The First Transgender Playmate

The cultural news breaking now is that Playboy is featuring its first transgender Playmate. Ines Rau, a French model with a lot of credits, is the choice, and while I'm not quite sure how I feel, the reaction by both men and women is fascinating.

Actually, Playboy ran a pictorial of a transgender woman back in 1991, but she was not a Playmate (in the world of Playboy, a Playmate is more exalted--she gets the centerfold, which no longer has staples). This was significantly ahead of its time, and the decision to have Rau as a Playmate is quite a statement of support for the LBGTQ community.

Interestingly, she is in the first issue following the death of Hugh Hefner (who is on the cover, the first man to grace the cover without a woman rubbing against him). On Playboy's Twitter account, there are dozens (if not hundreds, I stopped looking) of outraged responses, saying Hef must be spinning in his grave. Here's the thing, though--I find it highly unlikely that Hef's successors waited for him to expire to put in a transgender Playmate. For one thing, Hef had already run a transgender model, and secondly, for a monthly magazine, the issue is put together far in advance. Clearly his death only about three weeks ago caused them to pull whatever cover they were going to use and replace it with Hef's picture, and it looks like they pulled ads in the front to insert a feature on Playboy's founder. I'll bet the editorial and production staff put in long hours.

The comments by men are pretty awful, many of them homophobic. I would imagine this is because those Playboy readers who started as boys masturbated to the pictures, and would never do that to a transgender woman. But here's the thing--if they didn't know she was born a man, they wouldn't make any protests, because Rau, though with a sharply angled face, is not out of the league of women who are Playmates. I suppose these guys' reactions are like picking up a hooker and finding out it's a man.

I read the feminist response on Jezebel. Feminists can have a hard time with Playboy. There are those who are adamantly against the exploitation of women, but that's cisgender women. Does it apply to a transgender woman? The comments on the story were full of confusion. I think the best comment was "Yay?" It's a huge step forward for transgender women, in that they are recognized as beautiful females, but at the same time they are now being objectified. What's a girl to think?

Many sane comments confessed that Playboy and Hefner have a complicated legacy. Yeah, Hefner may have been a misogynist (a feminist misogynist) but he and the magazine were always on the right side of social issues. They had black Playmates in the '60s, and many Asian and Hispanic Playmates. They've had Playmates in their '30s (old for Hefner) and Ivy League graduates. So, if Playboy is the enemy of feminism, at least it's been evenly spread.

So how do I feel? Well, if I were much younger I'd be a little put off--I would think I'm buying the magazine to look at naked women that I'd actually want to sleep with. But today, would I refuse a woman like Ines Rau? I'm not so sure. When you get to be my age you realize things like what sex a person was born doesn't really matter. I'm glad Playboy did this, even though they may have angered their base (and they might end up selling a lot of issues just for the curious).