My problem with Hefner was his impact not on women but on men, myself included. His airbrushed photographs gave us unreasonable expectations for what a woman should look like, which made it difficult for us to appreciate the beauty of real women. It took me years to finally discover that no real women actually look like that. Even the centerfolds only look that good when photographed from exactly the right angles.

On the other hand, he deserves praise for his pioneering work against discrimination. He hired many Black people for top creative jobs, including writer Alex Haley and cartoonist Buck Brown. He also required that all playboy clubs be integrated. He withdrew the franchise rights from several clubs in the South when they refused to do this, costing himself a lot of profits. These were courageous and rare things for a large company to do in the early 1950s