| Chip Rowe hardly ever gets questions about whether or not a gentleman should remove a woman’s fashion wig before having sex with her, but the Playboy Advisor gets plenty of questions surprisingly similar to those from the early wig-wearing days of the magazine’s notorious advice column.
Sure, most guys today wouldn’t describe their wife as "chattel" because she wasn’t a virgin at marriage and he was (as one lad does in the 1966 version of The Playboy Advisor that adorns my bookshelf), but, says Rowe, the issue of women having more sexual partners is still a biggie.
"It’s the most common letter I get," says Rowe, who’s been penning The Playboy Advisor for the last 12 years and just released Dear Playboy Advisor, a compilation of the column’s greatest hits. "A couple wants an honest relationship so they decide to come clean about their pasts. Only it turns out she’s had 15 lovers and he’s had two and he can’t handle it. I don’t know if it’s a biological thing that’s ingrained in men or simply that old double standard when it comes to women and sex – you know, we want her to be experienced but not too experienced."
His advice? "The guy should only be concerned if she’s still having sex with any of them," laughs Rowe, over the phone from New York. "If not, I’d tell him to use it. Quiz her. Which guy impressed her the most and why? Which one had the best move? Gather all the best stuff from the guys who didn’t work out and use it to become the guy who does. If you’re jealous of her history, you’ve got other problems."
The tone, if not the language, isn’t far off his predecessor’s 1966 advice: "The desire to possess your wife’s past (that had nothing to do with you and is no business of yours now) is possessiveness to the nth degree."
And neither response jibes with the sexist label with which Playboy has historically been saddled (Hey, what do you expect when you dress women up like bunny rabbits?)
In fact, says Rowe The Playboy Advisor is one of few places in America where you can find a "progressive, forward-thinking view on sex."
"It’s most often criticized by people who have never read it," he complains.
Like feminist Patricia Gagne, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Louisville in Kentucky who couldn't believe it when her colleague James Beggan, an associate professor of psychology, said he thought Playboy's Advisor column provided good information and was not at all misogynist.
According to the story on salon.com, the two settled the argument by analyzing 7,000 Advisor letters from the column’s inception in 1960 through 1997. The Journal of Men's Studies published their joint conclusions: "The Advisor provides authoritative information that encourages men to respect women and treat them as equal partners in relationships."
According to Rowe, who has penned the column for the last 12 years, The Advisor started out with more "James Bond, ascot and martinis" type of advice and very little sex. When the column added more sex in 1966, letters jumped from 300 to 1000 a month (Rowe now gets about 700 a month).
"The Sexual Revolution was just getting going and people were hungry for information about sex," says Rowe.
40 years later, questions have evolved from whether it’s OK to "physically chastise a woman who can’t be controlled with words," (It’s not) to questions like whether it’s normal to want to sit in a recliner in the woods and spray bug repellent everywhere on your body except your genitals when you’re horny (It’s not).
But again, there are common threads. While advice on whether one should alert their dinner host if his date is a "Negro woman" seems dated, Rowe can imagine a similar question today about bringing a gay date to dinner.
In both cases, Rowe advises it’s "more interesting not to call ahead," says Rowe. "If you think it’s going to cause a stir, good, people need to be stirred."
Whatever you think of Playboy, he says, given the rise of abstinence education, the kind of advice in the Advisor is sorely needed ("The education part is a misnomer, as is the abstinence part. Anyone who thinks you can prevent teenagers from having sex by keeping them ignorant is wearing blinders," insists Rowe).
Fathers may no longer be so ignorant as to fear that listening to Beatles LPs will turn their daughters into sluts, a classic Rowe recalls from the archives, but he’s constantly amazed at the level of adult ignorance out there when it comes to sex.
"The Playboy Advisor isn’t a primary education source," says Rowe. "I shouldn’t have to answer questions from 20-somethings about how you get HIV or the function of the clitoris. Someone should be telling them this stuff when they hit puberty."
Oh, in case you’re wondering. "When making love on relatively formal (black-tie) occasions, leave your partner wigged." |
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