PLAYMATE 1955

PLAYMATE: a tribute

What a perspective and insights she must've had now lost to so many whom probably didn't want to know, but needed to learn from her. Alas, the frivolous nature of a fast paced life style Americans cling pitifully to reveals when someone dies how pitiful we are in our rush to the red light. Breathing off the fumes of quick and consumed moments in a rush to the next thing the older and wiser people slump often into deep melancholy, deep silences within a culture's fear of Old Age. Who wants to hear from them, or listen to their stories? Today, who wants insight and light shed upon their young lives to illuminate and strengthen their capacity to walk paths never trodden upon before because of the gifts of the Old Ones who shared theirs?

Doomed to repeat a past lived and resolved each American generation enjoys the illusion of being original, waking up from that and following cow and sheep paths to conform to being a unit of measure while a small select group of artists and thinkers and doers change the world, and in their wake leave new thoughts, and views of the world, and new capacities to do new things, and accept new ways as if they (the dull and frightened) had discovered it all!

American attitudes towards Beauty and Sex changed profoundly with the advent and the long life of Playboy, and I know the bulk of American's today are ignorant of this, and do not know enough to, at the least, pay tribute to the pioneer and forward thinker, Hugh Hefner, who founded Playboy and hired Gloria Pall in 1955 in the midst of the cultural upheaval of his publication.

Hefner’s work in the Civil Rights movement, and Women’s Rights movement spearheaded change at a quicken pace. The dialogues he started and facilitated cool from his TV shows, or from his editing room led to lifestyle changes and the re-evaluation of beliefs that led into court cases before the Supreme Court, and laws changed.

© Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

On July 15, 1927 Gloria Pall was born. In 1955 she was hired by Hugh Hefner to pose for Playboy. On December 30, 2012 she died.