The 55 most important people in sex

TO CELEBRATE PLAYBOY'S ANNIVERSARY WE RANKED THE MOST INFLUEN- HAL MEN AND WOMEN IN SEX FROM THE PAST 55 YEARS. WHO'S IN? WHO'S OUT? WHERE'S OUR BOSS? AND WHO THE HELL IS CHARLES GINSBURG?

1 ALFRED KINSEY The Indiana University biologist's 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, rattled the windows, but his 1953 follow-up, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, shook the foundation. Here for the first time was hard evidence that women lust as wan­tonly as men; mothers, daughters, sisters and wives revealed in interviews their kinky daydreams, masturbation habits and multiple orgasms. Kinsey hoped his research would allow women to claim what he saw as their natural right to sexual satisfaction. But the idea that women need not be subservient in bed didn't sit well in some quarters. Within months a congressional committee began investigating the Kinsey Institute and its chief benefactor, the Rockefeller Foundation, for ties to the Communist Party. In response the foundation canceled its support and Kinsey had to scramble to secure small grants to save his institute. He died in 1956 but lived long enough to see a revision of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, calling for the decriminalization of anal and oral sex, which his research had shown to be quite popular.

2 DR. JOHN ROCK The good doctor, who directed the clinical trials that led to the 1960

approval of the first contraceptive pill and then became the drug's

most vocal supporter, could be credited as the father of free love. But Rock had a loftier goal: He believed the pill could end pov­erty by slowing population growth. A devout Catholic, Rock argued that the pill is a natural method of birth control—and thus acceptable under church doctrine—because it uses pro­gesterone to fool a woman's body into thinking she is already pregnant, preventing ovulation. Unfortunately, in 1968 Pope Paul VI declared the contraceptive pill, as well as condoms, to be intrinsically evil." That verdict deeply disappointed Rock. The world's population has since more than doubled, to 6.7 billion.

3 HUGH HEFNER Inspired by Kmsey's findings and his own lust for the good life, Hef decided to launch a men's maga­zine focused not on hunting, fishing and survival adventures but on comfortable indoor leisures such as jazz, gaming and sex. Hef's upscale vision of male-female relationships was reflected in his chang­ing the name of the forthcoming publica­tion to playboy from Stag Party (that, and Stag magazine threatened to sue). In his first Playboy Interview, in Janu­ary 1974, Hef recalled his early goals, saying, "I wanted to edit a magazine free of guilt about sex and the benefits of materialism, a magazine that tried to put some of the play and pleasure back into life." Responding to criticism that his monthly objectified women, Hef said, "playboy treats women—and men, too, for that matter—as sexual beings, not as sexual objects. Women are the major beneficiaries of sexual emancipation because they've been the major victims of our repressive sexual heritage, which relegated them to the level of chattel— first as the possession of their fathers and then of their husbands. Female virginity has been prized in our society simply because an unused possession is valued more highly than a used one."

In 1957 Hef moved his rapidly expanding magazine to 232 East Ohio in Chicago, and the personal and professional began to merge.

4 ALEX COMFORT A tweedy English­man, Comfort set out to write a standard sex manual to educate himself and his medical students but quickly grew bored and decided to have a little fun. It wasn't his first attempt to explain sex; he had written a chapter of tips and tricks for an arty book called The Complete Lover, but it was pulled because the publisher found it too shocking. The result of his second effort was an illustrated coital recipe book. The Joy of Sex: A Gour­met Guide to Lovemaking, in which he encouraged loving experimentation. Pub­lished in 1972, it sold 12 million copies and became what The New York Times called "the coffee-table Kama Sutra of the baby-boom generation."

5 MARILYN MONROE In the January 196" installment of their playboy series The History of Sex in Cinema, Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert said of Monroe, "Though she was screen-tested as early as 1946, and though the test gave evidence of her magnetic sexuality, the studios saw her as just another blonde aspiring to

stardom. She, on the other hand, recognized early in life the quali­ties that could make a girl very, very popular." While waiting for her break Monroe posed / in 1949 for a series of nudes.

Three years later, after she had achieved fame, the , photos became pub- / lie in a pinup calen­dar. (In 1953 one ! of the shots would \ anchor the first issue \ of playboy.) Rather than shrinking in dis­grace, Monroe embraced the photos as works of art, joking that during the shoot she had "nothing on but the radio." In our June 2005 issue Neal Gabler argued that reac­tion "said something imponam about her appeal. She defused the idea of sex as a danger ¦¦ in 1950s America." LJ

8 MONICA LEWINSKY

The most fa­mous intern in the world appears high on this list for one reason: Had President Bill Clinton not left a stain on Lewinsky's

dress and his presidency, Al Gore would almost certainly have won the 2000 election. That means the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq, killing thousands and spending nearly a trillion dollars there. Lewinsky's seductive flute playing changed the course of history.

7 THE ROLLING STONES

MORE THAN ANY OTHER BAND, THE STONES INFUSED A PRIMAL, SWEATY SEXUALITY ^

INTO POPULAR MUSIC. WHILE MICK JAGGER SANG ABOUT ^ THE JOYS OF "BROWN SUGAR" THE STONES' EARLY COMPETI­TION ON THE CHARTS SERE­NADED METER MAIDS. SO WHO'S STILL WITH US?

8 TIMOTHY BERNERS-

LEE Sir

Timothy is

credited as

the creator

of the World

Wide Web, an

innovation

y that led to

,,V a global

community in which lovers meet before meeting, swingers broadcast live sex shows from their bedrooms, escorts ditch their pimps and fetish­ists discover the truth of Ugol's Law—that is, to any question beginning with "Am I the only one who...?" the answer is always no.

Ironically, the glut of online porn has led the adult film industry to a financial meltdown.

9 PETER DUNN AND ALBERT WOOD

THEIR LITTLE BLUE ERECTION PILL CHANGED THE WAY AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF MEN VIEWED SEX. IN OUR JULY 1998 ISSUE, AT A TIME WHEN ONLY ABOUT 5,000 MEN HAD TAKEN VIAGRA, WRITER CARL SHERMAN PREDICTED IT COULD "HAVE THE GREATEST IMPACT ON OUR NATIONAL SEX LIFE OF ANY PILL SINCE THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL." HE WAS RIGHT.

10 MADONNA Madge shook up the music world with "Like a Vir­gin" (which coyly suggested otherwise), pointy bras and a body she transformed from soft to solid. In 1992 she provoked the elite with a collection of photo fantasies called Sex, which became the book of choice in sex-dungeon waiting rooms. In our March 1991 issue writer Michael Kelly pointed out that what Madonna "exemplifies and advocates is not men's sexual control over women but women's over men. Her act, her songs and her videos all carry a clear and compelling message: Men want only one thing, and women should exploit that wanting." The men, it turns out, didn't mind.

11 HELEN GURLEY BROWN In the early 1960s Brown's film-producer husband, after reading letters she had written years earlier to a boy­friend, suggested she write a book for the young modern woman. Although she was already 40, Brown composed a slim manual origi­nally titled Sex for the Single Girl but changed by the publisher to Sex and the Single Girl to avoid sounding like an endorsement. As Brown explained, "I am always careful to say I am not for promiscuity. What

business of mine is it to be tor it or against it? I just know what goes on. And I know it isn't the end of the world when a girl has an affair." She had plenty of chances to revisit that territory, however, after she was hired in 1965 to revive Cosmopolitan, which she accomplished by adding to the for­mula a healthy dose of unabashed lust, including tips on pleasing men in bed.

Brown continued as its editor in chief for the next 32 years.

12 CHARLES GINSBURG In 1956 he introduced video mag­netic tape recording for industrial applications. Twenty years ^ later, building on Ginsburg's innovation, Sony created Betamax, expanding the living-room TV into something drastically new. Nearlv everv earlv tape was either porn or an exercise video—or

both, depending on your view of exercise tapes. Adult movie theaters began to shut down as Americans fed smut into their newfangled VCRs, which made no judgments before, during or after. __

13 RUTH WESTHEIMER In I9S0 ^ this "pint-size Pollyanna of passion" (our words) took to the airwaves with a late-night radio show called Sexually

Speaking. As we wrote in January 1986, "Appropriately for a mother figure, she is a sexual conservative who will always understand you—but this one happens to speak always with delightful directness." Her growing popularity led to David Letterman appearances, books and the college lecture circuit, all to promote what she called "'sexual literacy." A native of Germany, Dr. Ruth turned her trilled r's ("Ter-r-r-rific!") and cheerful "Have good sex!" into catchphrases.

\

14 ELVIS PRESLEY

IT WASN'T HIS WHITE RENDITION OF BLACK MUSIC THAT JOLTED THE NATION AS MUCH AS THOSE OBSCENE HIP SWIVELS, WHICH LED MEMBERS OF HIS BAND TO CLAIM THE KING WAS "WEARING OUT HIS BRITCHES FROM THE INSIDE." WHEN ELVIS AND HIS PELVIS APPEARED ON THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW IN 1956, THE CAMERA NEVER DROPPED BELOW HIS BELT. AS A TIME CRITIC NOTED, "ELVIS, THE PERFORMER, WAS ALL ABOUT SEX. IT MAY HAVE ONLY BEEN THE SUGGESTION OF SEX, BUT IT WAS THERE ALL THE SAME, IN THE SNEER, THE GYRATION, THE RAISED EYEBROW. THAT UNFETTERED SEX APPEAL REPRESENTED EVERYTHING AMERICAN PARENTS WANTED TO SUP­PRESS IN THE MID-1950S. WANTED TO—BUT COULDN'T."

15 MASTERS AND JOHNSON Their 1966 textbook, Human Sexual Response, despite being heavy with medicalese (it was written for physicians), became an instant best-seller. Though Kinsey had examined the sociological aspects of sex, gynecologist William Masters and psychologist Virginia Johnson tackled

its physiology. As male and female volun­teers engaged in oral, anal or vaginal sex or masturbated inside a St. Louis lab, the two scientists filmed them and took mea­surements with various clinical

devices, including a dildo cam. Eventu­ally they would observe more than 14,000 orgasms. Critics accused them of dehumanizing sex and removing its mystery. But Johnson disagreed, saying, "The mystery to which the traditionalists usually refer has to do with superstition and myth. A knowledge of sex doesn't impair but enhances it."

16 HOWARD STERN Who could have listened to "Lesbian Dial-a-Date" or "Sexual Innuendo Wednesday" and not realized something had radically changed in the way Americans talk about sex? Hounded by regulators—the FCC levied a fine for this joke: "The closest I ever got to making love to a black woman was masturbating to a picture of Aunt Jemima on a pancake box"—Stern relo­cated to the gated community of satel­lite radio where he has no boundaries and, unfortunately, less appeal. But as the self-proclaimed King of All Media asked, "What is this bugaboo about sex? To me, a penis is like your arm."

17EDMEESE

After President Reagan de­clared war on porn, in 1984, his attorney general assem­bled a clean­up crew. The Meese Com­mission heard testimony from

a variety of nut jobs and ferreted out the most bizarre and vile magazines, movies and books it could find. Critics sliced the commission's report to pieces, but its practi­cal effect was to give license to crusading local prosecutors, who began pressuring convenience, book and video stores to cleanse their shelves of suspect material. In our January 1986 issue Hef dismissed Meese's crusade as "sexual McCarthyism as rooted in deception, innuendo and out­right lies as the original version."

18 BRIGITTE BARDOT While Marilyn seduced America, Bardot conquered Europe. The French temptress, once

described in these

pages as a petite, silky, tousled beast of the jungle," introduced herself to American audiences in the 1956 film ...And God Created Woman, which opens with a shot of her bare ass. Although this and other nude scenes were censored

during U.S. screenings, the film grossed S4 million, by far the most receipts ever for a foreign entry at the time. American dis­tributors quickly "scrubbed and dubbed" Bardot's previous 17 films, and by early i 1958 she was the featured attraction in / movie houses all over New York. /

19 ESTELLE GRISWOLO In the earl> 1960s some states still banned the distribution of contraceptives, even to married couples. As director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, Griswold wanted to challenge that state's law, so she opened a clinic in New Haven.

i

Soon after, police arrested Griswold and her medical director, Dr. C. Lee Bux-ton, for providing birth control to a husband '.

and wife. Gris-wold and Buxton were each fined $100. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, and the jus­tices ruled 7-2 that Americans enjoy a constitutional right to privacy that extends to their sex lives.

20 BO DEREK

21 CATHARINE MACKINNON Best known tor her work crafting the concept of sexual harassment, the University

of Michigan law professor has long fought to have por­nography judged as a sex-discrimination issue rather than one of free speech, thus allowing any woman who feels victimized by its existence to sue for damages. MacKinnon and sister-in-arms Andrea Dworkin had limited success pushing their views in Minne­apolis and Indianapolis and with the Canada Supreme Court. In 1992 writer and scholar Camille Paglia credited MacKinnon with "fomenting the crazed sex­ual hysteria that now grips ^ American feminism."

22 VLADIMIR NABOKOV The novelist

wrote Lolitd on a bunerfly-hunting trip. In

the tragicomedy, Humbert Humbert lyri-

cally describes his obsessive

passion for a cer-

i tain 12-year-old

' girl. "I shall never

regret Lolita," Nabokov said of his creation. "She was like the com­position of a beauti­ful puzzle. There is a queer, tender charm _ about that mythi-JJ cal nymphet."

23 ANITA BRYANT Most people recognize the 1969 Stonewall riots as a watershed in the gay rights struggle, but eight years later Bryant, a Christian singer and the face of Florida orange juice, galvanized the movement. After county commissioners in Miami passed an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in hiring schoolteachers, Bryant successfully fought to have the law repealed. "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with Saint Bernards and to nail biters," claimed Bryant, who was photographed dancing a jig after the decision. Gay activists had the last word, however, organizing a boycott of Florida OJ and venues that booked Bryant, effectively ending her career.

24 FARRAH FAWCETT

25 ERICA JONG Her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying, introduced the idea of the "zipless fuck," i.e., a guilt-free affair with a stranger. Jong said both men and women told her they identified with her female protagonist's dilemma of "wanting to be sexually free and yet wanting to be grounded in a safe, secure relationship."

26 BARNEY ROSSET Hoping to cause "a breach in the dam of American Puritanism," Rosset's Grove Press in 1959 published an unex-purgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. (Sylvia Kristel, pictured at right, starred in a later film version.) Banned by the Post Office, the book became a best-seller, so in 1961 Grove put out the first U.S. edition of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Rosset observed, "Every time

I run into situations where people are decrying a piece of writing because of its sexual content, they show some sort of abnormal interest in the matter, and they seem to use their censorship func­tion as a sort of self-inhibiting mechanism to protect themselves— protection the rest of us don't need."

27 GERMAINE GREER Dubbed "the feminist who loves men/

Greer saved the movement from itself with

her 1970 book, The Female Eunuch. She

V argued women would not be free "until

\ their libidos are recognized as separate

entities" and encouraged women to sleep around, avoid mar­riage and engage in group sex as a way to defeat the patriarchy. In her January 1972 Playboy Interview Greer also suggested every straight man "should be fucked up the arse so he'll know what it's like to be the receiver. Otherwise, he'll think he's doling out joy unlimited to every woman he fucks."

28 CHRISTINE JORGENSEN In 1950 George Jorgensen Jr., a 24-year-old Army vet who had long felt he was a woman, began to bring mind and body together with hormone treatments. Two years later he traveled to Copenhagen for transformative surgery. When Jorgensen returned to New York as Christine, in 1953, she was

greeted by tabloid headlines. But Jorgensen embraced her role as the first transsexual celebrity and in 1989, the year of her death, said she was happy to have given the sexual revolution "a good swift kick in the pants."

29 PAMELA ANDERSON OUR FEBRUARY 1990 PLAYMATE, NOW A GLOBAL SEX SYMBOL, WAS DISCOVERED WHEN SHE APPEARED ON A JUMBOTRON SCREEN WHILE WATCHING A PRO FOOTBALL GAME. THAT LED TO HER PHOTO ON THE COVER OF PLAYBOY (THE FIRST OF 12), A CENTERFOLD AND ROLES ON HOME IMPROVEMENT AND BAYWATCH. MORE NOTABLE, SHE WAS THE FIRST CELEBRITY TO BE SEEN IN A SEXUALLY EXPLICIT HOME MOVIE (MADE IN 1995 WITH HER FIRST HUSBAND, TOMMY LEE) ^ AND NOT HAVE IT DESTROY HER CAREER. INSTEAD, THE COUPLE SUED THE

v ^ CHIEF DISTRIBUTOR OF THE TAPE FOR A SHARE OF THE PROFITS.

30 FRANK SINATRA His 1955 album Songs forSwin-gin' Lovers! has been called the first soundtrack for "grown-up love"; his music is how guys got laid in the 1950s. Sinatra explained his popularity this way: "I get an audience involved, per­sonally involved—because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliber­ately. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut, I feel the loss myself, and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel." (continued on page 138)

55 MOST IMPORTANT

(continued from page 66)

31 NANCY FRIDAY In 1973, the same vear Jong's Fear of Flying appeared, Friday pub­lished a groundbreaking work of nonfiction. My Secret Garden, in which women she had solicited through newspaper ads confessed their fantasies in frank detail, including wanting to be seduced by another woman, spanked or "raped." Friday argued that, because society discourages women from talking openly about sex, they are forced to pretend they have no desires. "Fantasy-should be thought of as an extension of one's sexuality," she wrote, warning that "no man can really be free in bed with a woman who is not."

32 JENNA JAMESON Although many adult performers have made the attempt, Jameson is the first to become a main­stream icon, writ­ing a best-selling autobiography,

showing up as a character on Fam­ily Guy and in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, appear­ing more than 30 times on The Howard Stern Show and serving as a CW ¦>

spokeswoman for ^^ brands such as Adidas. In 2006 she became the first porn actor to have a wax model at Madame Tussauds.

33 WILLIAM 0. DOUGLAS When the Supreme Court in 1973 voted 5-4 in Miller v. California to allow local prosecutors to decide which sexual material should be ille­gal in their town or county—a decision that still causes havoc, especially in the digital age—the longtime justice erupted in dissent. "What causes one person to boil up in rage over one pamphlet or movie may reflect only his neurosis, not shared by others," he wrote. "Obscenity—which even we cannot define with precision—is a hodgepodge. To send men to jail for violating standards they cannot understand, construe and apply is a monstrous thing to do in a nation dedicated to fair trials and due process."

34 PHILIP ROTH His 1969 novel, Port-noy's Complaint, is a monologue in which Alexander Portnoy recounts for his psy­choanalyst his lifelong struggle between perverse sexual longing and "strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses." One reviewer wrote of the book, "It is part of Roth's immense gift that he can somehow make obsessive masturbation, paranoia and four-letter words funny and therefore ultimately inoffensive."

35 CHARLES KEATING JR. In 1969 the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, after failing to find any connection between sexually explicit mate­rial and violence, recommended Congress strike down all laws banning its sale. Three commissioners, including Keating, an Ohio developer who had founded Citizens for Decency Through Law, dissented, arguing that the complete lack of scientific evidence

was irrelevant because "the utter filth" the panel had examined clearly causes "moral corruption." The squabble gave President Nixon the excuse he needed to ignore the findings. A decade later Keating, by then chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan, fell hard after the bank failed due to his risky investments, including using deposits to prop up CDL. The collapse cost taxpay­ers S2.6 billion, a figure that might have been much smaller if not for the lobby­ing of five U.S. senators, including John McCain (whose wife, Cindy, had a real estate partnership with Keating), to stop the investigation.

36 CANDACE BUSHNELL Her Sex and the City franchise originated in 1994 as a New York Observer column in which Bushnell used

an alter ego named Carrie to describe how she and her friends partied and preyed, keep­ing one eye out for Mr. Big. The subse­quent HBO series spoke to a genera­tion of women who lived life with a zest never before seen on television.

37 DR. MARY CALDERONE In 1964, after serving as medical director for Planned Parenthood, Calderone helped found the Sex Information and Education Coun­cil of the United States to push for age-appropriate sex education in schools, starling in kindergarten. "Sex is not some­thing you turn off like a faucet," she said. "We are sexual beings, legitimately so, at every age." Critics accused SIECUS of being a communist front, but Calderone, a devout Quaker, was more traditional

than they might have realized. "I'm not looking forward happily to a widespread acceptance of casual sex," she said. "Sex is probably most rewarding within an endur­ing relationship such as marriage."

38 BEVERLY WHIPPLE A sex researcher who spent her career at Rutgers Univer­sity, Whipple has done more than any other scientist to popularize the G-spot, an area located on the vagina's anterior wall, which is highly sensitive in many if not most women. Whipple and her colleague John Perry named the spot after a German gynecologist, Dr. Ernst Grafenberg, who had described the area in a 1950 research paper. Together with psychologist Alice Kahn Ladas, Whipple and Perry outlined their findings in a 1982 book, The G Spot: And Other Discoveries About Human Sexuality, which has sold more than a million copies. Whipple would continue over the next 25 years to document the wonders of female sexual response, hypothesizing that stimu­lation of the G-spot alleviates pain during childbirth and studying women who can climax from fantasy alone.

39 ALBERTO VARGAS A native of Peru, the artist had a layover in New York while returning from Europe in 1916 and, impressed by the many attractive women on the streets of Manhattan, never left. By the 1940s he had became famous for his Varga Girls watercolors in Esquire: The New Yorker described him as "an artist who could make a girl look nude if she were rolled up in a rug." However, after a legal battle with Esquire over ownership of the name Varga and the magazine's demand that he churn out 52 paintings a year, Var­gas in 1960 began to create a monthly Var­gas Girl for playboy. When asked why he drew only women, Vargas would respond, "If they can find me a substitute for a

beautiful girl, I'll draw whatever it is. So far no one's come up with anything."

40 POTTER STEWART The Supreme Court justice composed an enduring and insightful definition of pornography in a 1964 decision that prevented authorities from banning a French film. The Lovers. "I know it when I see it," Stewart said of porn, adding that the film didn't qualify'. In 1973 Stewart played a key role in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. However, he voted against Estelle Griswold (19) and with the majority on Miller v. California (33). Nobody's perfect.

41 LINDA LOVELACE Born Linda Bore-man, the star of the 1972 blockbuster Deep

Ihroat portrayed a woman whose cli­toris is located in her throat. "I think there would be a lot fewer problems in the world if everyone enjoyed themselves sexu­ally every day," she told playboy in 1973, adding that she had "abso-

lutely no taboos." However, a few years later Boreman found Jesus. Claiming she had been forced to perform at gunpoint, she joined Catharine MacKinnon (21) and Andrea Dworkin to battle the industry. (She would later reject her role as a MacDworkin poster child, saying, "They made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else.") In 2001, the year before her death in a car accident, Boreman posed nude, as Linda Lovelace, for Leg Show. "There's nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it's done with taste," she explained.

42 MIKE NICHOLS One of the few people to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony, Nichols directed Carnal

Knowledge (1971), a masterful decon-struction of the sexual attitudes of baby-boomer males that stars Ann-Margret and Jack Nicholson (pic­tured). The screen­writer, Jules FeifFer, when asked that same year in his Playboy Interview about the orimarv

message ol the him, read dialogue he had cut from the script: "You think boys grow out of not liking girls, but we don't grow out of it. We just grow horny. That's the problem. We mix up liking pussy for liking girls. Believe me, one couldn't have less to do with the other." Four years earlier Nich­ols had directed The Graduate, a story of distrust and generational warfare reflected in the cynical seduction of Benjamin Brad-dock (Dustin Hoffman) by the original MILF, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft).

43 BETTY DODSON Known as an erotic artist and bisexual libertine, Dodson made a splash at the 1973 National Organization

for Women convention by presenting a slide show of 15 friends' vulvas. "All our lives," Dodson said, "we've been led to believe that our cunts are nasty, ugly, smelly and shameful. But I'm here to show the world how beautiful they are." As a hands-on sex teacher, Dodson championed masturbation, organizing workshops in which women got off together. In her 1974 manifesto Liberat­ing Masturbation (later expanded into Sex for One), she notes that, whatever else happens in your life, "the most consistent sex will be your love affair with yourself." In the early part of this decade, at the age of 72, Dodson took a 25-year-old male lover and wrote Orgasms for Two.

44 DR. DAVID REUBEN His 1969 best­seller, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, made him a fixture on The Tonight Show and Amer­ica's go-to sex authority. Sadly, his book contains a great deal of misinformation and odd advice. Our favorite tip is that men who come too quickly should tell themselves during sex, "I will not spill my milk! 1 don't want to spill my milk! I am not going to spill my milk!"

45 IAN FLEMING In a Playboy Interview we published in December 1964, James Bond's creator said Agent 007 has few virtues out­side of patriotism and courage, "which probably aren't virtues anyway. I didn't intend for him to be a particularly likable person." But what's not to like about a guy who can save the day and get the girl? Bond took a "flat, direct approach" with women, Fleming said, because "we live in a violent age" in which "seduction has, to a marked extent, replaced courtship."

46 LENNY BRUCE Before Chris Rock, before George Carlin, before Richard Pryor, there was Lenny Bruce. His scathing commentar­ies on religious and sexual hvpocrisv led to

multiple arrests on charges of obscen­ity. He quite often used the word fuck, criticized the pope and pondered why so many Americans find sex dirty but embrace violence and war. The effect of the constant legal harassment on Bruce's ability to

make a living didn't help his fragile mental state, and in the summer of 1966 he over­dosed on morphine.

47 GLORIA STEINEM After bursting onto the scene in 1963 with a sensationalistic report in Show magazine about her 11 days as a Bunny at the New York Playboy Club, Steinem became the photogenic face of the women's movement and the fight for repro­ductive rights, co-founding the grassroots National Women's Political Caucus and Ms. magazine. Whether you agree or disagree with Steinem, she is always eloquent and challenging. In 1998 she defended President Clinton against charges of sexual harassment by arguing that, even if the allegations were true that he had made crude passes at Kath-

leen Wiley and Paula Jones, he deserved credit for talcing no for an answer.

48 ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE The pho­tographer made his name in the 1970s with his male and female nudes and later earned praise for his still lifes and erotic (usually homoerotic) portraits, such as a man dressed in a three-piece suit with his ample penis hanging from the fly. "My approach to pho­tographing a flower is not much different than photographing cock," Mapplethorpe explained. "It's basically the same thing." A year after the artist's death, in 1989, from AIDS, a grand jury in Cincinnati indicted the director of the Contemporary Arts Cen­ter for pandering, because an exhibit of 175 Mapplethorpe photos included two of nude children and five showing men in sadomas­ochistic poses. A jury acquitted him, but the culture warriors had been engaged.

49 DANNI ASHE

In 1995, after 10 years as a strip­per and adult performer, Ashe taught herself HTML and built a website. By the end of the decade she was describing herself as "a geek with big breasts" and, despite hav-

ing no previous business experience, was making a fortune. Danni's Hard Drive quickly became a model for other women who hoped to become adult entrepreneurs. Rather than venturing into "the dark sides of humanity," Ashe focused on what Wired described as "cotton-candy porn"—busty models who also have personality.

50 J. EDGAR HOOVER The longtime FBI chief is not on the list for his alleged homo­sexuality (he and fellow dedicated bachelor Clyde Tolson were inseparable for 44 years and are buried next to each odier). Instead, he earns a spot for his dastardly use of sexual blackmail. He ordered his agents to tape Mar­tin Luther King Jr. having sex with groupies in hotel rooms, for instance, and compiled dossiers on women thought to be Eleanor Roosevelt's lesbian lovers. Even Hef made Hoover's shit list, after he gently suggested in 1962 that the FBI chief spend less time spying on Americans in their bedrooms and more time chasing mobsters. Hoover imme­diately assigned an agent to read phyboy each month, summarize its political content and tag any digs at the FBI or its leader.

51 GAY TALESE The highly respected New York Times writer wanted to report from a place where journalists had sel­dom ventured: the American bedroom. He spent nearly a decade researching his 1980 "nonfiction novel" about the sexual revolution, Thy Neighbor's Wife. After recounting the history of sexual mores back to the Puritans, Talese chronicled the rise of Hefner and the Sandstone swinger retreat. He also took part in the revolution himself, managing a massage parlor and having adulterous sex with some of the women he interviewed.

52 ROCK HUDSON A Hollywood insider once explained Hudson's appeal as a lead­ing man this way: "He's wholesome. He doesn't perspire. He has no pimples. He smells of milk. This boy is pure." Hudson also apparendy had, as the gossip magazines of the 1950s often implied, a distaste for girls. When the actor announced, in 1985, that he was dying of AIDS, he attributed his condition to a blood transfusion. But by then he had been outed, and Americans had to abandon the notion that the disease affected only a small group of people, i.e., openly gay men in San Francisco.

53 BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI The Italian director often used sexuality as a mirror on human relationships. In his most notorious film, Last Tango in Paris (1972), a newly wid­owed American (Marlon Brando) begins a sadomasochistic affair with an anonymous woman (Maria Schneider) in an empty Paris apartment. British censors excised its most infamous scene, involving anal penetra­tion with a stick of butter, while an Italian court banned Last Tango altogether, saying it "catered to the lowest instincts of the libido." The reception was more friendly in the U.S., especially after Pauline Kael anointed the film in The New Yorker as "the most power­fully erotic movie ever made."

54 DELL WILLIAMS Inspired by the response to a NOW conference she had organized on female sexuality, the 52-year-old Williams in 1974 left her job in adver­tising to launch Eve's Garden, a mail-order catalog of vibrators and erotic books, fol­lowed by a retail store in New York. Unlike the dark and dingy bunkers that sold porn, "marital aids" and gag gifts. Eve's Garden catered to women by providing the com­fortable atmosphere of a trendy boutique. Today there are a number of female-friendly sex-toy shops, as well as freelancers who, like Tupperware ladies, sell the latest in vibrators and dildos at women-only home parties.

55 RUDI GERNREICH Hailed as one of the most avant-garde fashion designers of his time, Gernreich is best remembered for his topless swimsuit, introduced in the U.S. in 1964. Since many women were already going alfresco on the

beaches of Europe, Gernreich was sur­prised by the scan­dal his "monokini" caused in America. (He eventually sold 3,000 of the suits at $25 each.) The first woman to model the suit, Peggy Moffitt (pictured), said it "had to do with more than what to wear on the beach. It was about a changing culture throughout all society, about freedom and emancipation. It was also a reaction against something par­ticularly American: the litde boy snickering that women had breasts."

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