Within the same issues, Viva ran commentary from (male) doctors on (female) readers' sex fantasies, and featured sexy nude centerfolds and pictorial spreads. Viva ran articles about women’s "freedom to say ‘no’" and Vietnam veteran families lengthy interviews with Maya Angelou and Paul and Linda McCartney profiles on Dennis Hopper and Paul Newman book and culture reviews by accomplished critics and a smattering of fashion, lifestyle, and astrology pieces. She kicked the idea to Guccione (though some, Guccione included, said it was originally his), and in 1973, a new magazine was born under the Penthouse publishing umbrella: Viva, "the international magazine for women." Maybe women - whose carnal desires had been ignored at best and shamed at worst - would also want erotic pictures and smart stories within the same pages. The once-radical notion that women had desires and could be agents of their own sexuality suddenly wasn’t so far-fetched.Īll of this - Penthouse’s success, the women’s movement, the sexual revolution - gave editor Gay Bryant an idea. Meanwhile, the sexual revolution was rattling the country’s rigid beliefs about what all people could and should do with their bodies and appetites. From 1972 to 1973, women won the right to use birth control regardless of marital status and the right to have a safe, legal abortion. But as ideas of autonomy and liberated sexuality swept through the country’s courts, cultural institutions, and homes, the social norms and societal structures that objectified and oppressed women began to crumble. The previous decades had imagined women as wives, mothers, and sexual objects only, without desires or the right to their own bodies. At its peak, it sold more than 5 million copies a month and earned Guccione a spot on the Forbes 400 list.Īt the same time, second wave feminism was in full swing. The magazine’s eventual motto - "More than just a pretty face" - held true: Penthouse contained muckraking journalism, cultural commentary, and, of course, naked women. When demand grew, he set out to overtake Hefner in the U.S., launching Penthouse stateside in 1969. In 1965, he founded Penthouse magazine in the U.K. He was an aspiring American artist and future media mogul who’d landed in Europe working odd jobs to support his family. With its nude centerfolds and high-profile writers, the magazine helped kick off the sexual revolution and created a blueprint for a successful men’s publication that mixed culture, politics, and pleasure. In 1953, Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy.
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