The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag (2015) sparked a debate on Hollywood and its lack of diversity. Is a #PlaygirlSoWhite hashtag equally warranted? –we’re often asked. Yes and no.
Since our digital reboot in February 2022, four Black celebrities/models have graced our covers: model Hamidou, actress Dionne Brown, Grammy-award winner Lucky Daye and rapper NLE Choppa. Just this past month we featured singer-songwriter Kirko Bangz and baritone Norm Lewis in two sizzling-hot editorials.
But if we look back at the print magazine, that’s a whole other story and far more nuanced. We won’t find any Black men on the covers till the late 90s, when Blair Underwood, Wesley Snipes and Tyson Beckford ushered in a more inclusive era. Representation matters and the first two decades of Playgirl covers, which speak to its predominantly white, middle-class purview, failed to represent (and yes, even to ‘objectify’) male bodies of different colors.
We’ll find them, however, among the centerfolds and the discoveries: football player Jim Brown in 1974, Carlos Roebuck in 1976 (a mustached finalist for Man of the Year), Conroy Nelson in 1988… Too little, we know. But, in the early publishers’ defense, those few Black penises made a difference, perhaps no less than the Black sitcoms of the day.
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