Forget
the ‘mystical’ East. In the 21st century, the harem meets the
American dream.
November 2007
There is a bustle of activity in the women’s
quarters of the harem. It is the Sultan’s birthday and the members of the harem
engage in an unspoken contest for the emperor’s heart. They are making
themselves beautiful, tending their hair and dressing up in their finest
costumes to celebrate his four-score years with a grand ball.
Actually, this is not a story out of the Thousand and One Nights. The royalty in question is not
some Baghdad Prince of the Faithful, but the Sultan of Porn himself, Hugh Hefner.
The Arab or Muslim harem – with its mystery and
its promise of (largely imagined) debauchery in the form of bewitching dancing
girls and naked bathing beauties – has titillated the western male imagination
for centuries. And so many luminaries have been enticed into this forbidden
zone (which is what “harem” means in Arabic) – in their fantasies – legendary
musicians like Mozart, travellers and academics like Richard Burton, and even the Hollywood dream machine.
But you don’t need to travel to the exotic East
or back in time to see a real-life harem in action, there’s one open to public teleview, we discovered while channel-hopping and pondering
the impenetrable paradox of why it is that, even with so many channels, there
was still nothing to watch.
Girls of the Playboy Mansion offers the viewer a fly-on-the-wall
view of Hefner and his girlfriends living it up in his California home. Poised to hop to another
channel, this barmy world of an 81-year-old media mogul and his harem of
bottled platinum blondes drew us, like some genie, back at the last minute.
It turns out that Hef
officially launched his rotating harem after he separated from Kimberley
Conrad, his second wife. His coterie has ranged in size from around seven to
the current three girlfriends: Holly Madison (28), Bridget Marquardt (34) and Kendra Wilkinson (22).
And the “reality” show allows the viewer to
float on the surface gloss of this superficial world of endless parties and
dressing up. This is apparently the E! entertainment
channel’s biggest ratings grabber, but I suspect this is a reflection of the
quality of the rest of its programming.
Watching the show, I was struck by how much the
PlayboyMansion resembled the ancient world of
the harem. Life in the haramlik (as it is more
correctly known) also revolved mainly around the relationships between the
various women, who constructed friendships, alliances and rivalries with one
another.
Like in the harems of yore, Holly, Bridget and
Kendra are reportedly not allowed to have other sexual partner. They vie for Hef’s affections and compete for his attention, often
manoeuvring to get him alone. Like the sultan he obviously thinks he is, Hef (as they affectionately call him) even has his own
favourite, Holly.
Conrad, his second wife, to whom he
is still married and who is the mother of his children, lives in an adjoining
mansion, rather like the separate apartment reserved for the oldest member of a
harem. Moreover,
the pecking order of the women and the power they wield in the PlayboyMansion is a function of their
relationship with Hefner.
They used to say that behind every great man
was a woman. In harems, there were usually several. This power by proxy found
its most intricate manifestation in the Ottoman court, where the senior members
of the harem actually ruled the empire through their sons or husbands – perhaps
like Hilary Clinton. For instance, Valide Sultan Safiye, the mother of Sultan Mehmet III, was an effective backstage co-regent, first
with her husband Murad and then her son.
But, in the contemporary west, we are living in
an age of equal opportunity. So, why this enduring need for a patriarch? My
wife, Katleen, is baffled by why educated women –
Holly and Bridget are both working towards their second master’s degree –
should submit themselves to this. “They’re basically giving up their youth for
him,” she remarked.
However, it would appear that not all women
share her distaste. Shockingly, according to the exclamation-loving E!,70% of the show’s audience are women! “When the show was first in
development, I thought that [female viewers] were going to hate these women,”
Lisa Berger of E! admitted. Honestly, I would have
expected the same.
“They are normal girls living this fantasy
lifestyle. They’re good friends dating the same guy,” she added. “Normal” is naturally a
subjective term – and I won’t judge Berger’s definition of normal, if she
promises to do the same. But a fantasy world it certainly is. Aside from
academic curiosity at why these women are there, the few episodes we have
watched have held a kind of kitsch appeal, an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of surrealism.
While researching this article I’ve come across
a fair amount of speculation about whether or not Girls of the Playboy mansion
is empowering to women – and I’d be interested to hear what CiFers
have to say about this. Hefner, who did psychology and gender studies at university,
seems to have been aware of this angle and built in certain “girl power”
features to make the show appeal to female audiences.
To my mind, if this show is empowering, then it
is a sad testimony to how little progress feminism has made in subverting the
old patriarchal order. These young women may be educated and possess forceful
personalities, but then, these qualities were also valued in women in Victorian
times – as long as they didn’t rise above their station and deferred to their
man, just like in the Playboy mansion.
In principle, people are free to live in
consensual polygamous relationships if they so choose. However, economic and
gender inequalities make certain choices more likely. How many young women
would be interested in an octogenarian, if he wasn’t a rich and powerful man?
Although many do not like what he represents,
Hugh Hefner has been admired and envied by millions his entire life for his
playboy lifestyle. And even at 81, he raises few eyebrows with his multiple
girlfriends whose combined age (84) barely exceeds his. How many women of his
age would be so admired if they hooked up with their own harem of young male
lovers?
I hope we will soon see the day when economic,
social and gender equality mean that the likes of Hefner become a truly
endangered species.
