Photo thanks to Luke Ford
Back in the days when Hef had his mansion filled with Holly, Kendra and Bridget I used to watch The Girls Next Door. It was part fascination and part disbelief which kept me glued to the TV screen each week. I stopped watching when the ‘old’ girls left and the twins moved in. You have to draw the line somewhere 
Whatever you might think about Hugh – he’s either a member of the dirty old man brigade, a very lucky chap or somewhere in between – you have to respect him.
Hugh took a huge gamble to start his own business back in 1952. He left his job at Esquire magazine, scavenged for investors, rented out his furniture and made the first Playboy magazine a reality in December 1953 with a nude Marilyn Monroe.
His business, like his personal life, has had its ups and downs but he’s constantly moved forward. Even now he’s just launched a new website aimed at providing a ‘work safe’ playboy experience and he’s trying to buy back shares in Playboy to make it a private company again.
I admire him for living life on his own terms and not giving a hoot what anyone else thinks. And at 84 he shows no signs of slowing down. In our Western society where it’s often the norm to take our elders and shove them into nursing homes Hefner publicly shows there is life after 60. You can still run a business, still talk intelligently and even still have a sex life! Oh, and it can be as wild as you want it.
The world would be a better place if we all said hell to conventional ideas about aging and lived life how we wanted, and not what was expected of us. So, love him or hate him, Hugh is my role model for not letting a silly little thing like age get in the way.
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Oh, Hugh- I really don’t know how I feel about him. He’s married- they are seperated- yet he has girlfriends. Why have plural? Is one not enough? He cheated on his first wife because she let him since she felt guilty about an affair. He makes a living out of objectifying unrealistic women. He’s practically a one man add for eating disorders and fake boobs.
Yet, the points you make about his ability to make a name and money for himself, and that he’s still going after so many years are good points. and at least his women aren’t showing the world their insides like other magazines.
I was impressed with how Holly took over her own parts of the business. She’s a shrewd business woman even if she is selling herself.
Kendra, eh, I could do without.
You’ve made some good points, K.
In the series I liked Bridget the best as she seemed the least plastic to me. The whole living situation made my mind boggle and it sort of had that train wreck fascination. It’s not the lifestyle I’d want to live (plus I am now way too old for him and seriously non blond) and, OMG, I would hate for Tabitha to aspire to be a Playboy Bunny. I could never understand how Kendra’s mum could be so accepting of her really young daughter living in the mansion with a man 60 her senior (but then it could be that she wanted a piece of the action too!).
Lyn and K, you both say things I agree with – Lyn on how it is good that Hefner has not let anyone dictate to him how he should live his life, including his old age, and K, for the realistic view of how “grubby”, as I think a Brit might put it – sleazy, really, in my opinion – his lifestyle is, overall.
There is more, as one who has taught school and seen how youths have changed in their attitudes and behavior, including towards sex, in ways I could never have imagined, that I could say, but for the sake of brevity tonight I will just offer this: How many young, beautiful women do you think would have ever been at Hefner’s side and in his bed, much less two or more at a time, if he were not wealthy and well-known? Yes, he might have had a Barbi Benton as his girlfriend, as he did, decades ago, regardless. But the long line of flaxen lovelies since…and his truly gorgeous wife who actually seemed to have a perceptible depth, as well as some talent, personality, and character…call me a cynic if you will, but without the fame and fortune that he acquired for himself, I suspect that Hugh Hefner would have been an increasingly eccentric man holed away in an untidy house plastered with photographs of naked women, sitting around all day in his bathrobe, drinking martinis, chain-smoking, and watching old Rat Pack movies.
Leave it to you, Lyn to see the two sides of an issue/person. I don’t like anything about him. He’s had so much plastic surgery which belies the fact he’s not happy with his age and he’s been having a mid-life crisis since I think he was born. I think a healthy sexuality and sensuality should never die with one’s age, but do you really think he’s having sex or just putting on that facade? Goddess forbid, he ever be with a woman who wasn’t a Barbie doll…You get my point ; ) But I love how you look objectively at a person and their issues!
I don’t entertain for one minute Hugh doesn’t rely on Viagra to help with performance issues. And I’m certain the girls who he wows (or doesn’t whatever the case may be) in bed wouldn’t be there unless they were gaining something from it (and probably not a ‘big O’). It might be a facade. There’s only one way to find out for sure and I think I’ll pass