PLAYBOY’S ‘CHILD

CENTERFOLDS & CHILD PLAYMATES’

in

THE “PLAYMATE DATA SHEET”

Background and Update

DRAFT A WORK IN PROGRESS

By

Judith A Reisman, PhD

The Institute for Media Education

c IME 1993

Revised 2008, Scottsdale, Arizona

 A BRIEF DRAFT ANALYSIS
OF
PLAYBOY’s ‘CHILD CENTERFOLDS & CHILD PLAYMATES’
in a
“CHILD TO ADULT STRIP TEASE”
Using
“THE PLAYMATE DATA SHEET “

I. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The following graphs and data address Playboy’s girl ‘child playmates’ in random years
July 1977 to 1993. The findings reflect Playboy’s systemic use of little
girls as autoerotic stimuli. Below and left is a typical “Playmate Data
Sheet,” February 2006. The little bunny-eared child injects this ‘child
playmate,’ or ‘child centerfold’ into Playboy’s masturbatory mix after a
hiatus of roughly three years. The year my study was released 39% of
Playboy centerfolds were of children under age 12. In 1986 to 1988,
moving young teens back in 1989 and 91.1

“Having largely censored children from Playmate biographies, post our 1985
research, the September 1991 Playboy just resurrected 'The-Playmate-Child' (a
"Sixth-Grade" photo) that the art editor juxtaposed next to the (naked) child as
Playmate-Grown-Up' in the "Playmate Data Sheet." This same issue…[returned]
Playboy cartooning the child and statutory rape trickery (getting the victim
drunk), which was also suspended post-1985.”2

The Injurious ‘Four-Fold’ Design to Eroticize Girl Children

The following analysis addresses the use of the child in Playboy’s

sexual milieu. A “centerfold” was a picture on a sheet of paper that was
inserted into the middle of a publication. The original July 1977 Playboy
“biography” displayed three little girl photos below a childish “hand
written” page. Turning the page, one saw the naked Centerfold alongside
her child photos, automatically eroticizing the girl child--hence girl
children as a “class.” However, in recent times Playboy introduced a
four-foldout centerfold. This new fold allows the child’s photos to open
up over the lower body of her naked Playmate self. Playboy would know
this design allows child Playmates to be viewed co-terminus with sexual arousal to many other
1
See, Judith Reisman, “Child Pornography in Erotic Magazines: Social Awareness and Self-Censorship” in Dolf Zillmann, et al, Ed., Media,
Children and the Family: Social Scientific, Psychodynamic and Clinical Perspectives, Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, Hillsdale, NJ, 1994, pp. 313-
325, and Images of Children, Crime & Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, 1989, US Dpt of Justice, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, Grant No. 84-JN-AX-K007.
2
Ibid, Reisman in Zillman, “The scene: An outdoor picnic. A couple sits beneath a green-leafed tree. A pony-tailed, wide-eyed, bobby-socked
girl -- clasps her legs together as her companion, a man in shorts and sunglasses holds a bottle out to the girl saying: "I know you are young and
inexperienced, but you can trust me to be sensitive and understanding. Tequila?" (p. 155. The cartoonist's name resembles "Kihi Saat").”

2
naked sado-sexualized women on prior magazine pages. So the new four-fold design creates
neuronal pathways that must link innocent children with strong Playboy orgasm-based stimuli.
Inevitably this stimuli effects how children inside and outside the home are perceived and treated
by pedophiles and/or Playboy users.
Table 1 (Cartoon March 1972)

3,045 Total Playboy Child Photos, Cartoons, Illustrations

1,849 Child Visuals

1,111 Photographs (most child centerfold photos)
738 Child Illustrations
1,196 Child Cartoons

PLAYBOY'S CHILD IMAGES (1953-1984)

illustration

center photos

photos

cartoons

total imagery

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

Tables 1-4 are background graphs of the child

playmate photo environment from 1953 to 1984 taken
from the Principal Investigator’s research on “Images of
Children, Crime, and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and
Hustler” (1984). While that research isolated ages for
each Playmate Child, these cannot currently be retrieved
from all Playboy issues.

Tables 5-11 are Post 1985, after the Reisman

expose of Playboy’s child sexual abuse data caused
Playboy’s purge of its child sex abuse cartoons, its “Sex
in Cinema” child sexual abuse photos, as well as its little
Playmate girls in its “centerfold.” The study analyzes
Playmate child centerfolds in the initial 1977 year as well
as images from several magazine years up to 1993. A
detailed chronology of Playboy’s premeditated
eroticization of children is warranted. The following four
graphs identify the eroticized child environment in which
the Playmate Child photographs were initially grounded.

3
 The above quote is a quote from the newly released Playboy 50s collection. An
emblematic Playboy cartoon above left, March 1972. The child is drawn with exaggerated
breasts (typical of Playboy blurring the age distinctions between child, teen and adult). The man
appears to be an upscale (consumer) relative in this upscale room. The smiling child agrees to
sex saying ‘But first of all, we have to ask Teddy’s permission, and that costs $40.”

Table 2 (Centerfold Photos December 1978)

Children appeared on average 8 times per issue,
96 times a year in visuals and cartoons.

3,045 SEXUALIZED CHILDREN IN 373 PLAYBOY

ISSUES (1953-1984)

Per Month 8

Per Year 59

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Table 3 (Infant Centerfold Photo, April 1980)

AV. AGES OF PLAYBOY CHILD "PLAYMATES" 12/1953-

12/1984

infant-2yrs 17%

12-17 yrs 30%

3-11 yrs 52%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Eroticizing the Home: Having interviewed leaders and celebrities Playboy is now nostalgically
seen as “naughty” or as an erotic art periodical. Hence Playboy is documented as the first
pornographic media consciously allowed into homes with children. Early child photographs

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(12/1953-12/1984) pre “Reisman Report” commonly exploited girls between 3 and 11 years old,
key ages for incestuous and general sexual abuse in and outside the home. The second largest
number of photographs were in the 12-to 17 age range while 1,111 photographs were largely
little girl “Child Centerfolds” pictured in “Playmate” biographical data.

Table 4 (Child “Incest” Photo/Text November 1971, Buttocks Redacted Here)

PLAYBOY CAPTIONS DESCRIBING CHILDREN (1953-1984)

SATAN/SEX/VIOL

OTHER ILLEGAL

SEX/VIOLENT

VIOLENT

SEX UAL

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%

Directly and Indirectly Sexualizing the Child: Fully 18%

of texts accompanying child photographs referred in some sexual
or sadosexual way to the child. This is especially worrisome as most of Playboy’s child-adult-sex
freight was borne by cartoon “jokes” about incestuous and stranger rape (voluntary child-adult
sex is “statutory” rape) of even small children.

II. THE CURRENT STUDY

1993 UPDATE ON PLAYBOY’s CHILD “PLAYMATE” AND “CENTERFOLD”

PHOTOGRAPHS

When did Playboy Begin Using Children in a Child Strip Tease to Naked Playmate?

The following ages are commonly provided by Playboy in its “Playmate Data Sheet”
displayed next to that month’s main naked woman. Since Playboy editors appear to reduce or
increase the ages of both their women and girls this report relies on the accuracy of the
magazine’s age claims. However, unlike Playboy’s frequently fraudulent “vital statistics”
(shaving its Playmate’s weight, waist, and hips and enlarging bust measurements) printed as its
Playmate1 data children’s ages are subject to standard age imagery measures.2

5
 PLAYBOY’S STRIP TEASE OF “PLAYMATE” CHILDREN

96.2% of Playboy’s Child Photos Were “Centerfolds”

86.9% of all 1,849 Child Visuals Were Caucasian

PLAYBOY “CHILD PLAYMATE” PHOTOS 1993 UPDATE

June 1977, The Child Playmate of The Year Begins: June 1977 began the Playboy child
Playmate photographic tripods. Roughly 55% of the children in what I call the “Child Centerfold
Strip Tease” inserts in 1977 were under 16 years of age, the largest group being between 3-7
years, the latter the most common age of first incestuous sexual assault. Playboy’s little girls are
generally clothed (although babies have been nude with some little girls absent upper clothing)
and are labeled as though talking to the consumer about herself at 5 years and such like.

Why Call Her a Sexualized “Child Centerfold”?

The “little” Centerfold grows before the juvenile and adult consumers eyes
within the glossy, sensuous magazine, immediately unfolding into herself as a
ready, willing, sexually available nude “big” Centerfold for masturbation or
other sexual acting out. Essentially performing a child’s “strip tease,” the little
Playmate, Centerfold strips before the juvenile and adult consumer’s eyes.

• June 1977 The Child Centerfold, the “Playmate of the Year” is 9 months old and
gradually ages to be “adult.” Moreover, the naked playmate is posed by Playboy with child
dolls--from her infant photo to her presentation as a masturbation object.

• October 1977 3, 13, 18. The playmate centerfold is again posed by Playboy with dolls--
from baby to nude Playmate.
Table 5
As noted, since the
Department of Justice THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONTH IN 1977
research data on children
are available in the Reisman 18+ 25%
Report, the goal of this 16-17 yrs 20%
small paper was to examine
13-15 yrs 10%
the changes in ages of the
Playmate Child after 1985 8-12 yrs 10%
when the Reisman study
3-7 yrs 30%
was announced. To that end,
in order to establish an Infant - 2 yrs 5%
environment for these
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
findings, the first (1977)
Playmate Child issue was

6
located and its children evaluated by age. Due to financial and time restrictions, the next date to
be studied was 1985. The following graphs offer a brief, pictorial overview of Playboy’s Child
Playmates,1985 to 1993. Some years are missed due to resource limitations.

Table 6

THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER M ONTH IN 1985

18+ yrs 0%
16-17 yrs 33%
13-15 yrs 26%
8-12 yrs 13%
3-7 yrs 20%
infant-2 yrs 6%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

While the 1985 sample of 5/12 (42%) was smaller than all other later years discussed in this
report, it is a statistically viable study population. As noted, the highest rate of child imagery was
commonly between ages 3-7 years, with most children under age 16. By 1985 a reduction by
roughly ten percent among the youngest age group was in evidence, picked up by the under 17
with no Playmate “Children” appearing as 18 or over.

The 1986 hard copies of magazines were too few to calculate (December 1986 the Child
Centerfolds appeared as ages 15, 17, 19). These magazines were unavailable at university
libraries and unless identified in the text, the children’s ages were impossible to “see” on
microfiche--1987 were thus also too few to calculate. Below, the Playboy grooming process…

November 1987 the Centerfold grew from ages 11, 18, 19 and December 1987 she
appeared as 10, 17, 17. Although 45% of all 1985 issues were analyzed for the playmate
children, it would be valuable to collect and analyze all copies, secured from used book stores.

7
 Table 7

THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONTH IN 1988

18+ yrs 79%

16-17 yrs 15%

13-15 yrs 3%

8-12 yrs 0%

3-7 yrs 0%

infant to 2 yrs 0%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

The 1988 findings (92% of all issues) parallel the empirical observations of 1986 and
1987. Playboy purged its child sex abuse artwork, shifting to 18 and over for sexy Playmates. Of
the 1988 magazines, 11/12 were available with 79% of “children” 18 or over. This “aging” of
Playmate girls, with sporadic inclusion of a few 10 year olds, appears to continue the 1986 and
1987 trend after Playboy’s divestment of child sex abuse cartoons and violence post the 1986
Reisman report. However, these draft data await completion.

Table 8

THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONTH IN 1989

18 + 22%

16 - 17 yrs 36%

13 - 15 yrs 31%

8 - 12 yrs 11%

3-7 yrs 0%

Infant - 2 yrs 0%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

The 1989 sample included 12/12 (100%) of all magazines. The younger girls had again
begun to reappear as under age 13, the largest group declining from the over 18 “adults” in 1988

8
 to between 16 and 17 years in 1989. The increase in 13-15 year olds is dramatic within that one
year window, suggesting that younger children will be sexualized when
consumers increase their tolerance for sexualized children.

This conditioning, coarsening is confirmed in the 2006 issue cited at the

outset of this analysis and by the Child Centerfold in Bunny Ears saying, “I was
born to entertain.”

Table 9
Of the
THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONTH IN 1990 12 issues in
1990, 10
18+ 47%
(83%) were
analyzed for
16-17 yrs 13%
Child
13-15 yrs 37% Playmates.
8-12 yrs 3% Looking at the
3-7 yrs
1990 data,
47% of
infant - 2 yrs
Playmates are
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% 18 or over
(not age 21 as
called for by
the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography) with the second highest group being
adolescents 13 to 15 years. The youngest children are still invisible, remembering that 3-11 year
olds had been used most often in Playboy’s early years.

Table 10

THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER M ONTH IN 1991

18+ 40%
16-17 yrs 24%
13-15 yrs 24%
8-12 yrs 12%
3-7 yrs 0%
infant to 2 yrs 0%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

The 1991 data reflect 10/12 magazines (83%) with 40% of Child Centerfold images 18
plus years and equal numbers of early and late adolescents up to 17 described as Playmates.

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Younger children in the 8-12 group increased in appearance by roughly 10%, a suggestion of the
reduction of ages being scheduled by the Playboy editors to reuse the very young Sexualized
Child Playmate.

Table 11

T HREE CHILD CENT ERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONT H IN 1992

18 44%

16-17 yrs 17%

13-15 yrs 24%

8-12 yrs 14%

3-7 4%

infant to 2 yrs 0%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

The analysis of the 1992 data used 10/12 magazines (83%). While the highest group of
Child Playmates were (as in prior “post Reisman years”) 18 plus, by 1992 early adolescents
moved ahead of the 16-17 year olds as Child Playmates. Moreover, the younger children in the
8-12 group marked a return of the 3-7 year olds by Playboy editors.

Table 12

THREE CHILD CENTERFOLDS SEXUALIZED PER MONTH IN 1993

18 + 62%

16-17 yrs 12%

13-15 yrs 6%

8-12 yrs 16%

3-7 yrs 4%

infant - 2 yrs 0%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

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 The analysis of the 1993 data used 8/12 magazines, a 67% sample. The highest group of
Child Centerfold Playmate images continued to be 18 plus, late adolescents dropping behind the
younger children in the 8-12 year old group and the 1992 displays of the littlest 3-7 year old
Child Playmates continue in 1993.

Partial or total removal of mature pubic hair from the pudenda of Playboy adult
playmates is standard now and designed to mimic the infant and pre-pubescent pudenda. This is
now customary in pornography, following the long Playboy tradition of blurring age distinctions
between child and adult by electronically manipulating the “model” woman’s body to create a
pseudo child.

Posing women with child symbols, clothing, dolls, bobby socks, standing on “tiptoe” or
bathing with children’s toys and the like, are techniques Playboy editors have long employed to
make the adult a child and the child an adult. Posing mature females with buttocks up and in rear
“view” child like sleeping pose does two additional things; 1) it suggests the playmate of any age
as a child /adult and 2) it presents the female as a mammal in “heat” in “rut” welcoming anal
(harmful, painful) sodomy. Most of these “age blurring” methods are covered in the principal
investigator’s (PI) study, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and
Hustler (1989), as well as in her book, “Soft Porn” Plays Hardball (1991).

III CONCLUSION
This
study reflects a
brief, draft product to
fill an immediate
need. It should be
seen as co- terminus
with the PI’s

chronological analysis of the role of outed pedophiles as sexuality and child welfare “experts”
for Playboy magazine (available on request from the PI).

Moreover, much should be said about the fold-out Playmate which can be opened to
the left of the Playmate display. This new fold-out design allows the child to be
“interactively” viewed directly alongside any violent and degrading image in the magazine.
It is strongly urged that a complete study of these data be undertaken in order to warn and
caution the public--including leaders who may have appeared or who may be considering
appearing in Playboy as interviewees.

IMMEDIATE LEGAL AND LEGISLATION ACTION NEEDED

Everything science now knows about grooming child “addictions” to cigarettes (Joe
Camel) and alcohol (adverts/games) requires an official investigation of Playboy’s “grooming”
of a) child pornography addicts and b) children as sexual fetish objects for molestation.

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 The Child Centerfolds are the same marketing plan as Playboy’s pink “eraser boxes,”
school pencils and teenage bedding branding little girls with their Bunny logo, at roughly age 6
years and up. Playboy market analysts would have calculated the percentage of addicts little girl
products could yield against bad parental publicity. All marketing discussions and data should be
deposed—as were Ford’s decisions that allowing Pinto users to die in back end fires were
calculated against recalling defective, potentially murderous Pintos.

Children have been eroticized by Playboy

magazine since their first 1954 issues in which
male children were cartooned seeking sex in
pedophile-based scenes, moving swiftly to little
girl children cartooned, then photographed as
viable for rape by strangers and family. The data strongly suggest that
eroticizing children in Playboy has had a direct impact on pandemic child
pornography addiction and molestation. This would begin with training child
and adult users to believe in children’s alleged sexuality as they become sexually aroused
browsing these materials. What is now common knowledge in the arousal field is fully
applicable to Playboy. That is, child-based or child-associated pornographic materials stimulates
unwanted, unacknowledged child lust in many or most users and imitative, including incestuous
acting-out in some percentage of these.

Science confirms empirical observation. Eroticizing children in Playboy puts children at

risk of sexual abuse by older siblings, friends, parents and others. Victimization/testimonial data
are clear regarding the role of Playboy and other pornographies as causal in incestuous abuse of
children. Moreover, other techniques to sexualize children have involved grooming children and
consumers to subvert their resistance to their horror at the notion of incest and child sexual
abuse. Child bunny clothing, sleepwear, pencils, tattoos, etc., aid in that subversion.

As noted, long before it was accepted in the general society, Playboy had been removing
hair from the pudenda of adult Playmates, deliberately mimicking the naked child (see Reisman,
“Soft Porn” Plays Hardball, 1991). Viewers naturally connect a hairless adult genitalia to that of
the only hairless genitalia in the species homo sapiens, that of infants and children.
Pornographers traditionally blur adult/child age distinctions by giving women child like features,
including plump, pouty lips, abnormally small hips and buttocks, and rounded, newly
shimmering baby skin. The result of these manipulations are known as the “pseudo child.”

Posing women in child-like clothing, clutching dolls, sucking fingers, standing knock-
kneed, on tiptoe typical, and in similar child poses, leaning on deliberately oversized chairs and
beds, are further techniques Playboy and other pornographies use to create the pseudo child. A
typical sleeping posture of infants and small children has his/her bottom elevated. This often
appears in Playboy’s nude poses of seductive Playmates. What for a child is a natural sleeping
posture is deliberately presented by Playboy as a baby posture co-terminus with animal estrus,
that is, mating signals, degrading human females to the level of (baby) mammals.

Moreover, upturned buttocks as sexual signals misrepresents animal behavior. Although

animals use a rear mounting position, it is not for anal use. Animals do not misdirect their

12
copulatory site nor use the rectum for copulation. In that sense, as Playboy eroticizes normal
child sleeping postures they additionally endanger children in these photographs, illustrations
and cartoons with texts by claiming that sexually fulfilled females seek and enjoy anal sodomy.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue see: Images of Children, Crime & Violence in
Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, 1989, US Dpt of Justice, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, Grant No. 84-JN-AX-K007 (1989) as well as “Soft Porn” Plays Hardball (1991).

This draft study warrants further documentation. The findings however, constitute a
legitimate warning to those concerned with the growing problem of child sexual abuse and child
pornography addiction by millions of naïve victims of Big Pornography’s deliberate marketing
strategies.

13
 APPENDIX A January 2004

The Flexible Child Centerfold, Playmate

Can be overlaid with any Image, Creating Any “Fantasy” on
pages before page 179

14
15
 The Playboy issue with the blonde “High
School” girl pretending oral sodomy at
“Ridgemont High,” employs its similarly
blonde centerfold as a “High School” girl.
Since Hefner states “nothing” is accidental
in Playboy, every “comma” is “planned that
way” it is a given that the “Ridgemont
High” girl sodomy image was “planned” as
co-terminus with its “High School”
centerfold—taking the naïve viewer into
emotional responses to children and teens absent his or her awareness and violating their “informed consent.”

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