Hustler, 1976.
 
I’ve never quite bought into the idea that red is always a color of sex and desire. Not that I give a fuck or have any scientific evidence to back up my uninformed opinion other than the anecdotal prejudice that if red was a color of arousal then we’d all cop off at stop signals and dear old Santa Claus would be a sex god.

Maybe he is.

And maybe this explains why porn mags get into spreading some Christmas cheer every December by getting a little festive with their covers.

Such naive and dot-to-dot thinking led me to browse (ahem—for research purposes…of course!) through a fine selection of vintage, glamor mag covers just to get the inside skinny on how they once celebrated the Holiday Season. For if there is one thing I do know, thanks to analytics, is that our dear readers like stuff that says “NSFW” with a hint of the naughty, the naked, and the red.

So maybe red does mean sex?

I mean just look at the amount of red splashed out on the following selection of covers—it’s enough to give one hypertension. And note too how it was once seemly for megastars like Jayne Mansfield, Burt Reynolds, and Joan Collins to appear on the cover or even naked in the centerfold of such glossy, adult entertainment mags.

And last but certainly not least, these covers offer a potted history of porn mags. From when once adult magazines were about artful erotic photographs and great writing (by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, George V. Higgins, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, interviews with writers like William (Lord of the Flies) Golding, and articles on the threat of the impending devastating weather changes and corruption in politics) the adult mag soon became just a selection of close-up hardcore pix which might not have looked out of place in a medical textbook (Gynecology 101?) and very little readable content. It was, I guess you could say, rather prescient of how our world has moved from text to pictograph and hieroglyph (emoji) via technology.

But, anyway, this is all a by-the-way to sneak in a few saucy vintage covers for your seasonal entertainment.
 

Joan Collins on the cover of Playboy, Xmas 1983.
 

Don’t be fooled by technical side of Practical Photography, 1965.
 

Jayne Mansfield on the cover of Variedades, 1956.
 
More saucy covers, after the jump…
 

 
Despite its lad mag namesake, Playgirl magazine was founded entirely independently of Hef and his bunnies. In fact, the publication’s original target audience was second-wave feminists, those liberated ladies of the early 1970s that founder Doug Lambert believed were aching for the corniest kind of equality: pictures of naked “himbos” in between articles on abortion rights and Bella Abzug! Of course, Playgirl never really took off the way its counterpart did. The magazine is still going as a quarterly, but it has always circulated as much if not more so among gay men than women, who perhaps prefer their porn a little more subtle and discreet, and their lifestyle magazines a little less hokey.

Nonetheless, Playgirl has left us with some absolute treasures in its attempts to capitalize off of the modern woman, and you need only to watch this 1984 “video magazine”—again, an attempt to emulate similar projects by Playboy—to be reassured of its entertainment value. In another flailing attempt to brand the liberated lady lifestyle, the video combines on-the-street interviews, fashion/lifestyle editorial-style shorts, political segments and yes, fabulously corny softcore. Probably not SFW—there’s no frontal nudity, but you might die of shame.

Celeb appearances include Mark Harmon (who was then a big deal on St. Elsewhere), centerfold Steve Scott (later porn star Mark Davis), and even Geraldine Ferraro and future San Francisco mayor Willie Brown!
 

 
Via Network Awesome

 
The subscribership of Playgirl has always been a mystery to me. Their brand management has said their readers are about half women, half gay men, but that still offers little to no insight into the head-scratching randomness of Playgirl’s featured “eye-candy.”

In what appears to be no particular order (and additionally, no particular theme), we have Ted Turner (who would later monopolize US media and journalism), Calvin Klein (who would later date a male porn star), Woody Allen (who would later marry his girlfriend’s adopted daughter), and OJ Simpson (who would later murder his wife).

 
The next pages fare slightly better. You have Burt Reynolds (sure, why not?), Bruce Springsteen (totally respectable!), Alan Bates (first actor to do full frontal in a major studio movie in Women in Love), Johnny Carson (what?), Ted Kennedy, and Jerry Brown (there had to be politicians with more sex appeal).

Of course, this is the same magazine that did a feature of former Enron employees, after they had “lost their shirts.” 

I hate to be judgmental, but Playgirl, you have really bad taste in men.