HBO Max’s latest comedy series, ‘Minx,’ is about an adult magazine catered toward girls and homosexual men. Could or not it's based on ‘Viva Magazine’?
We’re dwelling in an age of edginess, where nearly nothing is just too taboo however virtually the rest may succumb to “cancel culture.” But in the Seventies, the entirety was once different. Sex was all over but was once continuously related to male dominance. Times Square used to be a haven for live intercourse shows and prostitution, and Playboy reached its highest level of recognition in 1972 with 7.2 million copies bought.
At the middle of this period used to be second-wave feminism. Women fought to change into equivalent to men not simply in legislation however in society. So with the good fortune of naughty magazines for males, female Penthouse editor Gay Bryant kicked around the idea of a magazine for ladies with famed editor Bob Guccione. So Bob created Viva Magazine, which is what turns out to have inspired HBO Max’s new comedy, Minx.
‘Viva Magazine’ may be the place ‘Minx’ got its inspiration.
Bob Guccione used to be one in all the many editors to take good thing about the sexual revolution. “Known for his leather pants, unbuttoned shirts, and gold chains, Bob Guccione regarded the a part of pornographer, even if he didn’t imagine himself one,” in keeping with Shondaland’s oral history of Viva Magazine. Very very similar to Jake Johnson’s Minx character, Doug, Bob was once the photographer and artist who based Penthouse to rival Playboy.
In 1973, Viva, The International Magazine for Women was once born below Penthouse’s publishing energy. Despite Viva’s wide enchantment to homosexual men, Bob used to be set on making it into “Penthouse for girls” and entrusted the day-to-day operations to his partner in business and life, Kathy Keeton. But in keeping with Leslie Jay-Gould, who labored for Viva, Bob was once a “control freak” who needed to sign off on everything.
It equipped edgy editorial jobs for women to write down for ladies, however it used to be all underscored by means of Bob’s dominance.
“When I were given this tale by [South African writer, activist, and Nobel Prize winner] Nadine Gordimer, Bob did not even know who she was and juxtaposed the piece with some pornographic image,” Viva's one-time government editor Patricia Bosworth defined. “I was working a magazine about arts and tradition with a center of attention on ladies and trying very exhausting not to bear in mind that Bob Guccione, the porn king, was once my boss."
Although it didn’t last long, ‘Viva Magazine’ was full of legends.
Legends in the magazine and behind the scenes fill Viva Magazine’s almost-forgotten history. Anna Wintour, the now-iconic Vogue editor-in-chief, was Viva’s fashion editor. Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Baez, Gore Vidal, and more wrote for Viva. Even Shelley Duvall and Rene Russo were cover models. There were pieces about the right women had to say “no” and thinking deeply about one’s sexuality.
Despite all of this, Viva Magazine had trouble finding its footing. The Shondaland oral history sums up Viva’s identity crisis: “Viva struggled to achieve a sexual identity throughout its publication, in part because its editors could not agree on answers to important questions: What was erotic, and what was pornographic? Should they show [penises] or not? And, more pointedly, what do women want?”
In five years of experimentation, Viva transformed from an erotic magazine for women into a place for hardcore pornography featuring more than what women wanted to see. Hearing its readers, it backed so far away from pornography that it turned into just another conventional women’s magazine. Between its erotic past and its unoriginal future, Viva went under in 1978. Could the same happen in Minx?
New episodes of Minx drop each Thursday on HBO Max.
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