Women, Not Girls

The Hugh Hefner of Italy is a blonde. Adelina Tattilo, fortyish and the mother of three children, is the founder and publisher of Playmen, a glossy monthly album of nudes and what would probably turn out to be articles if anyone bothered to read them. Despite--or because of--a running battle with police, the magazine has reached a circulation of 450,000 in less than four years. That is phenomenal, especially since Playmen costs just over a dollar a copy. LIFE-like Epoca (circ. 350,000) and Oggi (950,000) cost 29-c- and 24-c- respectively.

Playmen started out to imitate Playboy, although more prudently: the first Girl of the Month held her hands over her bosom. But in the last year or so, Playmen has taken on a style and candor of its own. Playmen's nudes are women, not girls, and rather normal women at that. Reflecting European tastes, Playmen does not display the mammary obsession that Playboy profitably discerns in Americans. Says Publisher Tattilo: "The U.S. is a matriarchy. I think this is the reason for the American male preference for women with exaggerated, voluminous bosoms, true wet nurses with a reassuring maternal aspect." The women she chooses for Playmen are slimmer, cooler, more urbane and more mature than Hefner's coed cuties. Hefner's girls giggle and eat ice cream; Tattilo's taste centers on women who might smile over a Campari.

Topless B.B. Signora Tattilo, who has the sleek, confident demeanor of a successful public relations woman, was once a successful public relations woman. In 1965 she and her husband, now separated, broke into publishing with a weekly for children called Big. A year later they started Men, a vulgar weekly collection on newsprint of photographs of nude women often purchased from Scandinavia--or provided by the agents of Italian starlets. Playmen was started in 1967, and looked enough like Playboy, which was then banned in Italy, to attract buyers. Except for the European style of its nudes and a blessed absence of Hefnerian philosophizing. Playmen still bears an outward resemblance to its U.S. forebear. Its centerpiece Girl of the Month folds out. while all about her lie layers of fiction, more-or-less serious articles and satellite layouts of film stars on sheets and Scandinavian beauties in saunas.

Since the beginning, not a month has gone by without police in some Italian cities being ordered to seize the magazine. Each month there is a race between the readers and the cops. Playmen rarely lasts more than 48 hours on the newsstands; in that time, it is either sold or seized. The readers are usually quicker than the police. Signora Tattilo says that Playmen cost $640,000 to launch and estimates that it is now worth $ 1,600,000.

Publisher Tattilo makes the decisions at Playmen, including cover-girl choices and such gambles with the law as publishing sneaked paparazzi pictures of Brigitte Bardot toplessly sunbathing. Unlike Hefner, Tattilo does not give sexual advice to readers who write in, but she says: "Playmen was started to fill a gap in the Italian press. I hope Playmen will contribute to changing, in an intelligent way, certain archaic attitudes toward love and sex among Italian men and women."

Playmen probably is helping to change official Italian attitudes. Five years ago it was dangerous in Italy to publish a photograph of a woman with a bare bosom. Such pictures--for instance, in Vogue's Italian edition--no longer provoke surprise. Despite the seizure orders (usually from a local prosecutor), Playmen has only rarely been charged under Article 725 of the Italian penal code for "violation of the common sense of decency."

Is Playmen obstructing the liberation of women, as some American critics have claimed of Playboy? Says Tattilo: "It is possible that Mr. Hefner considers the women in his magazine 'objects' instead of individuals. This is certainly not my way. In our concept of eroticism, the woman is the 'subject' as much as the man. I think that the American woman should first think of liberating herself from herself, from her own myth that threatens to crush the American male. I am surprised that in America there is no men's liberation movement."

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