Presidents And Their Playmates
If both Jung and Campbell spoke of archetypes as structuring patterns of the human psyche, one can posit the President of the United States and Playboy Playmates as representing the sexes in American pop culture.
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” — H. Kissinger
JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier revealed how Hugh Hefner and Playboy became a public forum for John F. Kennedy, advertising him as a sex symbol. As The Journal of American History noted, “Kennedy’s sexualized masculine celebrity was the central element in the success of an otherwise-conventional politician who floated in the broad mainstream”.
“Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” — Marilyn Monroe
May 1962, at Madison Square Garden, Monroe sang Happy Birthday to JFK in a sultry voice — one of her last major public appearances before her death less than three months later. The performance caused a stir in Leave It to Beaver America, leading the nation to gossip of a JFK-Monroe affair, as investigated in The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed.
Among Bill Clinton’s publicized lurid escapades, DailyMail reported on the mysterious death of Penthouse Pet Judi Gibbs in a house fire in 1986, amid rumors involving pictures of her with the Governor of Arkansas.
‘I’m not saying the Clintons kill people. I’m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead.” — Larry Nichols
George W. Bush was the object of claims by Playboy Lingerie model Tammy Phillips, according to Texas Monthly. She told the Enquirer they had an 18-month fling, but it fell apart when her uncle failed to collaborate the story.
Donald Trump had his own affair with Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal, memorialized in a document published by The New Yorker, detailing various clandestine hotel-room meetings, payoffs, and complex legal agreements.
“I didn’t want to influence anybody’s election. I didn’t want death threats on my head. I didn’t want someone else telling stories and getting all the details wrong.” — Karen McDougal
The New York Times published audio recordings of Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen discussing hush money, as the Justice Department was investigating Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
The Atlantic caught on to the juxtaposition between bunnies and politicians by comparing Stormy Daniels’ business approach to Trump.
“Although the asymmetry of their respective powers — the aging sex worker and the president of the United States — might seem insurmountable, in many respects they are equally matched.”
When both McDougal and Stormy Daniels came out with their stories, with a #MeToo movement at its apex, The Guardian jumped on the outdated trope.
“Playboy models, by design interchangeable — early 20s, white skin, blonde hair, large breasts, not women but “bunnies” — are the Olive Garden of American masculine desire.”
Trump had been frequently featured in The Playboy Interview, and appeared on its March 1990 cover with 21-year-old Brandi Brant, when Hefner wrote The Conservative Sex Movement, declaring Trump’s 2016 primary triumph as proof of a “sexual revolution in the Republican Party” and a sign of change in the “family values party”.
“It’s hard for me to tell which of these girls are yours, and which ones are mine.” — Donald Trump to Hugh Hefner
Surya Yalamanchili confessed to Politico her most memorable moment as a contestant on The Apprentice, was when Trump rewarded the cast with a trip to the Playboy mansion.
As John Mancini highlighted in Quartz, “it’s not hard to draw a straight line from the man who mainstreamed modern media’s objectification of women to the election of a US president who built his public persona on the same message”.
