HEROES-Hugh Hefner

In my Heroes/Villains series, there are two things that are clear. My villains are people who are stupid or vain. My heroes are individualists. I don't always agree with my heroes, but I admire them for being true to who they are.

Hugh Hefner may be my most controversial hero because he made his way in the world by being a high brow pornographer. I admire Hef for going against convention and helping to spark the sexual revolution. He did things his way, and he has garnered a lot of criticism for it from both religious people and feminists. I like this line from Hef:

The notion of the single man began in the 1950's. The idea of the bachelor as a separate life was new and obscure.

This is the lifestyle that Hef championed. It is the lifestyle that I have. Granted, Hef indulges way more than I ever have even at his advanced age. But he made it OK and even enviable to live as a single man. The world has never forgiven him for this.

Hefner forged a new archetype, and you can see it in sitcom characters like Ted Danson on Cheers, or Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, or Neil Patrick Harris on How I Met Your Mother. It is the man who eschews family commitment and lives for the hedonistic good life. Naturally, women hate this. Being bedded and not wedded is something women are averse to, but they want sex just like any man. If this wasn't so, guys like Hef would never get laid.

But Hef is not like a Larry Flynt who mired himself in whatever is lewd and crude. Hef has class. He loves sex, and he loves women. But he has a philosophy behind his hedonism which he articulated in Playboy as the Playboy Philosophy. For porn, Playboy was very literate and intellectual. It was very redeeming socially even if it had pictures of naked women.

What Hef gave the world is the Liberated Man. This man loved not just women but nice cars, fine wine, and jazz. His hedonism was a refined hedonism. But it was also about social freedom. Hef rejected the collectivist imperative that demanded work, marriage, children, and responsibility to the greater good. Hef called men to be single and free.

Hef has not always been true to this philosophy. He has tried the family life, and it has always ended badly for him. The reality is that a married man is a miserable man. The family lifestyle is a dead end. Playboy was an escape for trapped men everywhere.

Now, in old age, Hef is blowing apart the last myth--the Bachelor Apocalypse. If you don't live in the family way, you will become a miserable old man. Hef shows this for the lie that it is. When I see him, he is smiling.

The feminists will argue that Hef has hurt the cause of women, but this is not true. Hef championed women's liberation as much as men's liberation. It is this last part that feminazis despise. Feminists were less interested in breaking their own chains so much as putting men in chains. They wanted to have their cake and eat it, too.

The opposite of Hef's liberated man is the Imprisoned Family Man who is lampooned on sitcom TV in characters like Homer Simpson or Family Guy. Generally speaking, men with family responsibilities are portrayed as idiots, and they are idiots. I know this stings a bit for some of my readers, but I am only putting into words what we are already thinking. I am trying to think of a family guy who has been portrayed in a positive light since Bill Cosby, and I can't think of one. The reason we consider these guys to be stupid is because Hef shows you don't have to go that route. The moment Kevin James plays a smart family guy will be when I change my mind on this.

The family life is a sham because wives will cheat on you and spend all your money, and the kids will grow up to hate you for being so stupid as to make them, feed them, clothe them, and pay for their college education and whatever else they put on the credit card during spring break. Hef's world is called a fanatasy world, but it isn't a fantasy world. Hef is living it. Who doesn't want to be Hef?

The last thing to deal with is the plot of every chick flick ever made. It is the imprisonment and enslavement of the Liberated Man usually played by Matthew McConaughey. The guy wises up, falls in love, and does the right thing and COMMITS. What a sucker. There are no sequels to chick flicks because in the sequel they get divorced, and she takes half his shit and runs off with the poolboy.

The dirty secret about Hef is that as much as women say they hate him they also love him, and they love him for being precisely who he is. The Liberated Man is the man that every woman wants to fuck. Being a liberated man is reinforced repeatedly by all those easy women ready to give it up. Often, these women are married and have boyfriends. Spend some time as a liberated man, and it will seal the coffin on any marital aspirations you might have.

Hef was a pioneer, and he will be remembered as such by guys like me. People who hate Hef do so precisely because he has shown a certain bankruptcy to the conventional thinking. Hef has lived life on his terms, and this puts him in my hero category.

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