Gynophagia Chronicles Playpen Magazine Background
As with many American institutions, the original Playboy was a casualty of the nuclear attack by China on Los Angeles in the year 2068. In 2099 a man named Stephen Roth, who claimed to be a direct descendent of Hugh M. Hefner, founded a new edition of Playboy based in San Luis Obisbo, CA. Immediately a law suit was filed by the Hefner family which lasted five years and wormed it’s way from the Superior Court of San Luis Obisbo County to the United States Supreme Court where it was decided that Roth was to cease using the Playboy Marque name immediately. However, the Playmate trademark had expired, and could continue to be used. The January 2105 issue arrived in subscribers mail as Playpen, and has used that Marque to present times. That same year, the new Playboy Magazine premiered. This attempt to re-establish Playboy by the Hefner family never gained traction, and the fledgling magazine folded after only six issues.
Playpen continued to be reasonably successful after the name change, but was still plagued by accusations by the Hefner family that Stephen Roth was, in fact, an imposter. This issue went unresolved during Roth’s lifetime and all legal action was dropped shortly after his death. The issue was never resolved legally.
Playpen continued as it had started for five years as “Entertainment for Men.” It’s focus, of course, was on the Playmates. But it featured up to date monthly digests of Politics, Entertainment and Social Commentary, all of which were often edgy and biting. It’s monthly feature, the Playpen Interview, was the centerpiece of the magazines literary content.
In 2112 Stephen Roth began construction of the Playpen Mansion on the site of what was once the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant with the acquisition of some 800 acres in Avilla Beach, CA, near San Luis Obisbo.
In 2114, the popularity of Playpen skyrocketed with the addition of Beauty and Fashion guides for its primary readership: Young American Women. The moniker: “Entertainment for Men” was dropped in 2115 and replaced by “Entertainment for Men and Women.” In 2135, Stephen Roth died and the magazine went into receivership for three years till it was acquired by the Roth Institute, a new organization formed by close friends of Stephen Roth. Roth’s original idea was that the women featured in his magazine should be the best America had to offer, and they should “run a gauntlet” in order to prove their worth. The Board of Directors, which consisted of investors as well as former top editors, photographers and writers from the magazine put Roth’s vision into practice. In a petition to the United States Congress gave Playpen Playmates a special status that allowed them to live childless till age 40, which was the lowest age cap among the several states. The Caveat was: All Playmates must be Citizens of the Unites States., as U.S. Law could not protect foreign nationals from the culling laws of their own countries.
This law went into effect on July 1, 2140, and applied retroactively to all Playpen Playmates currently alive who were U.S. Citizens. It was in with the January edition of Playpen that Roth’s vision was realized.
Each Playmate would become property of Playpen Entertainment Group for life immediately upon their signing the contract that made her a Playmate.
All Playmates from that day forth would submit to being raped during the months of July or August of the following year prior to the Playmate of the Year announcement. Each rape is filmed, edited and transferred to Digital Video media common at the time for distribution. The resulting production is named “Playmates In Peril” and has been a consistent best seller since the first was issued in January of 2142.
The Playmate of the Year would be featured in the October issue of the following year would be selected in this fashion: Magazine Sales, Subscriber Votes would count for two thirds of the vote. The total number of votes and individual magazine sales would each count as one vote, and that number would be divided by sixty. The 30 Member Playpen Board of Directors would each have a vote that equaled the resulting value, so that the Board of Directors votes would count as 1/3 of the total.
Playmates would be ranked up to 3rd Runner Up, the eight lowest vote getters would be considered equals in the eyes of Playpen. The 3rd Runner Up would be culled in August of the year following her debut in Playpen Magazine as the Centerfold.
The new status for Playmates made Playpen an instant hot property. National Sales went from 11 Million copies a month to 17 overnight and climbed steadily. The “Cream of the Crop” in Young Women willing to undress and pose envisioned by Stephen Roth was realized. Suddenly being a Playmate was like winning the lottery and being crowned a princess. Any girl who thought anything of herself at all might attend one of hundreds of “casting calls” run by the Magazine. The trend was so huge that in 2172 Playpen began the E-Girl program. The E-Girl program featured a girl a day, or E-Girl of the Day (EGOD) in 12 pictures submitted by the model for free to Playpen. Subscribers could vote on those girls featured over the course of a week from Monday to Sunday, and the winner would become an E-Girl of the Week (EGOW). The four or five EGOWs in a month would compete to become an E-Girl of the Month (EGOM), and the twelve EGOMs would compete to become Miss June of the following year’s issue.
Literary Content:
Playpen initially took it's cue from Playboy Magazine in the literary content department. However, its political section, which was called “Town Hall” took up a full three eights of the literary pages. Each month authors would digest the news from the previous months and condense them down into their basic parts, creating articles which did a very good job of recording history with clarity. The editorials were so well constructed that, by 2130, Harvard University had begun using the Playpen Town Hall text for any of it's curriculum involving recent history. By 2150 the magazine had nearly tripled in pages, having gone from a standard one hundred fifty pages in the first decade to a whopping five hundred pages.
The fashion/beauty section of Playpen remained small till the year 2170. At that point, Playpen began promoting designers rather than simply covering them. Each month they would feather a “Designer of the Month” from 2170 onward. It took nearly a decade for that to catch on and become an important part of the magazine's mystique, but by 2180 Playpen's Fashion section was renamed Fashion and Style. It would have three major parts: Fashion, Cosmetics and Interior Design. There would even be a monthly pattern made available for women who sewed their own clothing.
In 2215, Belinda Hawthorn, a successful E-Girl of the month for December of 2210 became an associate Editor of Playpen Magazine. While in that position Miss Hawthorn began a small wire service designed for Playmates and E-Girls to post blogs on the Playpen Website. It was called Playpen Entertainment Group Wire Service, or PEG Wire among professionals. For a bargain basement price, several major newspapers and many more small newspapers took up a subscription to PEG Wire. In late 2218, PEG Wire achieved a new status as it began featuring stories by major news personalities, such as Simon Transit, who was lured from the Washington Post, and in the early 2220s PEG Wire had overtaken Scripps Howard in the #5 slot of top Hard News Wire Services.