A Playboy photo crew is searching for the perfect Hispanic woman who is willing to bare (almost) all.
Much like the duality of the magazine itself–it occasionally contains award-winning journalism, but the main sales attraction remains pictorials of nude women–people here have debated whether to welcome the Playboy crew or shun it.
Playboy’s search for Hispanics to appear in an upcoming “Latinas Sensuales” issue irritates the magazine’s detractors even further.
“Playboy has always been big on promoting stereotypes of women that can eventually have an adverse effect,” said Juanita Firestone, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “They’re saying that this is what a Latina is supposed to look like. They’re so tied to that one particular look–something very exotic and somewhat anglicized–when in reality most Latinas don’t look like that.”
Others argue there is nothing wrong with Playboy, which, they say, portrays women tastefully when compared with the lewd portrayals in some other magazines for men.
“If you take the full content of the magazine, and the lifestyle that it covers, you’ll see that Playboy is very sophisticated. It’s very aware of its sophisticated image, and it doesn’t objectify women as much as other magazines,” said Sammye Johnson, professor of communication at Trinity University. “They celebrate fine arts and fine lifestyle. When they use women at different stages of undress, I think they’re celebrating feminine beauty.”
The magazine is seeking models from Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio and San Diego for the section on Hispanic women.
The Latin craze in the arts and entertainment world is the reason for an issue devoted almost entirely to Hispanic women, a magazine official said.
“Right now, everything that’s Latina is hot,” Playboy spokeswoman Karen Ring Borgstrom said. “We understand that some people may have problems with what we’re doing. However, if you look at the very definition of feminism itself, you’ll see that these women who decide to use their femininity to their advantage are making a very feminist decision.”
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