The Playboy Bunny / A Singular American Icon

The Playboy Bunny was born on a cold February night in 1960, as
the most curious -- and, arguably, most fetching -- attraction at
the newly christened Playboy Club in Chicago. Indeed, when the
key club had first solicited prospective employees the year
before, the ad that was placed in the Chicago Tribune sought,
"the 30 most beautiful girls in Chicagoland."


More than acting simply as cocktail waitresses, hostesses and
servers at Playboy Clubs around the world over the course of a
quarter-century, the Playboy Bunny became a cultural icon -- one
that represents not only the corporate identity of Playboy
Enterprises, Inc., but likewise the persona of a lifestyle that
combines entertainment, sophistication, sexuality and fun. In the
first 20 years alone, more than 25,000 women donned rabbit ears
and cottontails, many of them working their way through college
by way of the job's legendary ample pay and flexible hours.


Contrary to critics who assumed that the Playboy Bunny mystique
was more about being an ornament than working, the job actually
required considerable skill. Ironically, Playboy founder Hugh
Hefner had almost personally put his waitresses in shortie
nightgowns -- a rabbit outfit, he reasoned, was too masculine an
image for the ladies of his cocktail corps. But Victor Lownes,
then the magazine's promotion director, along with other
associates convinced Hefner that he should extend onto the live
entertainment front the rabbit theme that he had so carefully
integrated into the pages of his magazine. Then Lownes'
girlfriend, a Latvian model who had appeared on Hef's TV show,
Playboy's Penthouse, convinced her mother, a seamstress, to
assemble a sample costume. No one could have guessed that a
classic was about to be sewn.


After its creation, the Bunny Costume was registered with the
U.S. Patent Office, and was ultimately displayed in the
Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Former Playboy Bunny's include actresses Lauren Hutton, Sherilyn
Fenn and Susan Sullivan, as well as rock star Deborah Harry. But
perhaps the most famous Bunny may have also been the most
infamous: Feminist Gloria Steinem went undercover as a cottontail
in 19TK to write an expose for Show magazine all about life in
the Bunny hutch. But guess who ironically got the last laugh!
Although the controversial article was intended as a criticism of
the Playboy Bunny in particular and Hugh Hefner's empire in
general, the publicity it generated went on to establish the
Playboy Bunny even more firmly as a singular American icon.


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What If Women Ruled The World ?

If women ruled the world, everything would change, according to former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Politics would be more collegial. Businesses would be more productive. And communities would be healthier. Empowering women would make the world a better place. Blending memoir, social history and a call to action, Myers challenges us to imagine a not-too-distant future in which increasing numbers of women reach the top ranks of politics, business, science and academia. Here's an excerpt from “Why Women Should Rule the World”:

Introduction
Women should rule the world.

That was it, the answer to my frustration and growing political alienation. It seemed so simple, so obvious. Women!

If we were in charge, things might actually change. Instead of posturing, we’d have cooperation. Instead of gridlock, we’d have progress. Instead of a shouting match, we’d have a conversation. A very long conversation. But a conversation nonetheless. Everyone would just hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.”

Or would they? What would it be like if women ruled the world, I began to wonder?

Would anything really change? Would the world be a better place? My hunch was that more women in public life would, in fact, make things better.

After all, more women already have.

It’s easy (and perhaps a bit facile) to argue that men haven’t done such a great job. The last century was the bloodiest in human history, and so far, this one has been a tale of war, terrorism, religious extremism, abject poverty, and disease. I’m not saying it’s all men’s fault. But let’s just say, they’ve been in charge, and it doesn’t seem we’re much closer to finding answers to these profound and vexing problems.

On the other hand, if there are societies where women have truly ruled, they are few and far between. For virtually all of history, woman has played a supporting role to man’s, well, leading man. A comprehensive review of encyclopedia entries published in the early 1900s included only 850 women, though it covered a span of nearly 2,000 years. And the queens, politicians, mothers, wives, mistresses, beauties, religious figures, and women of “tragic fate” were notable mostly for their relationships with men.

I have always believed that women could rule the world. As far back as I can remember, it has seemed obvious to me that women were, in fact, every bit as qualified as men in most endeavors, and better than them at many. Of course, the corollary — that men are better than women at some things — also seemed obvious, at least after the sixth grade. Before that, I thought I could do anything any boy could do. I was a good student and a good athlete, and I didn’t have much trouble keeping up with boys in the classroom or on the playground. But then Doug, another sixth grader at Wiley Canyon Elementary School in California, challenged my friend Peggy and me to a game of two-on-one basketball, first side to ten would win. He beat us 10-0.

I realized then that athletic boys are better basketball players than most girls, even the ones like Peggy and me who spent a fair amount of time shooting hoops. While I confess this was a bit disappointing at the time, I certainly didn’t think that boys were better at everything, or even most things. That idea simply never occurred to me.

Maybe it’s because I grew up surrounded by strong women. My mother, a product of her generation, left college after two years to marry my father, a young Navy pilot.

Within a few years, she had three little girls and a husband who was often at sea. With Castro’s ascent in Cuba, then the war in Vietnam, my dad was gone for weeks or even months at a time, and my mom was left to manage alone. One of my earliest memories is of helping my mom pack a little plastic Christmas tree, some cookies, and a few wrapped packages into a big box to send my dad, who was on a ship somewhere in Southeast Asia. But she never complained (at least not when my sisters and I were listening), and she never seemed overwhelmed by all that she had to do. The Navy, like all branches of the military, would collapse without the community of able women (and now a lot of men) who manage things stateside, while their husbands (and now some wives) are away. My mother and her network of Navy wives helped each other tend to sick children, unstop kitchen sinks, and deal with worrisome news from the war raging half a world away.

After my father left the Navy, we moved to the suburbs of Los Angeles, and my mom eventually earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees, then went to work, first as a counselor at a local college, then as an executive at the phone company. She was good at what she did, rose quickly in her various jobs, and got a lot of satisfaction from her professional accomplishments. I didn’t always like it when my mom was gone, but I never doubted that what she was doing was important. At the time, most of the mothers in my neighborhood stayed home, so what my mom was doing was unusual. But my dad was supportive, and my sisters and I were more proud than displaced — even when we had to eat dry macaroni and overcooked hot dogs every time it was my sister Betsy’s turn to make dinner. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t go to college and have a career — as well as a family — of my own. Both my parents, but especially my mother, encouraged me and led me to believe that it was possible.


My father’s mother, Grandma Bernadette, also shaped my ideas about what women could accomplish, in ways I think she never would have imagined. Her husband — my grandfather — died of congestive heart failure (he’d had rheumatic fever as a child) when he was just thirty-seven, leaving her with five children: my dad, who was eleven, and his four sisters, ages twelve to two.

My grandfather had owned a gas station on Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin, while my grandmother was busy raising the children and playing the organ at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. She hadn’t been very involved in the business — and it certainly wasn’t a business where one expected to find women in 1946. Because of his heart condition, my grandfather didn’t have any life insurance, but his business was insured. So when he died — as my grandmother liked to tell it — the insurance men came to her house, suggested she sell it and the gas station, and move with her children into the Catholic orphanage across town. She told them to get the hell off her porch and never come back. She kept the station and managed the day- to-day operations until she sold it more than thirty years later.

She raised five children, put them all through college, and still found time to play the organ at Mass every weekday and five times on Sunday. While she clearly missed things about being married — and having a father for her children — she never really dated or considered marrying again. She would sometimes say she never found the right fellow, but her daughters believe that she simply liked being the boss.

So my grandmother — by fate, rather than design — was a small business owner and single mom long before women routinely did either, let alone both. And I’ve often wondered: What would have happened to another family if the mother had died and left the father with five young children? How many men could have managed to run the business, raise the kids, and volunteer at church six days a week, all by themselves?

In addition to my mother and grandmother, I grew up surrounded by accomplished women. The principal of my elementary school. My guidance counselor in high school. My father’s sisters. My friends’ mothers, and my mother’s friends. It seemed to me that women were capable of doing just about anything. Not that they were always allowed to, of course. When I was in second grade (even before I learned that boys were better at basketball), our teacher asked us to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. The kid next to me, Robert, drew himself as a TV repairman. While his choice of career may not have thrilled his parents, it struck me hard. Wow, I thought. He can be anything. I have to be a teacher, or a nurse, or a nun. I drew myself as a teacher.

Happily, the years since I finished the second grade have seen an exponential increase in options. Girls can now aspire to be elementary school teachers or university presidents; nurses or doctors; nuns or — in many denominations — priests or ministers or rabbis. Girls and boys can be engineers, entrepreneurs, or astronauts. They can repair televisions or appear on them as actors or journalists. They can build homes or stay home with the kids.

And they can be press secretary to the president of the United States, as I was.

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Amsetrdam's War On Sex / Famous ''Red Light'' District Closing

Two weeks ago a young Dutch fashion designer named Bas Kosters opened a new store. His colorful and sumptuous creations—skirts, handbags, sweatshirts—merit attention. But the most striking aspect of his new venue is the location. Kosters's work is on display in Amsterdam's Red Light District behind two tall windows that until recently were used as a brothel. The ladies have vanished. The red lights and curtains have been removed and replaced by Kosters's hyperfashionable clothes.

Kosters found this studio thanks to an ambitious plan by the Amsterdam city government. Arguing that too many brothels and sex bars are linked to criminality, the authorities plan to all but erase the Red Light District. If the plan goes through, the peep shows, sex shops and prostitute windows that line the small alleys and canals will have to go, giving way to galleries, boutiques and upscale restaurants and bars. Goodbye to the big neon signs advertising every possible form of sexual indulgence.

Amsterdam without the Red Light District? Wouldn't that be like Paris without the Eiffel Tower? Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, and his aldermen have demonstrated little nostalgia for the district, which has been the world's most famous home of sexual permissiveness since the 15th century. They first unveiled the plan to close it in December; last month they revoked the licenses of two widely known sex venues, the Casa Rosso and the Banana Bar. The next step is to buy out the real estate owners. Last fall the city struck a deal with a powerful brothel owner, Charles Geerts (known as "Fat Charlie"), to buy 20 buildings.

driving force behind the cleanup is Lodewijk Asscher. A young star of the Dutch Labour Party and deputy mayor of Amsterdam, Asscher believes it's time to deliver his hometown from sleaze—even if he's scuppering a $100 million-a-year industry in the process. He is pleasantly surprised, he says, by the public support he's gotten for the plan. "Every day I get e-mails," he says. A recent survey confirms the sentiment: the city administration's polling agency found that 67 percent of Amsterdam's population supports a clampdown on sketchy business. The Amsterdam City Council approved the plan about two weeks ago by an overwhelming 43-2 majority.

But not everybody is happy about the change. Jan Broers, owner of Royal Taste, a hotel in the heart of the Red Light District, and eight prostitute windows, has formed a protest committee called Platform 1012 (named after the area's ZIP code). He claims to have collected thousands of signatures. This week the group staged a protest march, starting in front of the Casa Rosso and ending in Dam Square, where thousands of people shared a minute of silence. They carried pink balloons and signs saying "Hands off the Red Light District" and a poster of Asscher doctored to look as if he was with a street hooker.

Broers is afraid that fewer tourists will come to a sexless Amsterdam, harming legitimate, legal businesses. Most of all, he says, he feels "stigmatized" by the city government. "With all his rhetoric, deputy mayor Asscher is giving the district a bad name throughout the world," he says. "People phone me up from abroad every day, worried we might be gone already." Broers questions the city's premise that prostitution leads to criminal activities in the area. Indeed, the city, which is acting under laws that require only a suspicion of criminal activity, can point only to studies from the mid-1990s. "It's a shield. The city just wants to gentrify the neighborhood, so they can make some good money. And they're using public funds to buy all the real estate."

And what about the ladies? The Red Light District has about 450 windows where women offer their services. The majority of those will be closed down. Where will the inhabitants go, once they're forced out of work? Asscher says most of the prostitutes are part of international human-trafficking networks that draw on women from Eastern Europe, and they will most likely move on to Antwerp, Hamburg and other European cities. For those that remain, the city administration may start certifying pimps and require that prostitutes who work for them to be 21 years old.

The Dutch Sex Workers Union fears that many women and girls will be forced to start walking the streets. On its Web site the union calls the city's plans to certify pimps "bizarre." Since prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, it argues, sex workers don't need pimps to find a place to work. Ruth Hopkins, a Dutch-English investigative journalist who has written extensively on prostitution in Amsterdam, says the city government overstates the extent of involuntary prostitution. "Even though there are gangs of pimps, a lot of women, mostly Africans and Latinos, do their work in complete independence," she says. Hopkins fears that a cleaned-up Amsterdam will be a boring city.

The crackdown fits into a nationwide backlash against the excesses of 1960s "happy-clappy" liberalism, as a conservative Dutch member of parliament recently put it. Over the last few years the Netherlands has adopted a stricter policy on selling marijuana, and a ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms is slated to go into effect later this year. "People in Amsterdam and the rest of the country are starting to discern real tolerance from bogus tolerance," says Asscher. "When Rudy Giuliani started to clean up Times Square in the mid-'90s, some people were warning that no one would ever again want to come to New York City. But as far as I know, it has had record tourist numbers each year since." Perhaps Giuliani, who this week dropped out of the U.S. presidential race, should run for office in the Netherlands.

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Female Sports Writers Still Struggle For Fair Play

I Give You The ''First Lady Of Sports Commentary''



Phyllis became the first pioneer female sportscaster in America co-anchoring the popular Emmy Award winning "NFL Today Show" on CBS with Brent Musberger and Irv Cross from 1975- 1984. She interviewed some of the greatest sports figures in the world. She also co-hosted three Super Bowl broadcasts and six Rose Bowl Parades. She was the first female co-host of "Candid Camera". In 1985 she became the co-anchor of the "CBS Morning News" broadcast once again interviewing some of the great newsmakers in the world. Ms. George created and hosted two prime-time shows on TNN: "The Phyllis George Specials" and "Spotlight With Phyllis George". She interviewed high profile people in all walks of life - sports, news, politics, business, entertainment... Phyllis also hosted her own show on TNN called "Woman's Day TV with Phyllis George".


By Jessica Quiroli

On April 2nd 1975 Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn sent out a letter he wrote to the general managers of all major league baseball teams, rallying them to maintain a “unified stand” against allowing female sports writer’s into major league clubhouses.

Perhaps Kuhn could not imagine Sports Illustrated, the male sports fans’ bible, would be behind the fight to change the playing field for female sports journalists. Reporter Melissa Ludtke was the catalyst for the crucial change. Up to that point women such as Ludtke were left standing outside the sacred locker room doors after games, just hoping a player would come out to talk to them.

In the 1978 civil case Melissa Ludtke and Time Inc. v. Bowie Kuhn it stated, “Defendants admit that accredited male sports reporters may enter the locker room after a ball game for the purpose of interviewing ballplayers and that such fresh-off-the-field interviews are important to the work of sports reporters.”

Time, Inc. filed the lawsuit for equal access and eventually it was found to be “unconstitutional” to ban women from locker rooms. Women were allowed post game access as long as they acted in a “professional” manner, insinuating female sports reporters had ulterior motives for wanting access to locker rooms.

The controversial case in 1978 led to a victory for women in sports media.

It recently marked thirty years since Bowie Kuhn sent out his bold memo. How much have things really changed for female sportswriters entering the inner sanctum of male professional sports?

“We’re infiltrating the last totally male-dominated businesses in the world-sports,” said Joanne C. Gerstner, President of The Association for Women in Sports Media. Gerstner, herself an experienced sports reporter for the Detroit Pistons and Tigers also says, “I would like to see the change of pace go faster. But it’s moving along.”

The press box was a place of combat itself in the early days. In the 1940’s, according to Pamela Creedon’s 1994 book “Women, Media and Sport”, it was a place of, “all out war,” between male and female sports writers. You had a battle of the sexes amid athletic competition over who should have the right to cover the games of ball. Sports editor and reporter Mary Garber, “The Dean of Women Sportswriters”, was often put in the wives seating area, barred from sitting with the other male reporters in the press area.

Coaches, players, baseball officials, and fellow journalists can’t shut women out any longer. But the battle for equality is far from over in the “last totally male-dominated business.”

Today “women make up approximately 13% percent of sports departments”, as reported in Leah Etling’s 2002 study, “An Uphill Climb”. Some might say the number is a reflection of the differences in interests between men and women. Beat writer Jennifer Wielgus of the Bucks County Courier Times (a newspaper in the Philadelphia area) said, “The majority of sportswriters are male and probably always will be.” But according to Etling’s study, “Sports journalism departments have generally been reluctant to hire women for their desks.”

Another estimate Etling uncovered is that, “less than 6% of the Associated Press Sports Editors are women.”

Wielgus said,” Proportionally, there never will be as many women who want to be sportswriters as there are men who want to be.”

For women like Wielgus who do want to be sportswriters, the reality of people’s attitudes can be eye-opening. “Just the other day,” she explained, “someone called from one of our local high schools and asked, ‘Why do you always send women to cover our football games?”

Women passionately pushed to make their mark in sports journalism in the 1970’s and on into the 80’s as equal rights for women in the workplace became a centerpiece of those decades; but in the supposedly liberated 1990’s there were glaring reminders sexism still existed toward female sports writers.

In 1984 Claire Smith, a Philadelphia sportswriter and now Assistant Sports Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was physically removed from the San Diego Padres clubhouse after they refused to abide by their earlier, “assurances that the teams that still did not abide by league rules would come the post season”, said Smith. She says that it wasn’t until newly hired commissioner Peter Ueberroth was hired that all clubhouses were opened to, “properly credentialed reporters from that day forward.” But the problems did not stop there. In 1990, Boston Herald sportswriter Lisa Olson was covering the New England Patriots. Olson was subjected to the worst abuse against a female reporter in a locker room ever recorded.

While Olson tried in vain to do her job one particular day she was relentlessly and verbally taunted by some of the players. Afterward fines were issued by the National Football League to make it clear the behavior was intolerable.

In 1992 Sacramento Bee beat writer Sue Fornoff was covering the Oakland A’s but received little cooperation from Dave Kingman. Kingman refused to speak with her in the locker room and created an even bigger issue by refusing to talk to reporters if she was in the room. Other reporter’s professional duties were then compromised.

At an away-game in Kansas City in April Fornoff was given a message of sorts when she received a neatly wrapped box. Upon opening the box she noticed something moving beneath the tissue paper. It was a rat with a tag around its neck reading, “My name is Sue.” The finger was pointed at Kingman, who was fined and told he’d be released immediately if anything like that happened again.

Since then, it has been an ongoing effort on the part of sports officials to make the situation comfortable, for both athletes and female reporters in locker rooms and clubhouses. Emily Badger, a sports reporter at the Florida Sentinel since 2002, said, “I cover a program that doesn’t have an open locker room.” The fact that many sports teams are operating this way has certainly made the situation more comfortable for everyone involved. Badger says however that players have, “outright asked why I think I should be allowed in.”

Women are not going to be viewed any differently when they enter a locker room of naked men who feel the clubhouse is exclusive to men, and the male/female dynamic will never be completely extinguished in that environment; the most women can ask is to be treated fairly and given the chance to do their job. Wielgus for one sees some progress mainly due to strength in numbers.

She said, “There is definitely increasing diversity.” But, she continued, “Part of that is because of minority hiring quotas. I hate to say.”

Quotas present a whole other issue for women aspiring to be sports writers on equal footing with their male counterparts. Wielgus explains when she applied for her current job the ad read, “Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.” It isn’t entirely clear how much the use of quotas is responsible for the rising number of female sports writers. If the conditions have improved for women in the locker room, the process of getting hired might be the next thing in need of tweaking.

While quotas ensure women get a place at the boys table of sports writing it’s not a merit- based means of employing them. It is also worth wondering how many qualified women are being turned away for jobs just because a quota has been filled.

In the Associated Press Sports Editors ethics guidelines it states, “Assignments should be made on merit, without regard for race or gender.” Quotas, however, have been a necessary tool in women getting a shot at covering sports at newspapers.

There is still some fighting to do in order for women to be hired on merit alone.

“I am torn on this topic,” said Badger. “I have benefited from my status as a minority. At the same time this motivates me to want to prove that I have the talent and ability to warrant every opportunity given to me.”

According to Badger those opportunities are not given in some newsrooms she’s been in. “I’ve seen departments that clearly have no interest and make no effort to find and develop qualified women. This is a problem.” She also added, “It’s not enough to hire a woman to fill your quota, trust her with a beat that your paper values.”

If a higher number of women were in more authoritative positions, perhaps things would improve on that front. Gerstner said, “We need to get more women in positions of power: on-air, editors, and columnists. It’s not enough to be in the business. We need to get some say.” In a 1997 MSU State News article, Gerstner, then a Lansing State Journal sports reporter was quoted as saying, “The battle ground is having a female sports editor. There are very few of them.” Claire Smith was one of the few female baseball writers in the 1980’s and is one of the very few female sports editors today. However, she went onto say, “I was not in the first wave, or even the second, third or tenth. Braver women walked through those doors long before I did.”

While it’s difficult to nail down the exact number of women in sports journalism the Associated Press of Sports Editors are approximately, “six percent” women, said APSE president Jerry Mico in The American Journalism Review.

“It takes time to make a societal shift,” Gerstner said, “and that’s what we’re doing.” Just a few months after speaking with Gerstner, in an issue of The AWSM newsletter Gerstner reported numerous women had contacted her about rampant sexism and abuse in their sports departments by male counterparts. The women were too frightened to go public and wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of losing their jobs. Gerstner, as always a champion of this cause, promised to do all she could do be of help to the women.

While the relationship between athletes and the media has gotten far more strained over the years, women’s experiences separate them from men in the field even now. Female sports journalists remain on their own unique path and still face the question, “Why do you think you should be allowed in?” and still face internal abuses that often go unreported.

Mary Garber would not be forced to sit with the wives now. And the faces in the press box are more diverse. Female sports journalists have indeed advanced since the 1978 Ludtke decision, but clearly they are just rounding the bases.

They’ve not yet made it home.

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