While many in the press are hailing Hugh Hefner as a pioneer in his day — championing abortion rights and breaking the shackles of an oppressive sexual culture — the man represented a lifestyle and business that was in no way, shape, or form helpful to women.
It is no surprise celebrities are tripping over themselves to praise the man who gave them a platform to become famous for stripping down to nothing. He will be buried next to Marilyn Monroe, the woman whose nude photograph he published in his first issue of Playboy.
Hefner indeed was a pioneer. He was the force behind the mainstream objectification of women, someone who paid them to take their clothes off and convinced them it was empowering to do so, using the same arguments pornographers use for the same goals.
The harmful effects of pornography are no longer secret. Pornography is violent and has been proven to lead to aggression against women — no surprise since the vast majority of the victims of violence in pornography are women.
In 2013 traffic to porn sites received more traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. According to WebRoot, porn increased marital infidelity by 300 percent, and a study published in Science magazine showed a direct correlation between consuming porn in marriage and a higher divorce rate. Hefner said he never cheated while married, but he confessed that “I had a lot of girlfriends, but it’s not the same as cheating.” And the breakdown of the American family continues.
Holly Madison, who lived in the Playboy Mansion, starred in a television show about her time there and was Hefner’s #1 girlfriend for a time, reveals she contemplated suicide while she lived with Hefner and his girlfriends. The glamourous life was a total lie.
Holly was only one of the many women who bought into Hefner’s lies and suffered the consequences of being bought and paid for.
While I never met Hefner myself, it is beyond my ability to comprehend how Hollywood views a man who walked around in pajamas all day, paid women for sex, brought the objectification of women into the mainstream culture, and became wealthy by creating a magazine for lonely men as some kind of a hero.
Girls, please. We deserve better than this.
Editor’s Note: A version of this article was published by Fox News. Click here to read it.