Adventures in the Skin Trade
On the surface, which is hardly an area to be overlooked in the trade, this is the golden age of the skin-magazine business. Once dismissed as a kind of red light district of publishing, the centerfold monthlies are now piling up circulations that were undreamed of a few years ago; Playboy and Penthouse, the ranking champion and brash newcomer of the field, alone account for an estimated 20% of U.S. magazine newsstand sales. From college dormitories to Army barracks, they are now a standard bit of Americana. To the obvious delight of the magazines' readership, their photographers seem locked in battle to zoom in on ever more explicit poses and privacies.
The rivalry between the empires of hedonism is intense, and not just in print. A part of Playboy's success is due to Publisher-Editor Hugh Hefner's carefully publicized regal lifestyle, which might be described as Middle-American-Sybaritic. Penthouse's Bob Guccione is the first imitator in a long line who has effectively challenged Hef on that front as well as on the newsstands.
Yet suddenly the high-powered glamour and profits seem endangered on two scores.
On one side the skin kings are besieged by a host of imitators who threaten to glut even a market that sometimes seems insatiable. On the other hand there is the sudden appearance of a new and stricter legal definition of obscenity by the U.S. Supreme Court (TIME, July 2). Though the boundaries of the court's ruling are still unclear, they could well halt the skin trade's race to publish ever more explicit turn-ons. If forced to retreat, the magazines might simply succeed in boring their audience.
So far, there has been relatively little suppression of the skin mags. Playboy and Penthouse officials report distribution problems in only some 20 localities, most of them small communities in the Deep South. Last week, Guccione brashly vowed to fight any restrictions, by breaking the law if necessary. "If I have to go to jail for a good cause, that's okay with me," he told newsmen at a press conference in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Guccione pledged, Penthouse will provide financial support to retailers who run afoul of local police, and create a nonprofit subscription service that will mail banned magazines—Playboy included—to readers who can no longer buy them locally. He also plans to launch an "army" of college students who will conduct door-to-door surveys in censored areas to collect local attitudes toward sexual tolerance—a criterion that the Supreme Court said could determine the range of sexual material allowed in local communities. Finally, said Guccione, the September issue of Penthouse will carry "its nudest cover yet."
Hefner reacted much more cautiously. The night after the decision was handed down, he called a sober-minded meeting of his top editors to discuss its possible consequences. Though Hefner insists that "nothing we have published would even remotely fall under the ban of the Supreme Court's decision," he also adds—somewhat inscrutably—that "we're going to have to find some satisfactory middle ground."