n 1963, feminist icon Gloria Steinem went undercover as a bunny at the Playboy Club in New York. Her story, “A Bunny’s Tale,” appeared with this photo in Show magazine, and exposed many of the poor working conditions for the bunny waitresses. (via Newsweek)
One could care less about the launch of ‘the Playboy Club’ until you read Gloria Steinem’s interview in this piece on the Washington Post that slams American TV for moving towards shoddier representation of women than ever before. An excerpt from the article reads:
“The Playboy Club” pilot, which, among its other throwback (and throw-up) moments that aggrandize that place and that time, includes a line in which a male character tells another: “You’re the only man I know who puts his hand up a girl’s skirt looking for a dictionary.”
To quote Nore Ephron from Newsweek’s photo gallery:
“I worry (as someone who was an adult in the 1960s) that young people will see The Playboy Club and think that this is what life was like back then and that Hefner, as he also says in his weird, creepy voice-over, was in fact “changing the world, one Bunny at a time.”
So I would like to say this:
1. Trust me, no one wanted to be a Bunny.
2. A Bunny’s life was essentially that of an underpaid waitress forced to wear a tight costume.
3. Playboy did not change the world. “
That being said, these shows are also being slammed for aspiring for Mad Men’s “cool caliberated regard for the past” without having something to show for similar historical authenticity. While I agree that that sets Mad Men apart as extremely superior content, the justification falls flat for audiences in countries such as ours that are removed from the historical and cultural context of it all. Nore Ephron’s worries must be extended to people outside of America who’re watching these shows and getting consumed by all the glorified actions, without their context. That we have no idea what went on in our own histories is bad enough, that we increasingly relate to the world of American TV without the slightest clue as to their history, is simply dangerous.
Back to these shows, the following lines must be read:
“By time-traveling backward, the premise seeks to upend the idea that women were ever truly oppressed. By serving cocktails for Hefner, women were in fact seizing their destinies. By serving cocktails for Pan Am, they were charting a course for tomorrow’s career women. Their hardships — girdle checks for the stewardesses in “Pan Am,” the squeeze of tighter, wire-framed bunny suits in “The Playboy Club” — are seen as so much light hazing in an endless initiation into a man’s world.
As Steinem noted, those shows are less about women and more about this era of nonstop nostalgia that we live in. Retro is an addiction that rages out of control in a recession; the more we drink it in — the more times we remake “Charlie’s Angels” or wish for a return of stewardesses and other clear-cut visual cues of gender rigidity — the less able we are to move forward and come up with our own ideas.”
I<3 her.
(The photo captures Gloria Steinem as an “undercover bunny” from Newsweek’s essay. )
