Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, sometimes credited with ushering in the 1960s sexual revolution with his men's porn magazine, peacefully passed away on Wednesday at the age of 91, Playboy Enterprises said.
Railing against what he called ‘puritanical’ attitudes towards sex, Hefner founded Playboy, which catered to men’s long-subdued sexuality by commodifying women’s bodies – an enterprise that garnered him immense wealth and cultural influence.
Hefner proudly kept a harem of exclusively blonde women many decades younger than himself at his infamous Playboy Mansion. This was chronicled in "The Girls Next Door," a TV reality show that aired from 2005 through 2010. He said that thanks to the impotency-fighting drug Viagra he continued exercising his libido into his 80s.
"I'm never going to grow up," Hefner had said in a CNN interview.
Staying young is what it is all about for me. Holding on to the boy and long ago I decided that age really didn’t matter and as long as the ladies ... feel the same way, that’s fine with me.Hefner to CNN
In 2016, Hugh Hefner was sued along with Bill Cosby in a sexual battery civil case, in which the complainant alleged that Hefner conspired with Cosby in 2008 to host minor girls at his residence and plied them with alcohol in the company of Cosby. She alleged that Hefner “aided, abetted, and ratified” Cosby’s abuse, who was a long-time friend of his, and who he knew had a propensity for “intoxicating” and “taking advantage of” young women.
(With inputs from Reuters and The Telegraph.)
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