‘Playgirl’ panders to feminine voyeurism

Press, 5 July 1983, Page 14

‘Playgirl’ panders to feminine voyeurism

By

KATHY HORAK

of A.P., Santa Monica

When Ira E. Ritter devised the concept of “Playgirl” magazine 10 years ago, sceptics wondered how many women really wanted to look at pictures of nude men. The answer was plenty, and the response has made Ira Ritter rich.

Now, 750,000 monthly readers buy “Playgirl’s” trendy blend of advice, fashions, interviews, erotic fiction and, of course, men — slim, sensuous, gorgeous men in every stage of fullcolour undress. “No-one could understand that women would want to look at nude men,” Ira Ritter said as the magazine’s tenth anniversary issue went on the news stands recently.

“I did believe I had one of the most misunderstood magazines in this country,” the publisher recalled. “People would say to me, ‘Who is this magazine for?’ But the people sitting across the desk from me, the people in marketing and distribution, were all men, and men have been brought up in certain ways because they have mothers.”

Ira Ritter — at 34, a mustachioed blonde with a disarming grin — apparently suffered no such misgivings. He built Ritter-Geller Communications, based in Santa Monica, into a corporate gold mine that yielded SUS3SM in gross revenue last year for books and calendars, T-productions, mail-order fashion subsidiary, and the magazines “Couples” and “Slimmer.” But at $U52.95 a copy, “Playgirl” leads the moneymakers with SUSIS million in pretax profit last year. Ira Ritter said the magazine does it by “telling women they can be what they want

“Our direction is telling women, ‘if you’re a secretary, here’s how you can be a lawyer, but if you are a housewife and happy, that’s O.K. too.”

“We give women more self-confidence. Women once were told they went to school for a Mrs Degree, but in the ’6os there was an awakening, an awareness that they were able to be what they want without limitations.”

“ ‘Playgirl’ was a leader in that change — and we created a lot of uneasiness.”

The current issue may provoke more discomfort over centrefold David Van Brunt, 25, of New York. His pictorial is the magazine’s first to show sexual arousal. “We wanted this 10-year anniversary issue to have something special, different,” Ira Ritter explained. “We got all sorts of letters asking for what you see in the June issue.” Will it be a regular feature now? “I don’t know,” he said. “I tend to do things in good taste, to keep it high-class despite itself.” What will continue are the celebrity interviews (this month’s star is 1982 best supporting actress, Jessica Lange), cover story profiles (Clint Eastwood at 53 in this issue), tips on music, diet and beauty, a horoscope column, short stories by readers sharing erotic fantasies, and a sexadvice column.

This month, a wife inquires if she must cater to her husband’s bondage fantasies (the advice: compromise is crucial), a reader asks how to avoid pain (see a gynaecologist) and another wonders if exhibition-

ism is sick (not if no one gets hurt). Also highlighted is an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Playgirl Press and Simon and Schuster, “Sex and the Married Woman,” a national survey of 1207 married women commissioned from San Francisco’s Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

More than half say they’re more than satisfied. The median age of “Playgirl” readers is 25, which Ira Ritter said confirms his belief that those women have escaped many of their mothers’ hang-ups. It also enhances his optimism that “Playgirl” could be reaching one million readers a month by 1993.