No longer just about the men’s magazine, the Playboy logo has become mainstream. Playboy has introduced porno chic to a younger audience, with its insignia now adorning doona and pillow covers, pencil cases, key rings, wallets, purses, stationary, make-up and youth clothing ranges.
Not too long ago, Girlfriend magazine promoted Playboy clothing as “the must have brand for cool girls.” To adorn yourself in some way with the rabbit logo was to demonstrate an uninhibited, free range sexiness: essential for every girl.
Now Playboy Enterprises has been given the opportunity to socialise an even younger audience to the bunny ears. Perhaps it won’t be long before the bunny becomes as ubiqitous as the golden arches. Afterall, Hugh Hefner once said he wouldn’t mind if a baby held up a Playboy bunny rattle.
The porn empire’s latest marketing tool is a character much loved by children for the chocolaty delights he delivers. The Easter Bunny.
Universal has just released an animated film called Hop, billed as “Candy, chicks and rock ‘n’ roll”. The film features E.B, teenage son of the Easter Bunny. Easter Bunny senior wants his child to take over the family Easter egg business. But E.B has other plans. He wants to “see the world” so runs away to Hollywood, determined to become a drummer in a rock band.
But not every bunny wants to stay in a burrow. So when E.B looks for a bed where does he go to first?
The Playboy mansion of course. When E.B is told by “celebrity narrator” Hugh Heffner that the mansion only accommodates “sexy” bunnies, E.B replies enthusiastically: “I can be sexy!”
In this coming of age story which appeals to children’s natural attraction to the Easter
Bunny, E.B “learns what it takes to grow up”. The animated teen rebel, resisting his father’s wishes for him, on a journey of discovery, ends up at the Playboy mansion.
Cartoon bunny meet Playboy bunny in one seamless hop.
Embedding the Playboy Mansion in an Easter holiday film for kids is just another example of the mainstreaming of sex industry codes to children, contributing to their internalizing a message that the best known brand of the global porn industry is cool.
Alison Pollet in her 2004 article, Strip till You Drop, writes, “The bunny’s getting an extreme makeover; the company’s amping up its playful, mildly risqué qualities and de-emphasizing its pornographic ones.”
Hop helps it do that. The man responsible for the trivialization of female sexuality on a global scale becomes a celebrity narrator providing cartoon bunnies a bed for the night.
While children imbibe the Playboy PR that the brand helps make you sexy, playful and fun, (and Justin Bieber’s proposed visit to the Mansion further helps spread that idea) the reality of course is quite different.
You only have to go back to Hefner’s original description of the meaning of the Bunny, to get a good idea of his sexist and harmful views of women. In an interview cited here Hefner said:
The rabbit, the bunny, in America has a sexual meaning, and I chose it because it’s a fresh animal, shy, vivacious, jumping – sexy. First it smells you, them it escapes, then it comes back, and you feel like caressing it, playing with it. A girl resembles a bunny. Joyful, joking. Consider the kind of girl that we made popular: the Playmate of the Month. She is never sophisticated, a girl you cannot really have. She is a young, healthy, simple girl — the girl next door … we are not interested in the mysterious, difficult woman, the femme fatale, who wears elegant underwear, with lace, and she is sad, and somehow mentally filthy. The Playboy girl has no lace, no underwear, she is naked, well-washed with soap and water, and she is happy.
First person accounts about life at the Playboy Mansion reveal how the women are seen as property to be treated however Hefner wants. Jill Ann Spaulding describes porn and Viagra assisted unsafe sex sessions with the elderly Hefner.
Also this recent account in a piece titled “Pay to Play” by Daniel Flynn and published in The Spectator:
Nobody told Izabella St. James that sexual liberation came with curfews, monitors, and allowances. A former live-in girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, St. James has come clean on the dirty life inside the Playboy mansion. The Hefner girlfriends log-out upon departing the mansion and log-in upon returning. Security personnel monitor their movements, with a strict 9 p.m. curfew imposed. Weekly allowances of $1,000, and gratis plastic surgery, keep the ladies in line. The busty blonde reflected in the Daily Mail earlier this year, “Little did I realize that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle.”
The picture painted of the Playboy mansion by St. James and other playmates is one of joyless, obligatory orgies, dog-mess littered carpets, hall-monitor snitches, and a control-freak master of the house. Reality-television star Kendra Wilkinson, a five-year resident of the mansion, recalls: “It was way more strict than my parents had ever been.”
Flynn concludes: “One man’s emancipation can be another’s enslavement. In Hugh Hefner’s case, one old man’s sexual liberation is a whole harem’s subjugation”.
But it’s all candy, chicks and rock ‘n’ roll for E.B.
If you prefer your children have a non commercialised, commodified, women-as-bunnies Playboy mediated vision of sexuality, don’t take them to see Hop.
See also:
Playboy makes me feel like a piece of flesh: a young woman speaks.
14 Responses
Thank you for this article. I was going to take my kids,(aged 11 to 3) to see this movie today, in the ads looks like a cute kids movie. Will now chose another movie to watch .
I took my kids to see Hop, didn’t know about the Hugh H voice cameo/playboy mansion visit. Wasn’t terribly impressed.
I took my 10& 5 yr old kids to see Hop (not knowing anything about it, but trusting – silly me – a “G” rated movie should be fine) only to have the playboy mansion and a converstaion between an animated rabbit and the king of porn shoved in my face. Luckily my kids don’t have that sort of brand exposure, so it went over their heads, but to say I was shocked to go to a G rated movie and find a prominent reference to the porn industry is a massive understatement!
I spoke to a friend who took her children to see HOP. I wanted the inside scoop on the scene described above. Interesting reaction by a few parents who were in the conversation. I was shocked when one said that the children wouldn’t realise it was playboy and would go over their heads. As if this was okay? There was no concern that brand playboy and Hefner himself had made it into a children’s movie.
I don’t have children but this kind of reaction and comment alarms me.
Once again you have highlighted the mainstreaming of porn Melinda.
Unfortunately I don’t believe its just socialising of a young audience, I believe their is an acceptance by parents. Both are a concern.
It has been almost two years since I posted photos and blogged about Playboy marketing to our children in Coles ( http://www.sayno4kids.com/blog/?p=55 ), so despite being appalled by Playboy’s latest ‘appearance’ in a G Rated CHILDREN’S film, it comes as no surprise.
In HOP, the Playboy branding is so obvious – make no mistake – they want your child to remember the logo, and they will – particularly if they see the film more than once (followed by a trip to Coles, a flip to the back of the latest tween magazine with the Playboy logo for mobile phone ad, a walk past the shop window of Adairs, etc.). It’s not just the usual branded can of soft drink or make of car sending a subliminal advertisement we’re all used to spotting in films, the Playboy logo is FEATURED front and centre in HOP – more than once. In fact, at one point the logo is flashing boldly as the screen resembles a video game/tracking device – sheer marketing brilliance to draw it’s audience of children even closer to the bunny logo . And of course, Hugh Heffner himself even has a speaking cameo role.
The flooding of the CHILDREN’S domain with a porn brand shoud be seen and exposed for exactly what it is: CORPORATE PAEDOPHILIA. It is well known that paedophiles introduce children to pornography to groom them. What do you think Playboy is doing?! Playboy is about porn. Everything else they sell/give away is about marketing the porn brand. Hugh Heffner tells us he would be happy to see young children sucking on Playboy dummies.
Enough is enough. Let’s call it exactly what it is, and keep these nasty, irresponsible, VESTED interests away from our kids.
Wish I’d known. Have been offline all weekend and my five daughters went to see Hop with their grandparents. Absolutely disgusted.
Hello, just wondering..
Melinda wrote ‘ The man responsible for the trivialization of female sexuality on a global scale …’ ( referring to Hugh Hefner)
I think this article is fantastic.. but I was wondering if you could just expand on the trivialization idea?? – I was thinking the opposite, that playboy over obsesses over a woman’s sexuality – making her sexuality who she is rather than a part of who she is.. am I making sense?! any thoughts on this would be great to hear.. and thanks for the warning on Hop.. I won’t be taking any kids to see it.. I did hear that RIO is suppose to be good ! 🙂
My son and I went to see this Melinda. I was really disturbed by the Playboy episode. The branding was incredibly overt. The Playboy insignia was not only on the map the bunny was following, and on the mansion gate but as you saw the Easter Bunny through “Hugh-cam” it was brandished on the side of the cinema screen for some minutes.
I found this completely inappropriate and also incredibly incongruous with the rest of the film which really celebrated the fantastic elements of Easter – lollies, bunnies, the child-like wonder one experiences when waking to eggs.
I felt betrayed that the adult world of porn was snuck into a film directly aimed at small children. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t funny.
It was irresponsible.
I can only assume Playboy INc paid for this product placement. If this is indeed the case, how many silver coins did the Producers accept?
Thank you for keeping us all informed
Earlier in the week ABC radio was doing their movie reviews and the reviewer gushed over this film. No mention of the Playboy tie-ins of course! The SMS I sent in pointing it out was thankfully read on air. Kids and their parents deserve better than to be ambushed by child sexualisation mid-movie.
I am so sad at how many parents and commentators have written this off as a bit of harmless fun or ‘a joke for the grown-ups’. Hef and his cohorts have socialised us all and we don’t even realise that our sexuality has been traded for their profit.
Excellent article.. I didn’t take my kids to see Hop…and I’m so glad I didn’t after reading this. I can’t believe they would reference the Playboy Mansion in a G movie. Astounded really.
I just saw this link to read this on Kidsfreetobekids and it was that facebook page where I first learnt about Hop and the playboy mansion. I was totally disgusted and I refused to take my children to the movie. I even told some friends, sadly they still chose to take their children because the children wouldn’t understand. I, however believe seeing the movie sends out the message to this silly people who created the movie that it is OK to abuse our children in this way. The fight for our children is going to be a long one.
And now Justin Bieber, a tween icon, is visiting the Playboy Mansion… All those little girls, with their little girl fantasies of Justin being a nice, wholesome boyfriend… will consciously or unconsciously compare themselves and feel they are not enough. Boy, where are the days of Donny Osmond? OK, so he’s a Mormon…. but as a kid, always projected this incredibly wholesome persona… never in a million years would I have known what to do if there had been a news story about Donny going to the Playboy Mansion. As a little girl, I would have instinctively known I was not enough… Of course, we all know we don’t have a chance of meeting our icon star, but we have the freedom to dream of ourselves being the woman of his dreams. Not so anymore….
I propose two things… the industry is fueled by women allowing themselves to be exploited due to low self esteem… What would happen if we started aiming education and resources toward women who are vulnerable to getting into porn? Perhaps, those women who would choose otherwise, we could find a way to give them alternatives.
Secondly, has anyone proposed some sort of campaign to educate Justin Bieber fans? To insome way stand up for themselves and shun him as a result? The industry and socialization of porn would take a major hit. Anyone have any ideas on how to use this horrific public event to our advantage?
Dammit! My 7 year old went and saw HOP with her school Vacation Care programme. Then her father took her to see it. I didn’t know! I wish I had, and I would have banned her from going….and let the VacCare progamme know why!