Men's Magazines and Censorship
Men's magazines have historically navigated a complex landscape of censorship, particularly regarding their content related to sex and the portrayal of women. Before the early 1950s, these publications often included risqué articles and photographs but generally avoided overtly explicit material to maintain compliance with postal censorship standards established under the Comstock anti-obscenity laws. The U.S. Post Office played a significant role in regulating these magazines, even requiring prior approval of content until landmark legal victories, such as the Supreme Court case Hannegan v. Esquire Inc. in 1946, began to limit its authority. The launch of Playboy in 1953 marked a significant shift, as it openly focused on sexual content and led to the emergence of similar publications. This shift generated backlash from various communities and led to instances of local censorship, including businesses removing magazines deemed offensive. Over the years, several legislative efforts were made to restrict the sale of such magazines, particularly in sensitive environments like military base exchanges. Critics of these magazines have raised concerns about their impact on societal views of women, arguing that they contribute to objectification. Thus, the intersection of men's magazines and censorship reflects broader cultural debates about decency, morality, and the representation of sexuality in media.
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Subject Terms
Men's Magazines and Censorship
Definition: Periodicals intended for a male audience
Significance: Men’s magazines have often been the target of censorship, typically as a result of their depictions of nude or seminude women
Before 1953 many men’s magazines published articles about sex and photographs of women exposing considerable flesh, but those articles and photographs were not the magazines’ primary fare and their editors were scrupulous about staying on the good side of the US Post Office.
The Post Office could, and did, prohibit the use of the US mail to deliver publications that violated the standards of decency it established under the Comstock antiobscenity law, and thus for decades was a key American censorship unit. As late as 1943, editor Arnold Gingrich of Esquire took each issue’s copy and art for the magazine to Washington, DC, to get it approved by the Post Office before it was printed, much less mailed. The magazine’s mailing rights were nevertheless pulled in 1943. Esquire fought the Post Office, first in hearings before postal officials and then in court, and won a Supreme Court ruling restoring its mailing privileges and limiting the censorship powers of the Post Office in Hannegan v. Esquire Inc. (1946). After that the Post Office still occasionally attempted to assert its censorship powers over men’s magazines, but without notable success.
In 1953 Playboy magazine, followed by some copycats and some raunchier publications, made sex a primary item of content.
Such content found critics and opponents in many communities. In Riverton, Wyoming, for example, a grocer in 1968 removed Playboy from his shelves and said he would remove any other magazine that customers found offensive. (The promise was not kept when some customers said they were offended by Guns & Ammo magazine; it was not removed.)
It appears that attempts to censor men’s magazines in the United States have been limited mostly to such efforts, although Congress prohibited the publication of Playboy in braille for a time in the mid-1980s, and the federal government, in the wake of the report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in 1986, attempted to lend its support to local efforts to remove the magazines from newsstands. In 1996, a bill was introduced in Congress that would prohibit military base exchanges from selling Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. It was not uncommon to hear Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler attacked because of their emphasis on sex and nudity. Many groups have attacked the magazines as purveyors of the offensive custom of viewing women as objects rather than as people.
Bibliography
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Semonche, John E. Censoring Sex: A Historical Journey through American Media. Lanham: Rowman, 2007. Print.
Somaiya, Ravi. "Nudes Are Old News at Playboy." New York Times. New York Times, 12 Oct. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Tabuchi, Hiroko. "Cosmopolitan Magazine Covers to Be Shielded by 2 Retailers." New York Times. New York Times, 31 July 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Taylor, Stuart, Jr. "Court, 8–0, Extends Right to Criticize Those in the Public Eye." New York Times. New York Times, 25 Feb. 1988. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.