Hugh Hefner of the silk pyjamas and Barbie-doll filled Playboy mansions has died. His son described him as ‘a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom.’ Others saw him as ‘louche purveyor of corrupting smut’; and a dirty old man who reduced women to fetish objects. For good or ill he was immensely influential in promoting the sexual revolution from the 1950s onwards when his Playboy magazine became a global best-seller every month. Alongside nudes he published interviews with Martin Luther King Jr, Beatle John Lennon, and Fidel Castro; with contributions by Norman Mailer, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury.
Born 9 April 1926 4.20pm Chicago, he was a pro-active Sun Aries trine Neptune and square an influential, controlling 10th house Pluto; and his Sun was also sextile an enthusiastic Jupiter and Mars in broad-minded Aquarius in the publicity-attracting 5th. He had a very complex chart and not altogether a happy one, despite living every teenage boys’ dream. He said he never found his soulmate, despite three marriages and endless flings. He had a needs-space and constant-relationship-change 7th house Uranus in a self-protective Water Grand trine to Saturn in obsessive Scorpio trine a Cancer North Node. His Saturn was further emphasised being on the point of a T Square to Neptune opposition Jupiter (Mars) – not good at sharing, co-operating or intimacy. His sensitive Pisces Moon was trine his Pluto, so he would be possessive but always on his own terms.
His 7th Harmonic was strong – a perfectionist and a seeking soul. Can be cold, self-centred, attracted to alcohol/ drugs and occultism. As was his 11H – a difficult number to live up to. Can be idealistic and inspired; also fanatical, greedy, self-indulgent.
If there was one word that described his life it was satiated, nauseating levels of gratification of the most superficial kind. Certainly influential, and more complicated than nude centre-spreads might suggest, but empty inside. Oddly enough, or maybe not, he had no Earth planets. Mainly Water Fire which is excitable, good for the entertainment business. But Earth was his missing element, so he gorged on the most negative aspect of it.
Was Hugh really just a high end pimp?
Would seem closely related, with revelations coming out about his “pig parties”.
Hugh Hefner should go down in history as the quintessential objectifier of women.
When I think of advocators of free speech, civil rights, and sexual freedom, Hugh Hefner certainly does not pop up in the landscape. I think his son well truly puts his father up on a pedestal and lionizes him way too much. Typical really, for his son and lots of other men, to want to look up to an empty, materialistic man like this, who collected women like baseball cards and think it the apex of ideal masculine living.