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d-m-c at worldnet.att.net d-m-c at worldnet.att.net
Thu Dec 31 11:10:10 PST 1998


At 12:05 PM 12/31/1998 -0600, Peter Kilander wrote:
>I think Doug's on to something; it's an issue I've wrestled with and
>continue to. Another way to look at it is through the lens of feminist
>theory, which I'm not well-versed in. Often it's women who are out buying
>things for the family, being heroic consumers while men like myself can't
>get out of the shopping mall fast enough. Also, when Martha Stewart came on
>the scene, I felt she was pure evil - I wonder how much of that was the
>inner male in me.

In _Hearts of Men_ Ehrenreich argues that men revolted or rejected their identity as breadwinners, though in a rather unorganized way, well before the second wave of feminism. In her discussion of the new ideal of masculinity presented in the first issues of Playboy, (among other discourses like therapy, health care, pop culture) she points out that much of what symbolized this new freedom from breadwinning toward playboying was a variety of consumer goods as yet unclaimed by hetero men. (an interest in anything domestic, anything remotely consumerist was seen as signifying homosexuality. Anathema in the 50s!) Breadwinners could be seen as such because they had jobs, wives, and children. Oh they had a variety of consumer goods that symbolized their role too: power tools, wood paneled station wagons, Old Spice, gillette razors, and BBQ grills, and lawn mowers. But Playboys, they needed something else. HAving a job wouldn't differentiate them from their poor beaten down brethren in gray flannel suits. So, one way to mark themselves off was to get rid of the wife and kids. And another way: Consume! Consume sports cars, brandy, cigars, jazz records, stereos, picasso prints, wine, cruise vacations, smoking jackets, casual attire.

"Playboy presented...something apporaching a coherent program for the male rebellion: a critique of marriage, a strategy for liberation..., and a utopian vision (defined by its unique commodity ensemble). It may not have been a revolutionary program, but it was most certainly a disruptive one. If even a fraction of Playboy readers had acted on it...,the 'breakdown of the family' would have occured a full fifteen years before it was announced....Yet, Playboy was immune to the standard charges....you couldn't call it anti-capitalist or un-American, because it was all about making money and spending it....You could call it 'immature' but it already called iself that, because maturity was about mortgages and life insurance and Playboy was about fun. Finally, it was impervious to the ultimate sanction--the charge of homosexulality. The playboy didn't avoid marriage because he was a little bit 'queer,' but, on the contrary, because he was so ebulliently, even compulsively heterosexual....In every issue, every moth, there was a Playmate to prove that a playboy didn't have to be a husband to be a man. (50-1)



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