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Ten Thousand Motels
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Comment Box: Have We Had Enough Hef?
Washington Post
By Liz | November 10, 2008
(AP)Would we respect Hugh Hefner and his legacy more if he just gave up the young chicks and the illusion of studliness to which he clings?
This week, I decided to go with a question that has been gnawing at the edges of my brain for a while now: Is an 82-year-old man who still primarily identifies himself as sexually voracious impressive or pitiable?
Whether you love or hate Hugh Hefner, there's no doubt that the man lives a life not only of his own choosing, but his own creation. There was certainly sexually explicit material before Hef, but he mainstreamed it. The iconic Playboy bunny symbol is recognizable the world over and the porn industry is one of the most reliably profitable businesses around (if only there were a mutual fund).
(For the sake of considering this question, let's put aside the debate about whether what he did was to free up human nature or exploit women. The truth is, it's probably a little of both.)
Here's what I'm interested in: More than 50 years after he broke barriers of taste and, arguably, helped to usher in the sexual revolution, is it time for Hef to put an end to his party? Is it time for him to finally settle down or will we be treated a decade from now to a hospital bed-ridden, oxygen-tubed Hef pillowed between two buxom bunnies in nurse uniforms? Is there a point where it just becomes a grotesque, a self-parody?
I realize I'm asking more questions than providing answers. I'm hoping we can all weigh in on this question. It might help to define how we deal with sex and aging in an America that is greying by leaps and bounds. Baby boomers now make up 26 percent of the population and, with almost miraculous advances in medicine, many can expect to live longer than at any time in the history of the world.
But about that voraciousness. If it is, as I suspect, a put-on at this point or is Hef really still that interested? It's possible. One study done in the 1970s -- the Baltimore Longitudinal Study -- found that "men who reported the highest frequency of sexual activity when they were younger had the slowest decline in sexual activity as they got older." So, considering that Hef was probably 500 percent more sexually active as a young man than most of his peers, it would follow -- according to this model -- that he's still got it to some degree. A more recent survey, though, found that natural decreases in testosterone leads to a decrease in sexual desire and to, ummm, malfunctioning equipment.
But, thanks to an unprecedented atmosphere of openness about sexuality -- that Hef himself helped bring about -- seniors are increasingly asking for help. And, true to stockholder-pleasing form, Big Pharma is here to help: Viagra, Cialis and the like continue to proliferate. Even Bob Dole -- possibly one of the most straight-laced men on the planet -- became a pitchman for Viagra following his failed bid for the White House in 1996.
After learning all that, I'm not willing to begrudge anyone -- senior or not -- a sex life. Yet Hef and his legendary libido still bugs me.
Maybe, though, it isn't Hef's actual sexual activity so much as the massive mystique he's built up around it. A mystique as recognizable as a Coke can -- the mansion, the bunny, the grotto. Hef has turned his personal love life into a Las Vegas of lust: the pajamas, the rotating cast of blondes, the legendary parties. But lately Hef's appearances on "The Girls Next Door" and the series of tabloid stories about his girls -- one's dating Criss Angel, another engaged to an NFL player and his newest models (and I mean that in the Chevy sense, not the Linda Evangelista sense) are 19-year-old twins -- have served to make Hef's Vegas more Circus Circus than Bellagio, if you catch my drift.
Hef became a caricature of himself decades ago. But only in the past few has he become a punchline. Come on, man. It's time to grow up. Pull yourself together. You've made yourself ridiculous. Less is more and a little mystery can aggrandize one's legend more than all the reality TV bedroom scenes you can muster.
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