With its appearance on the stands in May 1973, Playgirl magazine became the first magazine for women to focus on men. Although Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan had featured the first nude male centerfold, Playgirl, first published by Douglas Lambert and edited by Marin Scott Milam, was more of a female counterpart to Playboy. While Cosmopolitan may have pushed at the far edges of women's magazines, Playgirl went over the line in its effort to bring a newly blossomed feminism to the realm of popular reading material. It desired to offer women "the good life," much as Playboy identified a way of life that encompassed the music their male readers listened to, the books they read, the cars they drove—and the women who fed their fantasies.

By the late 1990s, although Playgirl could boast a circulation of more than 500,000, this was still nowhere near the much larger circulation figures...