Bunny Hop II: The 'Boy in the Bubble

About 4 1/2 years ago, after inheriting it from my dead uncle, I schlepped four decades' worth of Playboy magazines into my parents' basement. I blogged about it, blurring the magazine and its semi-sophisticated aesthetic with my uncle's underachieving, too-brief life. The delicate dance of obsolescence and objectifying women came rushing back to context when The House That Hef Built turned a new leaf.

Earlier this year, "The 'Boy" underwent an overdue makeover. A lot of the magazine's decades-old fixtures were excised: the mostly unfunny, panel and page-size cartoons; the Party Jokes page behind the centerfold, featuring excerpts from the unpublished Unabashed Dictionary; the annoying "jump copy" that was standard in most monthly periodicals in the 1950s and '60s. (The back section that featured paparazzi photos and new gadgets was dropped about ten years ago.) Most crucially, however was the disappearance of full-frontal nudity; in a time and age where naked women can be easily accessed on the internet (and in most cases, for free) why spend five dollars to see three or four monthly pictorials?

That's not to say, however, that barely-dressed women have disappeared from Playboy altogether. The centerfold is still there, but the naughty bits are covered up in clever ways. There is a newfound, harder emphasis on fiction and journalism, and there's even a column from a feminist perspective. The Playboy lifestyle is still elite and debonair but far more enlightened. The goal is to compete with Esquire, not Maxim.

So where's ol' Hef in all of this? Still schlepping around, taking on possible roommates, and largely letting others take the rein of his creation. According to reports, Hugh Hefner was more than willing to drop the cartoons, but had to be persuaded to tweak his creation's most noted content. Even in old age, America's best-known pajama-clad party animal had fought tooth and nail to cantilever a mindset that withered away decades ago.

Change is inevitable, and with Playboy reinventing itself after six-plus decades of great prose, swingin' cocktails, and bogus boobies they might prove there is still life in the brand. Had my uncle lived to see this, I'm sure he would've been annoyed by the lack of full-frontal nudity but would have kept reading out of habit. For now, Playboy has taken a behindhand step forward, a curious but righteous leap into the 21st century.
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MadFunnyWomen

My career in the radio industry ended in April 2010. During my time in radio, I noticed an unspoken yet obvious pattern of gender bias; with the exception of my college radio station at Illinois State, the overwhelming majority of my former co-workers were white males, and the on-air talent was 80 to 90% male. Less then a year after I was replaced I wrote “Pushing Air,” a comedy pilot based loosely on my experiences in the industry. One of the protagonists in my pilot was Rachel, the marketing director of a cluster of stations owned by a media conglomerate in a major Midwestern city. Rachel was the voice of reason, but stifled by an overbearing programming director; she was overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated, and because of a weak economy, stuck in a job that was beneath her tremendous skillset. That is not to say that Rachel was alone or isolated. The men in the office were frat boys with type-A personalities. The handful of women that were in the office were all just as miserable as she was. A culture of sexual harassment was implied but not directly addressed.

I didn’t write these characters to be one-dimensional ciphers, but a circumstantiated representation of how radio treats women. Programming that is marketed toward women are two parts awkward and condescending, and the majority of female on-air talent work in formats that cater to men with expendable incomes. For example, a female personality on a typical classic rock station has to look, sound and dress like an extra from “Coyote Ugly,” whether she really lives the lifestyle or not. (There’s also a culture of ageism toward women, but that’s another rant for another time.) At least one Chicago radio station has used breast augmentation as a contest prize, and another has an annual “rock girl” contest in which the winner and finalists model for a cheesecake wall calendar. The majority of radio executives would read this and argue that finding a role for women in their medium is “tricky,” and somehow defer the blame to the realities of industry consolidation.  In reality, however they’re not making an effort. I would have relished the opportunity to do anything that would have changed the “good ol’ boy” aesthetic that permeates to this day.

I thought about “Pushing Air” and my decade-plus in radio when a controversy erupted last week regarding comments made by iO co-founder Charna Halpern. In case you missed it: a few months ago, she had mentioned on Facebook that several female performers had been harassed by a manager at iO West in Los Angeles. They were afraid to say anything to Halpern for fear of being denied opportunities, or worse yet kicked out of the improv venue. She had hired a counselor at iO West, stated her lack of tolerance for sexual harassment, and name-checked iO alum Amy Poehler. Evidently, whatever she put into place was insufficient, as she posted on social media again to address the situation. In this case, the perpetrator was mentioned by name, and she gave him the shadow of a doubt. To Halpern, this accuser was a woman who “(likes) to either cause trouble or get revenge or just want attention so they make up stories… she claims I just put her off and offered her free classes.” Halpern said she would never handle such a situation in such a shallow way, adding “it’s people like this who make it difficult when a woman really has a problem-- we need to take this issue seriously and not spread lies because you didn’t make a team or for whatever reason you are angry.”

Halpern’s comments were perceived as aloof and self-serving, as if her primary objective was to protect her theaters, her employees, and her company, Yes And Productions. The response to these comments was fast-building and outraged, and rightfully so. Julia Weiss, a Chicago-based comedian/playwright and a performer at iO, delivered one of the first rebuttals: “It is unbelievably rare for women to make up stories like this to get ‘attention’ or ‘revenge.’ Perpetuating that narrative is what makes people dismiss women when they voice their experiences with harassment and abuse… while I respect that you’re taking this seriously and putting policies in place to protect women, posting something like this doesn’t foster a sense of comfort in people dealing with these issues.”

The majority of the nearly 200 comments that followed shared Weiss’ sentiments, and eventually Halpern deleted her post. The businesswoman was more concerned with the integrity of her employees, and the overwhelming rebuke was justified. There has always been an undercurrent of sexual harassment and misogyny in the improv community, especially in Chicago. Even if you weren’t directly affected, to say that the abuse has been overplayed or even non-existent is foolish and reprehensible. Halpern’s post begat a dialogue that mushroomed in size and volume on social media throughout the week. Some called for the men of the community to support and defend their female colleagues. Others shared stories of being harassed at Second City, iO, and even out of town improv festivals. One common thread in the conversation was that instructors let male students touch female students inappropriately without ramifications. Until recent years, the steps that Second City and other venues have taken to stop this have been mostly saber-rattling.

At the very least, I hope this worthy and insightful dialogue continues growing. A change in culture is badly needed, and the sooner the better. If I see any inappropriate behavior, I will gladly call it out. If you’re in a bad spot and you want to talk, I will listen. I have no justification for my own inaction, whether it was at a radio station six years ago or at an improv venue now. The number of women that make up stories of harassment and assault are a tiny minority. This is a real problem.

I’ve been a member of the Chicago improv community for going on seven years now. When the radio chapter of my life ended and I struggled to move on to something else, improv became my reason to wake up in the morning. I have always treated my classmates and teammates as equals. There are a number of bad apples within the community, not to mention a long history of misogyny, and my gut instinct was to not exacerbate the problem, but to treat my peers with dignity and respect. It’s one thing to be daring and politically incorrect, but another to disrespect your colleagues and collaborators. Improv used to be a boys’ club, and now the boys need to take accountability for their own actions. We have the power to stop this.

Don't Say a Word

In the end, it was a big journalistic train wreck. Earlier this month, the Columbia Journalism Review determined that a 2014 article in Rolling Stone magazine about sexual assault was likely totally fabricated. The article, written by Sabrina Erdely, focused on a University of Virginia undergrad who was gang-raped by her peers. Erdely, who has been criticized for fabricating details in the past, apparently ignored every journalistic commandment in the book: elevating fact-gathering over moral narratives; hunting down info; asking pointed questions. She made Rolling Stone hopelessly foolish, and a writing career that was already on the rocks is likely sinking into the abyss. Erdely's piece wasn't so much literary non-fiction as it was agenda-driven mythmaking. The story behind the story has become more interesting than the original article itself.

Part of the public outrage behind this scandal is fueled by the "rape culture" discussion that has hit fever pitch in recent years. Feminists have argued that rape is pervasive and has been normalized in the broader culture as a result of generations of traditional gender roles, and such instances are quickly and wrongfully dismissed. Erdely assumed that by interviewing the victim only and glossing over the frat brothers that she demonized, it would both sustain the brutal perspective she desired as well as cater to the audience she was preaching to. The editors of Rolling Stone, famed equally for somewhat archaic music journalism and left-leaning muckraking, thought this was the eye-opening scare story that this burgeoning controversy needed to start a broader discussion. Instead, it created a whole different scandal.

Just because one woman exaggerated allegations of sexual assault --or a second woman made up details about the first woman's encounter-- does not downplay the fact that rape is a serious issue, especially on college campuses. It happens on campuses across the country almost on a daily basis, yet most cases of rape are never reported or swept under the rug. This is a major issue that has been pandemic for several years (if not decades), but there is hardly anything to indicate that the collegiate rape crisis is under control, if not going away. Instead, Erdely and her lack of ethics has nearly trivialized a crisis without solution or resolve.

Next Week: my latest "Seasons of Love" TV essay.

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