。

Oddly, around 2005, Hefner’s commercialization of sexuality found a new audience: women. In the 1970s, both the growing force of the feminist movement and the emergence of hardcore pornography began to diminish Playboy’s power in the marketplace. In Fraterrigo’s book, she quotes a fired Playboy secretary, Shelly Schlicker, as voicing some of the frustrations women had with how they were perceived within the magazine. 

挺奇怪的，在2005年左右，海夫纳对性爱的商业化找到了新的观众：女性。上世纪七十年代，女性主义运动力量强大起来，纯色情产品兴起让《花花公子》不再风靡。在弗拉特里戈的书中，她引用被解职的《花花公子》秘书雪莉·石里克的话，表达了杂志内部对女性的看法让女性遭遇到的种种挫折。

“Hefner has made millions selling this air-brushed image of women to insecure men who are taught to want a playful pet rather than a person,” Schlicker said during a protest outside the Playboy offices. “But it won’t work. We will no longer sell ourselves.”

“海夫纳赚了大钱，他把美化了的女性形象推销给没有安全感的男人，让他们以为自己想要的是一个好玩的宠物而不是一个人，”石里克在《花花公子》办公室外抗议时说。“可现在行不通了。我们再也不会出卖自己。”

But by 2005, women were increasingly adopting Hefner’s ideals as their own. As Ariel Levy argued in her book published that same year, Female Chauvinist Pigs, pornography and strip clubs had become the standard for a kind of outspoken sexual freedom that embraced raunch culture. Rather than protesting Playboy, women were buying bunny-branded T-shirts and bikinis at Target. The year before, Jenna Jameson had published her bestselling memoir, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, signifying porn’s infiltration into the cultural mainstream.

可到了2005年，女性们越来越多地开始认同海夫纳的理想。当年出版《女性沙文主义猪猡》一书的作者阿列尔·列维认为，色情品和脱衣舞俱乐部成为某种包容粗俗文化的大胆的性解放的标准。女人们非但不反对《花花公子》，反而在超市购买兔女郎T恤和比基尼。一年前，珍娜·詹姆森出版畅销的回忆录《如何像色情明星一样做爱》，标志着色情渗入文化主流。

2005 was also the year in which The Girls Next Door debuted on E! Also known as The Girls of the Playboy Mansion, the reality show documented the lives of Hefner’s three primary girlfriends: Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. The show ran for six seasons until it was canceled in 2010, and its major demographic was women viewers. 

2005年《邻家女孩》在娱乐台E登场，人们称之为“花花公子庄园的女孩”，这个真人秀记录了海夫纳三个主要女友霍莉·麦迪逊、布里吉特·马奎德和肯德拉·威尔金森的生活。节目播了六季，2010年停播，主要收视人群都是女性。

For five decades, Hefner and Playboy had proffered an idyll of masculine sophistication, available for purchase with the right jacket or cigar brand or Diners Club card (a longtime Playboy advertiser). 

五十年来，海夫纳和《花花公子》演奏了一曲成熟男子气概的田园牧歌，只要你穿对了夹克，用对了香烟或是持有《花花公子》长期广告商大来信用卡，就不乏男人味道。

But now the lifestyle being peddled was female. Holly, Bridget, and Kendra lived in a kind of perpetual sorority, enjoying pool parties on Sundays and shopping trips to Beverly Hills. They were given a $1,000 weekly clothing allowance and the use of Hefner’s account at an upscale beauty salon. Hefner leased expensive cars for his girlfriends to keep up appearances, but he refused to buy them cars outright in case it gave them too much independence. He did, however, pay for their plastic surgery.

可如今，它兜售的生活方式属于女性。霍莉、布里吉特和肯德拉姐妹同住一处，参加周日泳池聚会，去比弗利山购物。她们每周有1000美元着装费，可以使用海夫纳的账户在高档美容沙龙中消费。海夫纳将豪车借给女友充门面，但拒绝直接买车送她们，免得让她们太过独立。然而，他却花钱让她们整容。

The show was classic Hefner: highly profitable conformism disguised as sexual freedom. It also helped revive the flagging Playboy business. Hefner told The New York Times in 2010 that while the magazine used to carry the brand, now it was the brand that carried the magazine. “We have merchandise that we sell all over, like clothing,” he said. “We’re one of the main men’s upscale brands on the mainland of Red China, where the magazine is not yet permitted.” But the boom was short-lived. 

节目是典型的海夫纳式的：包裹成性解放的因循守旧，但利润丰厚。节目还振兴了奄奄一息的《花花公子》。2010年，海夫纳对《纽约时报》说，杂志过去支撑品牌，现在是品牌支撑杂志。“我们全都商品化了，什么都卖，例如服装，”他说。“我们是中国大陆高档的男装品牌之一，可杂志在那里还不允许出版。”但繁荣只能绚烂一时。

In 2015, Madison published a memoir in which she offered a more truthful depiction of her relationship with Hefner, detailing that sex with him was mandatory for the playmates, and unpleasant. Many of the women who lived with Hefner, she alleged, got involved with prostitution. Another former playmate, Izabella St. James, wrote a book that punctured the illusion of the Playboy Mansion itself, stating that it was dingy, falling into disrepair, and smelled like urine from Hefner’s incontinent dog.

2015年，麦迪逊出版回忆录，讲述自己同海夫纳更加真实的两性故事，指出同他做爱是作为玩伴的一种义务，并不愉悦。她承认，许多同海夫纳搞过的女人都是妓女。另外一名前玩伴伊莎贝拉·圣詹姆斯著书戳穿“花花公子庄园”本身的幻想，认为那里很污秽，让人绝望，闻起来一股尿骚气，像是来自海夫纳随地大小便的狗。

The same year, Playboy announced it would no longer feature nudity in the magazine, a decision that’s since been reversed. My colleague Megan Garber wrote at the time that part of Playboy’s enduring appeal over the years had been its ability to present masculinity as something you could buy, rather than something inherent. “It understood that what it was selling was not actually sex, but a sense of self,” she wrote. 

当年，《花花公子》宣布不在杂志中刊登裸照，该决定后来被推翻。我的同事梅根·加伯尔当时写道，多年来《花花公子》拥有永恒的魅力，其部分原因是将男子气概表达为某种你可以买到的东西，而非必须与生俱来的。“它明白自己出卖的不是性，而是自我感觉，”她写道。

“It took pornography—one of the longest-standing human art forms—out of the realm of the animalistic and into the realm of the aspirational.” But by 2015, Hefner, and his lifestyle, were as quaint and out of vogue as the mildewed grotto at the Playboy Mansion.

“它将色情作品，这一由来已久的人类艺术形式，带出兽欲之地，送入梦想之乡。”可到2015年，海夫纳和他的生活方式就像“花花公子庄园”发霉的洞室一样离奇和过时。

In 1972, the year Playboy was arguably at its financial and cultural zenith, the writer John Berger gave a series of 30-minute films about the aesthetics and ideologies entangled within images, from works of art to mass-produced magazines. “Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself,” Berger explained. “Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell.” 

1972年，据称《花花公子》处在财政和文化的巅峰时，作者约翰·伯格拍了一系列每集30分钟的影片，探讨纠缠于图片之中的审美和思想，对象从艺术作品到大众杂志。“宣传从来都不是对自我愉悦的颂扬，”伯格解释说。“宣传总关乎潜在的买家。它提供了一种自我形象，购买了它推销的产品或机会会是这种形象光彩夺目。”

Hefner, throughout his life, understood that what he was selling in Playboy wasn’t sex so much as the dream of sex. Not the act itself—messy, emotional, sometimes exquisite—but the promise of sex, implied by possession of the right luxury items, or the simple purchase of a magazine.

海夫纳毕其一生都很清楚，他在《花花公子》上出售的并非性爱，而是对性爱的梦想。他并不看重那种污秽的，激昂的，有时优雅的行为本身，他专注于对性的许诺，一种通过拥有正确的奢侈品或只是购买一本杂志就可以拥有的东西。