10 Things I Learned from the Kate Moss Issue of Playboy (NSFW-ish)
Here’s What I Learned with My Open Mind
1) There Really Are a Lot of Articles, Many of Them Quite Good: I actually said out loud, “There’s a lot of content in this issue! And I like it!” My friend laughed. But it’s true! That’s the kind of thing I notice about magazines. It’s my job. There are a lot of articles in this issue, and many are quite good! There’s a comprehensive gift guide! An interview with comedian Patton Oswalt! An essay about branding by Slavoj Žižek! Wait, what? I really wanted to read that. Maybe people do really read the articles? I wanted to read the articles as much as I wanted to look at the pictures of Kate Moss in a harness. Interesting turn of events!
2) The Cartoons Are Way Less Funny Than Those in the New Yorker: Maybe that seems obvious, that the quality of something in Playboy wouldn’t be as good as that in the New Yorker, but for all I knew, the ability to get really raunchy would unleash the comedic genius of these cartoonists, leading to something extraordinary! But no. The cartoon captions seemed stolen from a decades-old Catskills routine. Boo. Missed opportunity.
3) There’s Actually Some Overlap with the New Yorker: It used to be that Playboy and the New Yorker competed for fiction and other literary content. Hard to believe, right? Well, while this issue of Playboy isn’t really on par with the New Yorker in many ways, it does contain a humorous essay by B.J. Novak, who just wrote a Shouts & Murmurs for the New Yorker! I didn’t find either of his pieces all that funny, but that’s just me maybe. Also, Rick Moody is in this issue of Playboy. And there’s a lovely essay on death by poet Donald Hall. Worlds colliding, you guys! Boom.
4) Hugh Hefner Has Known a Lot of People During His Career: I get that this is the 60th-anniversary issue, so of course it’ll partially be a reflection on Hef’s career. And so there are a lot of thumbnail-sized photos of everyone who, like, once looked at Hef at a party. But really, Hef has known a lot of people. Some of the best shots include one of Dustin Hoffman and his uncomfortable teenage son, Jake; one of Hef, Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, and noted thespian, Brande Roderick; giddy duo Jim Carrey and Jon Lovitz; Joe Namath and Sammy Davis Jr.; Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, in happier times, and with much chest hair on display for Baldwin; a brunette Gwyneth Paltrow with a blond Anthony Keidis; and Thora Birch and Elizabeth Taylor. Amazing!
5) All the Ads Are Super Sexy: Unfortunately, this winds up feeling relentless. Especially because the actual magazine’s content isn’t all-sex, all-the-time. But the ads? Even an ad for a Mini Cooper makes a reference to breast size (“Here’s to A Cups!”). Too much! Who would’ve thought that advertisers would be so crass? Ha ha. Kidding. Everyone would’ve thought that.
6) Ben Affleck Really Is Going to Be Batman: I mean, I knew this. But I’d forgotten about it. And now I remember. And also, I don’t really care. In fact, the interview with Ben Affleck is BY FAR the most boring thing in the magazine. I understand that he’s a good celebrity get, but ohmigod, he’s so boring. Although it was funny to find out that he was the only Dazed and Confused cast member not to get laid while they filmed in Austin. In fairness, O’Bannion was THE WORST.
7) Martin Luther King Jr. Invited Hugh Hefner to March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965: There’s a pretty cool feature in this issue displaying Hef’s old correspondence back from when he was relevant, and it includes a telegram from Martin Luther King (!) inviting Hef to participate in the 1965 march from Selma, Alabama to the capitol city of Montgomery. Hef…didn’t go. But he was asked. Which, well…I didn’t know about that! And now I do. And so do you.
8) There’s More Than One Centerfold: Well, technically, there is only one January playmate and one February playmate, but because this is a double issue, there’s TWO centerfolds. Plus Kate Moss! Plus other naked women! That’s a lot of practically hairless vagina to go around. Something that I enjoyed was reading the questionnaires that these young women filled out, the common thread among all of them being that they want to live in California. No word on whether they currently live in New York and are in the process of writing their very own “Goodbye to All That”-articles, but I can dream, can’t I?
9) Even Playboy Understands the Appeal of Game of Thrones: This makes perfect sense actually. GoT is so porny as is, so maybe this wasn’t surprising, but it was still very much appreciated by me, because I enjoy every opportunity I get to think about how good of an owner I would be to a dire wolf. So good.
10) Kate Moss Is Beautiful, But a Terrible Interview Subject: So! Kate Moss was the whole reason I even wanted this issue to begin with! But how would she look? Photoshopped like crazy? Stiff and unnatural? What would be wrong?! Well, nothing. Not exactly. The photos were done by the fashion photographer team of Mert & Marcus, who have shot Moss many times before, and frequently when she was nude. But this time, the photos seemed a bit sterile…a bit too fashion-y. Moss has been shot naked so many times that it’s not the fact of her body that’s surprising, it’s what she does with it. The power of a naked shot of Moss isn’t what it would be with a celebrity who’d never shown her body, the power lies in how Moss always transforms into something different, while still being recognizably herself. That’s her gift as a model anyway, remaining physically vital and fresh all within the constraints of a small, rectangular frame. And no one is better at this than Moss. But maybe because the Playboy audience isn’t thought to be as critical or discerning as a high fashion/fine art audience would be, these photos mostly felt a bit flat to me. Well, not all. The mask was nice. But so, worse than the photos (which weren’t BAD, just not great) was the interview with Tom Jones, who is, it seems, a knight. The knighthood has really gone to hell, hasn’t it? Anyway, it should have been campy and hilarious, right? Instead, I could barely finish it. And it was short! But impossible not to skim. All that happened was that the most obvious round ever of Fuck, Marry, Kill was played (Piers Morgan, Marc Jacobs, Naomi Campbell…I don’t even NEED to tell you who Kate selected, because you already know, you’re not stupid), and the sort of sad fact that, because she started modeling when she was still a child (14), Moss has never had any other career or personal ambitions, like, ever. As in, she said she doesn’t know what else she’d have done besides model, but that she probably would’ve just ended up working in a pub. Which doesn’t sound wrong, exactly. She really doesn’t seem to have any interests other than the size of Tom Jones’s Cartier watch (it’s big!). Like, it must’ve been really hard to get a good pull quote for this article. The photos, though…some of them are quite nice. Especially in contrast to how bad the interview is.
So, in the end, I am not going to subscribe to Playboy. It’s really not as bad a magazine as I thought it would be. But, even with the presence of Žižek and Moss, it still feels a bit like a relic, and not like something particularly innovative or even something that breaks the 60/40 rule of interesting/skim-worthy content that I need my magazines to have. Because not every issue will have Žižek and Moss and THEN where will I be? Stuck in the pages with a bunch of young women whose greatest desire is to go to California?! No. No. I absolutely can’t subscribe to that. Which doesn’t mean that I won’t have someone buy me a copy again on a cold, gray Sunday morning. But, really, I’ll only be reading it for the articles.
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