Consuming Liberation: Playgirl and the Strategic Rhetoric of Sex Magazines for Women 1972-1985

This dissertation considers how heterosexual women\u27s sexual pleasure was negotiated in the popular and underground press in the 1970s, focusing particularly on two virtually unexamined parts of U.S. culture: sex magazines for women and woman-authored underground comics. Publications such as Playgirl, Viva, and Foxylady reveal essential differences between sex magazines for men and those for women, particularly how each type of publication addressed its readers through editorial content as well as advertising and marketing. Through the marketing of male centerfolds for women, women were asked to consider their sexual appetites for men\u27s bodies as equivalent to those of heterosexual men for women\u27s bodies. This project argues that sex magazines for women offered an evolving narrative of sexual liberation that was intrinsically wedded to, and in constant conversation with, the women\u27s movement. Playgirl and its competitors strategically embraced some of the tenets and language of the women\u27s movement while generally refusing to support the movement as a whole. This dissertation examines how the visibility and cultural influence of the women\u27s movement encouraged male magazine publishers to employ women editors as spokespersons. These women wrote often of sexual liberation, but they avoided engaging in any systematic critique of male power in society or heterosexual relationships. The final chapters take a broader view of the publishing industry and women\u27s sexuality in the 1970s. They examine representations of women\u27s sexuality in woman-authored underground comics, publications with titles such as Tits and Clits and Wet Satin, and the impact of these representations on sexual culture in the United States. It argues that woman-authored underground comics exemplify approaches to sexual imagery and women\u27s sexuality that emerged out of feminist consciousness. The authors of these comics negotiated their own brand of feminist sexuality and their work is indicative of what is possible when women\u27s bodies are oriented as the center of women\u27s sexual universe. The concluding chapter examines the ways in which the model of female sexuality proposed by Playgirl continues to engage with and influence discussions of women\u27s sexuality and the place of sexual imagery in U.S. culture