Hugh Hefner Was a 'Disgusting Old Sleaze'

Now that Hugh Hefner is gone, he's being remembered as "some kind of liberator of women," writes Suzanne Moore in the Guardian. But Moore—whom Hef once threatened to sue after she called him a pimp—says the Playboy founder sold a "fantasy of freedom" for men only. Women, on the other hand, "had to be strangely chaste but constantly available for the right price." This was true not just in the pages of his magazine but in real life, she writes, citing the experiences of women who made it to the Playboy mansion's "inner sanctum" and eventually described a feeling of being imprisoned.

The truth, Moore writes, is that Hef was a "disgusting old sleaze" who "procured, solicited, and made profits from women selling sex." And he did so while trying to make it seem that it was the women in question who aspired to be "living Barbie[s]," "that at 23 they want nothing more than to jump octogenarians." And yet now that he's gone, people are acting like he was a champion of the sexual revolution. "But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to other men," making "the selling of female flesh respectable and hip." Click for Moore's full column. (More Hugh Hefner stories.)