It is the way of the world that corporations tend to be corrupted as each successive generation takes control. Sometimes men start companies with all the best intentions, eschewing the making of a cheap buck for the sake of their principles. This tends to be something their children fail to understand, or it at least tends to be discounted in favor of getting dad to go a different direction to increase the company’s bottom line. But oftentimes, dad won’t budge. The company will operate as he sees it — as his vision dictates … until he dies. Then, without their father to stand in the way, the children turn the company down darker paths and make darker alliances. In the case of a company that’s already bad, well, things get worse.
In the case of Playboy — while Hugh Hefner’s dead body was still warm — the floundering magazine for “men” introduced its first transgendered playmate. (Links are for sourcing purposes only. Let the curious be forewarned.)
Let that sink in for a moment. They went from the exploitation of women, to the exploitation of a man who feels like a woman. Playboy has definitely taken a darker turn, coming down on the side of sexual confusion. But then, the whole empire was built on sexual confusion as a founding principle. “The human body is beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with that; no one is getting hurt. This is empowering to women.”
Really? Then why do we have a #MeToo culture? Why do we have porn addicts assaulting children in libraries, Target stores, and elsewhere across this porn-soaked planet? Why is the FBI rescuing a five-year-old girl and her three-month-old sister from a sex trafficking ring? Who really gets empowered in all this — and who gets fooled into believing they’re empowered? Sex and sexuality as a tool of empowerment is absolute confusion. It is used by the Hefners and Weinsteins of the world to control and exploit.
But God never intended sex as a tool or weapon. He never created a harem — virtual or otherwise. He created us male and female. One man and one woman in the beginning. God instituted one man/one woman marriage, and by extension that means a man should only really see his wife’s body and she his. Every Playboy playmate — and every woman caught in the web of lies that is pornography — is offered up as an opportunity for every man to look at the body of a woman who is, or has the potential to be, someone else’s wife. And that fits perfectly the Lord’s definition of adultery.
Playboy has, for years, tried to tell men what kind of body shapes they should find attractive. That effort has been mimicked to softer — but no less insidious — degrees by the marketing industry. The trickledown effect has been monumentally destructive for young girls, who see the thin, busty models and then look at their still-developing bodies and well up in a rage and hatred that points inward and warps their sense of self, playing out in eating disorders and other forms of self-harm.
On top of those unrealistic expectations — because, let’s be real, every image in Playboy is heavily Photoshopped — our daughters have to contend with porn-soaked boys, who look at Playboy and worse, and expect girls to be the easy, slutty porn princesses of their lurid, little dreams.
The #MeToo culture isn’t going anywhere, because sexual predators will continue to feed on Playboy and the rotten fruits of the industry it spawned, until they are no longer sated by mere images and venture out into the real world for victims.
This latest envelope pushing by Playboy shows that they’re not done yet — that they’re willing to sink deeper into sexually deviant realms. Their callous disregard for women, under the guise of empowerment, simultaneously sickens me and chills me to the bone.
I fear for my daughter. I fear for my sons. And I fear for an America that has turned from the Lord to engage in such a twisted, base worship of the human form. God help us all.