Prof.
Carolyn Bronstein and co-writer Whitney Strub have published a piece on the late Hugh Hefner, Chicagoan and publisher of
Playboy magazine, who passed this Wednesday. Their article,
"Hugh Hefner's Safe Sex", published by
The Washington Post, contrasts Hefner's "safe" form of "sexual fantasy" with the "far messier reality" happening within the sexual revolution and pornography of the 1960s and 1970s, as portrayed on the new HBO series
The Deuce.
"...the makers of filmed pornography, which was more graphic and arguably more stimulating than the magazine’s famed centerfolds, were already laying the groundwork for the demise of Hef’s empire. What happened amid the thriving street culture of sex workers, pimps and corner hustlers on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues challenged — and ultimately triumphed over — Hefner’s heterosexist, classist vision of the good life for Americans in the postwar decades."