'Boy Meets 'Girl

Playboy. Playgirl. Now, there's a pair.

Needless to say, there's no chicken and-egg question here; we know which came first. But squatters' rights and circulation figures aside, we thought it was time to check out the "Entertainment for Women" magazine, and what better tour guide than Playgirl's own editor in chief, Nancie S. Martin?

We first met Nancie last April, when she and Playboy Associate Editor Bruce Kluger shared honors as celebrity judges of a coed strippers' pageant at Manhattan's Limelight night club. According to Kluger, the pageant was nothing special, but Nancie certainly was. "I called her the next day," he says, "and within 48 hours, she'd not only agreed to pose for Playboy, she led the contract negotiations, planned her own PR and mapped out one hell of a project. You knew she was an editor in chief."

The week after her Playboy shoot, Kluger and Martin had the following conversation.

Playboy: So we meet at last.

Playgirl: Playboy meets Playgirl.

Playboy: Let's first dispel some myths: Your readers are mostly gay men.

Playgirl: Ninety percent of our readers are female--generally urban. About 75 percent are single, between the ages of 18 and 34. Average age: 26, 27. Most are working.

Playboy: Myth two: The models are all gay.

Playgirl: The models are mostly straight. But I don't have any figures on that, because it's not something you ask. I do know that most of the guys we photograph have girlfriends.

Playboy: Angry girlfriends?

Playgirl: No, no. Supportive girlfriends who say, "Hey, look what I got."

Playboy: Ok, how about the myth that the size of a man's penis plays an important role in his appearing in the magazine?

Playgirl: Here's my version of the Playgirl peter principle: Since many men are insecure about the size of their penises, if someone's willing to show it, it has to be OK. Of course, women tend to look beyond body parts. They don't just say, "God, he's got a big schlong!" or "What shoulders!"; they react to an over-all feel, like "Oh, what a baby face!" or "Ooh, what a stud!" Then again, for our 15th-anniversary party, we did hold a wet-shorts contest.

Playboy: Wet shorts?

Playgirl: Yeah; you always see these wet-T-shirt contests, but it's not very often that you have a contest where the women get to see what the men have. So we got all these ladies up on stage with soda siphons.

Playboy: And it worked just like a wet-T-shirt contest?

Playgirl: Yes.

Playboy: Wouldn't the cold water have a deleterious effect?

Playgirl: Well, the siphons were left out for a while, so the water was fairly warm. I didn't detect any noticeable shrinkage, though, of course, I hadn't seen them previous to that moment. The guy who won was rather nicely endowed. He was apparently a bodybuilder.

Playboy: Since we're talking stud, let's define some Playgirl terms. For example, good buns.

Playgirl: It depends. Different women have different preferences. Some women like them rounded, some like them a little flatter. But, essentially, good buns are well worked out. They have that nice dimple in the side.

Playboy: Like a dent.

Playgirl: It is a dent.

Playboy: Hunk.

Playgirl: Manly. Confident. Fearless. A hunk should be in good shape. As I've always said, the two most important qualities in a man are a flat stomach and a sense of humor.

Playboy: Let's talk about you. How does a 30-year-old woman become editor in chief of Playgirl?

Playgirl: While I was in school, I worked full time in the state assembly in Albany, New York. That was interesting, but there was a lot of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" stuff going on and I decided that I didn't really want to be a part of it. So I came back to New York City and started doing a little modeling, going to acting classes, working as a make-up artist, doing waitress work, managing rock bands. I even worked as a counter manager at Macy's.

Before long, I ended up at Look magazine, which folded within a month but gave me enough magazine experience to decide I really liked it. Eventually, I became the editor of Tiger Beat.

Playboy: The teen magazine?

Playgirl: Right. So you see, essentially, I've gone from showing 15-year-old boys with their shirts off to showing 25-yearold men with their pants off.

Playboy: Beyond the numbers and the stats, who is your reader? Or, the way we'd say it at our camp, What sort of woman reads Playgirl?

Playgirl: The young, single working woman. Hedonistic. Fun-loving.

Playboy: From where, typically? New York? L.A.? Chicago?

Playgirl: No, not really. More like Des Moines. We sell very strongly in the so-called Bible Belt; you'd be amazed at the extraordinarily active sex and fantasy lives of the women of America.

Playboy: Aside from the obvious, how are you different from, say, Cosmo

Playgirl: Cosmo is all about what's wrong with you and how to improve it. I think my favorite Cosmo cover line was "How to Overcome Those Horrible Feelings of Inadequacy"--like it was assumed you were miserable.

Playboy: So if Helen Gurley Brown were here at this moment ... ?

Playgirl: I would say to her, "There's nothing wrong with the people who read my magazine. They're terrific just the way they are." I'd also say that Playgirl is the only magazine that caters to women's erotic selves. We're appealing directly to the pleasure center. We're saying, "Look at these wonderful-looking men. Wouldn't you like to sleep with them? One of them?" And we make a point of telling our reader how to enjoy herself.

For example, we did a very technical piece on how to give the perfect hand job. We told our readers the different strokes: one-handed, two-handed, backward, sideways. I learned a lot of things from that article myself.

We'll also be publishing the natural follow-up, how to give the perfect blow job. Both articles were written by men, whom we would presume to be the experts on what they like.

Playboy: Have you always been passionate about women's sexuality?

Playgirl: Yes. In fact, in some ways, I consider my magazine and my personal sexuality contemporaneous, because Playgirl came into being the same year that I lost my virginity.

Playboy: In 1973?

Playgirl: That is correct.

Playboy: Wait a minute.

Playgirl: I was 15. I just couldn't wait to find out what (concluded on page 162) 'Boy Meets 'Girl (continued from page 80) it was about. And that's why I love doing what I do, because I'm sort of on a mission to tell our readers that their sexuality is a wonderful thing to enjoy. And I'd like to go beyond our readership. I'm working on my first novel, which has a sexual theme, and on an idea for a TV show about women's sexuality.

Playboy: Do you consider yourself a hedonist?

Playgirl: Yes. And I think that part of me is also a major sensualist. If I could have a massage every morning when I woke up and every evening when I went to sleep, I would be a very happy person. And it doesn't have to have anything to do with sex. Many women want to be touched and stroked and massaged and rubbed. Some of the most sensitive parts of my body are not in any of your standard erogenous zones.

Playboy: What's an extremely sensitive part of your body?

Playgirl: The back of my neck. So, you see, it's not all breasts and genitals.

Playboy: Do you ever get hot on the job?

Playgirl: Sure; every now and then, a guy sends in a picture, and I'll go, "Oh, my God! Wait one second here!" And, yes, that makes me a little crazy. But in terms of twitching and squirming, I would say I get turned on by the stories and the fantasies the readers send in to us. Because words create pictures in my head, and I find myself thinking, What a good idea.

Playboy: Is it frustrating to get turned on in the middle of the workday?

Playgirl: Sure; it makes it a little hard to concentrate.

Playboy: What do you do about it?

Playgirl: Nothing. I wait until I get home to my boyfriend. Then I attack.

Playboy: Tell us about the Playboy shoot. What did you do beforehand to get yourself psyched?

Playgirl: I was staying at this wonderful hotel in Los Angeles with a Jacuzzi on the roof--heated, of course--and this beautiful view of the city. So I went up there, got into the Jacuzzi, got out my Walkman and listened to Sade--new album, very L.A., very sexy--and I let the water bubble up around me until I said, "I'm ready. I can do anything now."

Playboy: Once you were in front of the camera, what was the sensation?

Playgirl: You can feel it in your body, in your mind, in the way that your clothes or lingerie feel on you. You're ready and moving toward something. Every nerve ending in your skin is communicating with the camera.

Playboy: Did you fantasize about anything?

Playgirl: I pictured men getting hard, OK? It's the equivalent of Playgirl's women readers' seeing our guys and getting wet; the idea that just looking is enough to turn you on. That's what I was trying to convey.

Playboy: How do you deal with the hard-on in your pictorials? What can you get away with?

Playgirl: OK. Here's the way it works: We show men with partial erections but not with full erections, simply because you cross that so-called fine line between photography and pornography.

At one point, Playgirl was doing serious hard-on shots; stuff that looked like this [angles arm upward]--like a hatrack. But a lot of retailers got pissed off and closed themselves off to us. They said, "We can't carry this magazine. This is filth."

Playboy: So how do you work around it?

Playgirl: We'll have the guy sitting down or lying down. That way, he can have a very lovely erection that, because of its position, won't be so obvious. I think it's unfortunate that we have these kinds of rules, but it's necessary.

Playboy: How do you think your readers are going to react to your being in Playboy?

Playgirl: I think they may be upset that I've done something that most of them won't have the opportunity to do. I think they may be jealous of me; they'll say, "My boyfriend was looking at pictures of you in Playboy. How dare you?"

Playboy: And that worries you.

Playgirl: Yes. I have a tremendous sense of responsibility to them and I don't want them to feel that I'm in competition with them, because I'm not. Posing for Playboy was a fantasy for me. And I want my readers to know that I did it because it was a thrill. And, yes, it's all right to do something just because it's thrilling.

"You can feel it in your body. Every nerve ending in your skin is communicating with the camera"