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Speaker 1: By the end of nineteen seventy five, Viva's de facto publisher,

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Speaker 1: Kathy Keaton's normally breezy, horny monthly editor's letters suddenly read

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Speaker 1: more like pointed manifestos or defensive strikes. Here's podcaster and

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Speaker 1: journalist Natalie Robamed reading Kathy.

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Speaker 2: Whenever I admit publicly that I enjoy being a sex object,

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Speaker 2: hotline feminists screep me with hoots of hostility.

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Speaker 1: It's still the mid seventies, and Kathy's partner, Bob Guccioni,

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Speaker 1: is still in a highly public war with anti porn feminists.

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Speaker 1: But it's not just Bob anymore. The anti porn feminist

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Speaker 1: movement is now coming for Kathy too, for selling penthouse

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Speaker 1: ads and especially for her complicity in Bob's porn empire.

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Speaker 2: Out they come practically foaming at the mouth, the self

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Speaker 2: appointed defenders of the faith. We're through with all that,

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Speaker 2: they shout. Women no longer awe nor do they wish

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Speaker 2: to be sex objects.

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Speaker 1: Along with the letter is a photo of Kathy done

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Speaker 1: up in a gauzy white dress, pearly lipstick, her hair

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Speaker 1: and loose waves. Kathy's in her late thirties here, but

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Speaker 1: the photo styling is young and kittnish, and her image

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Speaker 1: matches her words. According to Kathy, she's a sex object

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Speaker 1: for men's consumption, and she loves it.

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Speaker 2: Being a sex object is just another way of saying

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Speaker 2: that I'm glad, I'm female, Glad, I'm womanly. I enjoy

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Speaker 2: being gloved, pampered, and needed. Now, why in God's name

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Speaker 2: would I want to deny myself that.

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Speaker 1: Kathy's letter is meant to be a counter attack against

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Speaker 1: the rise of anti porn feminists, but it reads more

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Speaker 1: like a jumble of internalized misogyny. In it, Kathy defends

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Speaker 1: putting a man's sexual needs before your own.

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Speaker 2: Sure, I'm playing a role if you want to call

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Speaker 2: it that. I'm serving him, giving him pleasure, but it

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Speaker 2: gives me pleasure at the same time.

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Speaker 1: And she also talks about how a good sex object

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Speaker 1: should never threaten her man. With her career success.

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Speaker 2: She doesn't talk about her talent, or her money or

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Speaker 2: her pa. Instead, she behaves as if he, rather than she,

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Speaker 2: is the center of that domestic weld.

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Speaker 1: Kathy's message, much like Viva at this time, is confused

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Speaker 1: as hell. Two years in and Viva is still experiencing

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Speaker 1: growing pains it's floundering around for cohesion, trying to make

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Speaker 1: all its feminist power and soft dicks blend. Sometimes it

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Speaker 1: goes corny and big, like in it can't be Spread

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Speaker 1: of nude male hairdressers, and other times it goes dull

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Speaker 1: and predictable, like in its makeovers of plain women who

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Speaker 1: don't need makeovers. A women's magazine trope, if there ever

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Speaker 1: was one. There's an essay on sexism in the film industry,

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Speaker 1: and frank talk on body image, and the same issue

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Speaker 1: where somebody writes about SHARE's secrets for staying quote spelt

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Speaker 1: essentially Viva can't really decide what it is. And Kathy's

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Speaker 1: at a bit of a crossroads as well. At the

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Speaker 1: time of this editor's letter, she's about to be thirty seven.

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Speaker 1: For most people now, that's young, but back then a

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Speaker 1: thirty seven year old woman might as well have been

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Speaker 1: fifty seven or eighty seven. Remember the late sixties movie

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Speaker 1: The Graduate, How Dustin Hoffman's twenty one year old character

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Speaker 1: was getting hit on by the forty five year old

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Speaker 1: Missus Robinson, the mother of his girlfriend. May I ask

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Speaker 1: you a question, what do you think of me?

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Speaker 3: What do you mean?

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Speaker 1: Well, Anne Bancroft, who played Missus Robinson, was only thirty

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Speaker 1: five years old in that movie, which shows you what

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Speaker 1: Hollywood and even the general public thought about the sex

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Speaker 1: appeal of women who were no longer in their twenties.

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Speaker 1: By the way. In contrast, Hoffman was twenty nine in

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Speaker 1: that movie, playing a twenty one year old. But I digress. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously women are sexy at all ages, but Kathy is

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Speaker 1: maneuvering through dated nineteen seventies values of women's looks, and

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Speaker 1: she can't quite seem to face the reality of seemingly

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Speaker 1: everyone telling her it's time to leave her super young

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Speaker 1: sex object years behind. Both Viva and Kathy are in

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Speaker 1: the midst of an awkward identity crisis, and time's had

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Speaker 1: ticken on defining exactly who and what they both really

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Speaker 1: are and want to be. From crooked media and iHeartMedia,

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Speaker 1: I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is stiff, Episode six, Midlife Crisis,

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Speaker 1: Act one, Lose the woman.

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Speaker 3: Kathy Keaton was a very very strong woman, but she

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Speaker 3: was insecure creatively.

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Speaker 1: That's Bob Guccioni Junior, Bob Guccioni, Senior's son from his

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Speaker 1: second wife.

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Speaker 3: And you know I don't think she frankly had the

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Speaker 3: abilities to be creatively in control. She wasn't a very

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Speaker 3: creative and a good writer, wasn't a very particularly visual person.

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Speaker 3: She wasn't necessarily an instinctual or reflex his editor, Like.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people we spoke to, He's talking about

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Speaker 1: all the things Kathy Keaton wasn't. So who was she?

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Speaker 1: This is a tough question. Kathy was a confusing, even

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Speaker 1: mysterious figure for most of her Viva staff. She was

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Speaker 1: an unconventional boss, non confrontational. She hid in her office

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Speaker 1: a lot like Bob. She could be absent from the

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Speaker 1: day to day for weeks. She's credited as being the

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Speaker 1: publisher and editor of Viva. But if you've ever had

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Speaker 1: this kind of there but not really their boss, you

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Speaker 1: know that a title doesn't mean much if they don't

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Speaker 1: actually show up consistently to do the boring and necessary

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Speaker 1: work of bossing. Here's Viva, editor of al Monro.

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Speaker 4: I had any conversation with her was when I went

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Speaker 4: into their she had a little anti office and I

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Speaker 4: went in for a second and I'm not sure what for,

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Speaker 4: and she just looked up and she said something like,

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Speaker 4: may I help you? And I just looked at her

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Speaker 4: and I said, I don't think so, and I walked out.

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Speaker 1: And even when she was there, Kathy wasn't the most professional.

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Speaker 1: She was chilly and removed, but also lacked boundaries and

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Speaker 1: even basic decorum. The kind of boss who inadvertently revealed

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Speaker 1: personal details about herself that as an employee, you don't

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Speaker 1: really want to know.

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Speaker 5: We were at the house one time, Valerie Jenny me.

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Speaker 5: We went up there to have dinner with Kathy for

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Speaker 5: a business meeting.

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Speaker 1: Let's via editor Pat Linden. She's talking about her colleagues, Valmonroe,

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Speaker 1: who we just heard from, and Ginny Kopecky.

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Speaker 5: Kathy said, does anybody want to smoke? And I didn't,

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Speaker 5: and I think just one of us did. And anyway,

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Speaker 5: in order to do that, we had to go into

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Speaker 5: their bedroom.

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Speaker 1: Kathy led Pat in her colleagues down a hallway right

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Speaker 1: to the entrance of the Gucci's bedroom.

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Speaker 5: There was a beaded curtain, I think it was beated,

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Speaker 5: and that's he went through that in order to get

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Speaker 5: to the bedroom. And that's how he got to the bedroom.

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Speaker 5: We walked through a beaded curtain. They don't even have

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Speaker 5: a door in their bedroom.

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Speaker 1: For all its opulence, the Guccioni homestead lacked a number

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Speaker 1: of normal house conventions, and this was something that could

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Speaker 1: be a bit freaky to the relatively traditional female editors, who,

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Speaker 1: if you recall, were forced to spend a lot of

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Speaker 1: time there since Bob mostly worked out of his home.

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Speaker 5: And so in the bedroom was an enormous bed And

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Speaker 5: then on two sawhorses is door, and on the door

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Speaker 5: is a very very complicated puzzle. You know those fifteen

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Speaker 5: hundred word jigsaw puzzle that Kathy did. You know, she

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Speaker 5: was alone a lot, I think, and so she would

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Speaker 5: sit in her bedroom and do this jigsaw puzzle.

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Speaker 1: If Kathy was alone a lot in her own house,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't because Bob wasn't there, remember he rarely left

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Speaker 1: the house. It was because he was on another floor

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Speaker 1: of their giant residence, namely the floor where Bob kept

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Speaker 1: his photo studio, a floor which contained extra bedrooms, a

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Speaker 1: floor where there were usually at least one or two

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Speaker 1: penthouse pets staying over. It was a space Rolling Stone

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Speaker 1: magazine once described as quote a dorm like arrangement where

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Speaker 1: pets were kept on a short leash and forbidden to

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Speaker 1: bring male guests into their bedrooms. I mean fucking yikes.

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Speaker 1: Here's another excerpt from Kathy Keaton's editor's letter.

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Speaker 2: Women enjoy the need to be appealing, seductive. A clever

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Speaker 2: sex object can be extremely aggressive, but so softly feminine

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Speaker 2: in her approach that she seems unobtrusive.

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Speaker 1: So Kathy's publicly talking about how much she loves being

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Speaker 1: objectified and keeping it sexy core with Bob, but at

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Speaker 1: home things seem different.

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Speaker 5: She wanted people to think that she had this fabulous

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Speaker 5: sex life because she was married to Bob. Goutcha and

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Speaker 5: I couldn't believe it, and I didn't and I don't.

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Speaker 5: We all agreed about that that there's a lot of talk,

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Speaker 5: and there's some magazines, but sex is not something that

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Speaker 5: is part of their life. And he didn't seem like

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Speaker 5: a sexy guy, and the house didn't seem like a

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Speaker 5: sexy place.

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Speaker 1: And maybe this puzzles at home floor away from a

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Speaker 1: penthouse pet's dorm life suit did Kathy fine. We'll never know,

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Speaker 1: but what we do know is it wasn't exactly the

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Speaker 1: life Kathy Keaton had originally imagined for herself growing up

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Speaker 1: as a kid in South Africa. Kathy had not aspired

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Speaker 1: to be an exotic dancer, nor a porn publisher, nor

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Speaker 1: a sexy Manhattan hostess, nor anything like any of the

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Speaker 1: roles she'd played up until this point.

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Speaker 6: I wanted to be a scientist. Given an opportunity, I

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Speaker 6: would have become a biologist. But your little girls didn't

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Speaker 6: get to do things that in South Africa in those

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Speaker 6: days are in England, with America for that matter.

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Speaker 1: That's Kathy being interviewed on Arlene hrson cable access show

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Speaker 1: in the eighties. By her own account, Kathy had always

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Speaker 1: been bookish and even academic, but as a lower class

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Speaker 1: girl born in the late thirties, the world wasn't so

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Speaker 1: welcoming to her academic curiosity nor her smarts. So instead,

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Speaker 1: like many ambitious women of her time of all times,

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Speaker 1: Kathy used her looks and old timey feminine wiles to

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Speaker 1: get ahead. By the time Viva's published in nineteen seventy three,

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Speaker 1: She's got all the makings of a seventies bombshell, the

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Speaker 1: slinky clothes, the blonde waves. But look at any footage

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Speaker 1: of her and you see that under the sex kitten veneer,

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Speaker 1: she's mostly awkward. She seems like a nerd at heart.

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Speaker 1: Here's editor Robin.

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Speaker 7: You know, she dressed like the X stripper that she was.

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Speaker 7: But as is true with many people I've met in

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Speaker 7: the entertainment field, shyness can sometimes be there. They're comfortable

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Speaker 7: in character, but they're not personally comfortable.

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Speaker 1: Here's bel Monroe again.

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Speaker 4: I saw that as as if she were a character,

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Speaker 4: you know what I mean, like some kind of character

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Speaker 4: in a play.

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Speaker 1: Kathy may be in character, but her awkwardness is a

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Speaker 1: parent no matter what her costume. And this is something Bob,

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Speaker 1: her partner, the founder of Penthouse, is not shy about

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Speaker 1: letting her know. Here's Kathy with Arlene Hrson again.

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Speaker 6: Why didn't you photograph you for the MAXA. We always

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Speaker 6: told me I was the wrong time hm, which he

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Speaker 6: annoyed me. I wasn't good looking enough.

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Speaker 1: Oh how did you feel about that?

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Speaker 6: I was serious about that.

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Speaker 1: Whether it's because she fears Bob's rejection or she's genuinely

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Speaker 1: into looking over the top sexy, Kathy mostly leads with

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Speaker 1: her bombshell persona, not her brains. Kathy was bold and

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Speaker 1: independent and progressive in so many ways. For example, she

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Speaker 1: and Bob didn't marry for decades and from accounts from

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Speaker 1: friends who spoke to us off the record, they didn't

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Speaker 1: want kids. By many many accounts, Bob and Kathy also

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Speaker 1: had an open relationship that we can't be sure whose

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Speaker 1: choice that was, or if that choice went both ways.

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Speaker 1: Here's Kathy's letter Again.

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Speaker 2: Being a sex subject has nothing to do with promiscuity.

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Speaker 2: In fact, being a successful sex subject often means being

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Speaker 2: happily faithful to just one man.

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Speaker 1: See, even if Kathy had independent sexual or professional aspirations,

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Speaker 1: her attention was mainly in one place.

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Speaker 7: She was really very focused on Bob. I don't think

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Speaker 7: she spent a lot of time thinking.

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Speaker 1: About what it was like to be a boss. But

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Speaker 1: this the fixation on staying in the male gaze, needing

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Speaker 1: to be seen and validated by men, even if it's

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Speaker 1: just one man, in order to feel valuable. It's almost

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Speaker 1: always a doomed enterprise, a damned if you do, damned

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Speaker 1: if you don't, patriarchal trap. Too many women are stuck

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Speaker 1: in even today, and for Kathy at least, the need

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Speaker 1: to appear sexy to men and especially Bob, and especially

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Speaker 1: as she got older, may have grown bigger than the

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Speaker 1: need to do her job well. At Viva.

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Speaker 2: The energy boostock at from being openly admired for my

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Speaker 2: looks is a whole lot better than any instant breakfast,

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Speaker 2: and I don't think it's interfered with my career. In fact,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure it's had the opposite effect.

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Speaker 1: And even though the constant obsessing over her appearance didn't

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Speaker 1: exactly help her duties on the content side of Viva,

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Speaker 1: it did give her an edge when it came to

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Speaker 1: her other job selling ads, at least it did. For

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Speaker 1: a minute.

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Speaker 8: She would go with this woman, Marianne Howardson, who was

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Speaker 8: also a fabulous looking woman.

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Speaker 1: Like Penhouse pr director Leslie J.

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Speaker 8: Remembers, and the two of them. I once saw them

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Speaker 8: talking to one man, an advertiser on other side of him,

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Speaker 8: and I thought, oh my god, this man is buying pages.

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Speaker 1: Kathy and Marianne laid on the charm and it worked

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Speaker 1: like magic. Advertisers bought in.

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Speaker 8: I don't know, they just it all worked. They were

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Speaker 8: fabulous looking, and they were terrific, and they obviously made

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Speaker 8: a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: This sex sells approach was particularly effective for drawing in

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Speaker 1: the Penthouse advertisers of the time. Marlborough man Big Tobacco macho,

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Speaker 1: booze companies men being men's stuff. But Viva was a

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Speaker 1: problem from the start. Brands that traditionally bought ads in

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Speaker 1: women's magazines were generally more conservative. Cosmetics companies, say, didn't

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Speaker 1: want an association with a pornographer like Bob, in part

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Speaker 1: because they were also selling to teens. For a company

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Speaker 1: like Procter and Gamble, a laundry detergent ad in Viva

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Speaker 1: wasn't worth the risk of turning off brutish housewives. They

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Speaker 1: couldn't afford even a whiff of connection to smut. So

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Speaker 1: after a decade selling ads for Penhouse and Viva, Kathy's

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Speaker 1: sales strategy is starting to hit a bunch of snags.

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Speaker 1: Here's Viva and Penhouse editor Peter Block.

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Speaker 9: She knew she was great at selling ads, and she'd

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Speaker 9: do it by a combination of intelligence and flirtatiousness. But

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Speaker 9: with certain people, you don't do that. If you're trying

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Speaker 9: to give people to give you millions of dollars in

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Speaker 9: your magazine, that's not the way to do it. And

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Speaker 9: she'd wear these short skirts and kind of do her

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Speaker 9: flirtiness and all this stuff that worked with a lot

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Speaker 9: of people, and certainly and worked with a lot of advertisers,

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Speaker 9: but didn't work with everybody.

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Speaker 1: Kathy's using what she knows being alluring and unthreatening to men,

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Speaker 1: lightening their wallets by giving them what she thinks they want.

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Speaker 1: It's worked for her well all the way back to

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Speaker 1: her dancing days, but now it's starting to work less.

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Speaker 1: Like when Kathy goes to fundraise from some bankers with

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Speaker 1: her colleague Richard Cohen.

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Speaker 9: Afterwards, the banker called him up and said, Richard, I'm

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Speaker 9: going to give you a piece of advice. Lose the woman.

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Speaker 9: And Richard said, you're talking about miss Keaton. He said,

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Speaker 9: lose the woman. You're not going to make a dime

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Speaker 9: with her.

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Speaker 6: Now.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to cast dispersions here. Unlike Peter, I

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Speaker 1: think Kathy could totally do her job in a miniskirt

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Speaker 1: or a spacesuit. Who cares whatever. And it's impossible to

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Speaker 1: pinpoint exactly why Kathy's sales strategy stops landing the way

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Speaker 1: it once had. It could be because she's getting older,

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Speaker 1: or because the times are changing, or because in some

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Speaker 1: more conservative rooms sex just doesn't sell.

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Speaker 5: She had no sense that this was inappropriate, that you know,

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Speaker 5: you just don't do this and she didn't know what

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Speaker 5: was going on in that sense.

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Speaker 1: Whatever the case with Kathy out dealing with ad sales

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Speaker 1: and Bob distracted out fighting anti porn feminists, the Viva

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Speaker 1: editors they have no real guiding light, no boss leading

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Speaker 1: them in any direction. The rape issue undid a lot.

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Speaker 1: Betty Jane had been fired. The amazing executive editor Patti

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Speaker 1: Bosworth is still at Viva, but she's heavily reeled in.

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Speaker 1: Morale amongst the staff is low, and the job it's

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Speaker 1: just not the same. As the calendar turned to nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy six, as Viva turned three, the center no longer

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Speaker 1: held on this magazine experiment. Something had to give after

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Speaker 1: the break.

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Speaker 3: Most of my life was defined by the moment when

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Speaker 3: there was before Penis and after Penis Viva.

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Speaker 1: Act to the grand Neutering. By nineteen seventy six, Viva's

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Speaker 1: in trouble. Here's Leslie j who was head of pr

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Speaker 1: for Penthouse at the time.

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Speaker 8: They weren't marketing it the right way. I feel because look,

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Speaker 8: nobody knows what the magazine was, that it was directionless, and.

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Speaker 1: She's right, of course, the magazine's rudderless for all sorts

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Speaker 1: of reasons. It's currently a mishma of Limp Dick's hard

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Speaker 1: hitting feminist essays and Kathy's letters on how to put

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Speaker 1: your man first. There's a leadership vacuum and a morale problem.

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Speaker 1: But more than even all these things, the most important

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Speaker 1: thing in any creative enterprise always there's a money problem.

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Speaker 1: Unlike Penthouse, Viva is not selling. Here's Robin, and.

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Speaker 7: We didn't sell a lot of subscriptions, but you know,

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Speaker 7: we didn't sell a lot of ads either.

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Speaker 1: And remember Viva was reliant on subscriptions. Though it sold

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Speaker 1: in some newsstands, it was considered too explicit to be

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Speaker 1: carried on most. And it also needed ads, which had

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Speaker 1: always been and were now even with Kathy's charms, difficult

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Speaker 1: to scare up.

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Speaker 7: Most of our readers were gay men because it was

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Speaker 7: the only way you could see nude men outside of

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Speaker 7: a porn environment at that time, which might be a

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Speaker 7: good market, but they're not going to be able to

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Speaker 7: sell mascara advertising.

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Speaker 1: Yes, at this point point, Viva's readership is mostly gay men,

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Speaker 1: a fact that was always rumored, but now Robin could confirm.

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Speaker 1: She's seen the names on the subscriber list, and with

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Speaker 1: few ads, and few subscriptions and no significant female readership. Well,

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Speaker 1: the magazine's identity crisis is starting to affect people's abilities

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Speaker 1: to get their jobs done.

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Speaker 7: I had to do a promotional piece for Viva, and

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Speaker 7: I could not figure out what this was.

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Speaker 1: Robin's just twenty one at this time, trying to navigate

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Speaker 1: this challenging environment.

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Speaker 7: And so I said to Alma, my boss, I said,

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Speaker 7: I'm really struggling. I don't know what I can say.

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Speaker 7: I don't know any woman who would read this magazine.

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Speaker 7: I just don't get it. And she said, you know,

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Speaker 7: Bob and Taffy would take that well coming from you.

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Speaker 7: You know, given your background, you know, why don't you

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Speaker 7: write them a private letter? So I wrote it from

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Speaker 7: my heart. It was everything I believed.

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Speaker 1: Remember, Robin's been at the company since she was seventeen,

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Speaker 1: since the company was smaller. She's basically part of the family.

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Speaker 1: Her letter is impassioned, a plea to her bosses. In it, she.

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Speaker 7: Says, I've got to tell you, I just don't understand

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Speaker 7: Viva and I find it impossible to promote I don't

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Speaker 7: know any of my friends. You know, I'm twenty one.

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Speaker 7: We're your target market. I don't know anybody who wants

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Speaker 7: to look at pictures of male penises. I just don't.

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Speaker 7: And you know, I like the idea of a sexy

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Speaker 7: magazine for women, but this isn't sexy to me.

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Speaker 1: Now hindsight is twenty twenty, but it's important to say

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Speaker 1: here there are loads of straight women who like looking

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Speaker 1: at all kinds of penises in all kinds of ways,

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Speaker 1: and who find pictures of penises extremely hot. Maybe not

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Speaker 1: in the soft, sad slung comedy way they were often

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Speaker 1: depicted in Viva, but anyway, back to Robin, she's hungry,

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Speaker 1: she's got that idealistic early career fight in her, and

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Speaker 1: she's found a cause worth fighting for. She thinks the

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Speaker 1: Viva dix are not only gross, but more that they're

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Speaker 1: dragging Viva down. And Robin's not the only Viva editor

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Speaker 1: who thinks the penises and Viva are not working. Here's pat.

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Speaker 5: First of all, it was losing readers because women were

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Speaker 5: interested in naked men. And I read in something somewhere

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Speaker 5: that somebody said, you know, Bob GUCCIONI does not understand

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Speaker 5: that women don't want to see naked men.

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Speaker 1: So Robin writes the memo and Kathy and Bob agree

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Speaker 1: with her. It works.

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Speaker 3: Most of my life was defined by the moment when

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Speaker 3: there was before Penis and after Venus.

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Speaker 1: That's Bob Junior. At the time Robin was coming up

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Speaker 1: with her memo about the future of Viva, Bob Junior

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Speaker 1: is coming to a similar conclusion.

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Speaker 3: The circulation department kept coming to my father and saying,

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Speaker 3: we're losing distributors. They don't they think it's a porn magazine.

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Speaker 3: They don't get an understand. You can tell him whatever

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Speaker 3: you want. You can tell you got award winning writers,

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Speaker 3: and we did have those.

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Speaker 1: At this point. Anna east Nin, Maxine Hank Kingston, Nikki Giovanni,

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Speaker 1: and Rika Johng had all written for Viva, but it

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00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:06,320
Speaker 1: still got the X rated taint, no pun of being

387
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Speaker 1: a sleezy porn magazine. In the seventies, this sleeze factor

388
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Speaker 1: is way easier to sell if you're making porn for men.

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Speaker 1: Penhouse and Playboy were both sold in porn stores or

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Speaker 1: porn sections of newsstands, places where men shopped and women.

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Speaker 1: Did not put five issues of Viva in the porn

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Speaker 1: section of a newsstand. Well by the end of the month,

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Speaker 1: all five would be right where you left them. The

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Speaker 1: new stand business was a smaller portion of sales, but

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Speaker 1: it was also a key way to be discovered by

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Speaker 1: new potential readers, and for Viva, newstand sales would always

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Speaker 1: be limited. No one knew how to help Viva sell

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Speaker 1: because women reading porn wasn't normalized, and even if Viva

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Speaker 1: was more than just porn, as long as there was

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Speaker 1: a picture of a dick next to its groundbreaking articles,

401
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Speaker 1: the distributors viewed the magazine one way and one way only.

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Speaker 3: We have the best photographers in the world. Helmut Newton

403
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Speaker 3: was taking pictures for us an ADVD on mistaking pictures

404
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:10,240
Speaker 3: for Viva the best, but the whole staler does know

405
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Speaker 3: that or care. He just sees the penis and he

406
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 3: thinks this goes into a porn stool. I don't have

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Speaker 3: any porn stores in my network. Why am I getting

408
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Speaker 3: this magazine? So it wasn't going on sale in a

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Speaker 3: lot of the country.

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Speaker 1: The pressure is building up in terms of Viva not selling,

411
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Speaker 1: and Bob's usual, it's fine, the readers will catch up.

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Speaker 1: Attitude is beginning to falter finally, and.

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Speaker 3: Then one day just gave it to the pressure when

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Speaker 3: he realized the magazine was barely getting on sale outside

415
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 3: of New York and Los Angeles, another major beteput areas,

416
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Speaker 3: So the penises.

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Speaker 1: Went away by agreeing to cut the dicks from Viva.

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Speaker 1: Bob and Kathy meg a concession. It's a concession that

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Speaker 1: goes against the entire Viva promise, goes against the idea

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Speaker 1: that street women should have a place to stare at

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Speaker 1: naked men, to explore their R and X rated desires

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Speaker 1: like men had with Penthouse. And though the porn in

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Speaker 1: Viva was rarely executed appropriately, it was rarely through a

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Speaker 1: female lens, it was still the entire reason Viva was

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Speaker 1: made in the first place. And if Viva wasn't a

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Speaker 1: smart feminist porn magazine, then what in the world was it.

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Speaker 1: But Bob and Cathy don't give the staff much time

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Speaker 1: to sort this out. They're not what you'd call master

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Speaker 1: business strategists. They're capricious and impulsive. They decided that Dick

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Speaker 1: should go with no warning or vision for what happens next.

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Speaker 1: After Robin sends her memo, things move fast, faster than

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Speaker 1: Robin had imagined they would.

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Speaker 7: I was a little bit set up in writing the memo.

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Speaker 7: I was not the catalyst for them changing Viva.

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Speaker 1: After Robin's memo goes out, Bob and Cathy agree to

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00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 1: her direction, and Alma more Robin's boss who encouraged her

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Speaker 1: to write the memo, who'd never edited a magazine before

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Speaker 1: but clearly wanted to, now becomes Viva's main editor. Alma

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Speaker 1: Moore didn't want to talk to us for this part cast,

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00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: and since Patty passed away in twenty twenty, she's not

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Speaker 1: here to confirm this for sure, but judging from the mastheads,

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Speaker 1: Patty's out right after Robin's memo, which wasn't necessarily Robin's intention,

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Speaker 1: Patty Bosworth, the beloved editor who brought Viva some of

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Speaker 1: its most groundbreaking journalism, is thrown away with the dicks

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Speaker 1: very quickly.

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Speaker 7: Most of the staff was fired, the new policy was announced,

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00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 7: Alma was announced as the editorial director, and I moved

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00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:36,439
Speaker 7: over as an associate editor.

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Speaker 1: It was kind of surprising, and so in the April

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00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six issue, Viva has a new masthead and

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00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: Kathy publishes a new letter announcing the magazine's new identity.

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Speaker 1: It's titled on Passed in Future Changes. In this letter,

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Speaker 1: written just months after the one at the beginning of

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00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: this episode, Kathy's tone completely There's no sex kitten rhetoric.

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00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: She's a career woman now shouting her accomplishments, highlighting the

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00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: lack of professional opportunities for women, and publishing stories on

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00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,959
Speaker 1: things like how women should ask for a raise, gave us,

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00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,719
Speaker 1: changing and growing and what's unspoken is so is Kathy.

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00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: Here's Natalie Robamt again. Reading Kathy Viva has always been

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Speaker 1: very personal to me.

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00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 2: That's why I see changes to this magazine on human terms.

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00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 2: First there was birth, then self definition, and now there's growth.

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00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: Alongside the letter, there's a photo in it. Kathy looks

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00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:40,119
Speaker 1: a lot different than she did at the beginning of

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00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: this episode. She's decked out in power jewelry, chunky bracelets,

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00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 1: statement earrings, her nails are red, her hair's slicked back.

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00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 1: She's even smoking a cigarette. It's a transformation, akin to

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00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: Sandy's makeover at the end of Greece. If Sandy was

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00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 1: once an exotic dancer turned high powered girl boss. Kathy's

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Speaker 1: editors let her continues.

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Speaker 2: What will be different, perhaps most obvious at first, will

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00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:08,400
Speaker 2: be a change in our erotic photography with tastes developing

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00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 2: so rapidly, it's difficult to predict what's going to interest women,

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00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:15,640
Speaker 2: but in our opinion, it's not going to be male nudity.

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Speaker 1: Kathy has done a full one eighty.

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00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 2: It's an exciting time, and I believe a wonderful time.

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00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 2: Perhaps we will all be able to finally work in

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00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 2: a world in which a woman is allowed to work,

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00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 2: to be a respected member of society and retain her

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00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 2: own individuality.

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Speaker 1: And as the remaining Viva women head into the late seventies,

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00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: the times are a change in. The anti porn feminists

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00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 1: who were fighting Kathy are drowning out, all other feminist voices.

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00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:51,640
Speaker 1: Pornosic is heading out, and the Reagan era moral majorities

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00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 1: that sniffing around looking for a way in For Viva

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00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: editors like Pat and Robin, the Cox conundrum, the flaccid

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00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: dicks they hated, was at last settled. They no longer

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00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: need to keep up the charade. Here's Pat.

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Speaker 5: We're bringing Viva on this new track. Now. Viva is

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00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 5: now going to be a terrific magazine. It's going to

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00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 5: be a feminist magazine. It's going to be exciting, it's

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00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 5: going to be better than Miss. It's gonna be different

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00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 5: from Cosmo.

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Speaker 1: Well, the focus is now on words, and even though

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00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,640
Speaker 1: Viva no longer features groundbreaking mail nudes, that doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: it's photography will stop being both important and influential. Because

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00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 1: this little feminist porn magazine that no longer contains porn,

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00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:36,920
Speaker 1: it's about to become a launching pad for a woman

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00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: who will become the most famous and powerful fashion editor

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Speaker 1: of all time.

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Speaker 8: I remember when she came in, there was a big

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Speaker 8: to do with hell we have. Anna wintor.

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Speaker 1: Stiff is an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media.

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00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: It's produced by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by

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00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: me Jennifer Ramalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sidney Rapp

506
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:08,160
Speaker 1: is our associate producer, Story editing by Mary Knopf, music

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00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: sound design and engineering by Hannes Brown. Our fact checker

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00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: is Julia Paskin. Additional production support from Nafila Cato and

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00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: Inez Maza from Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer,

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00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: Katy Long, and Mary Knopf, with special thanks to Alison

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Speaker 1: Falsetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers are

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Speaker 1: Beth Anne Macaluso. And Julia Weaver