The Fantasy of a Female Hugh Hefner

From Medium  authored by Ann Friedman:

“In the wake of Hugh Hefner’s death, I’m not interested in arguing about whether the Playboy founder was a sexual pioneer or a feminist. You know what’s not novel and transgressive? Rich white men in mansions enjoying access to women’s bodies and presenting their lifestyle as the height of culture.

But I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t something sort of appealing to me, a 21st-century woman, about the Hefner lifestyle. To make Hef relevant in 2017, all you need to do is flip the gender: a woman running her media empire in the comfort of her loose-fitting silk pajamas, sipping a tumbler of whiskey carried to her by much-younger men (called “ponies,” or whatever animal nickname most excites her) with strong jawlines and some barely-there hot pants? Now she just might be a pioneer.

Perhaps the gender-flipped Hefner fantasy is attractive because of how far women still have to go when it comes to being seen as sexual and powerful at the same time. A man can brag about his exploits in the bedroom and, at the same time, be respected as an entrepreneur and a political force. (This is true even when the exploits are nonconsensual: Ask anyone who voted for our pussy-grabbing president.) When women are widely accepted as powerful figures — be it in politics, media, or business — they tend also to be seen as sexless, if not frigid. And when they’re known for being sexual, they tend to be shamed as much as lauded for the power they derive from their sexuality. To consider a female Hefner is to ponder what it might look like to truly transcend this Catch-22.”