In the hazy past of the pre-Internet era, there existed a certain artifact that could

be found among the possessions of millions of men and some women around the globe.

Tucked between mattresses and box springs, stashed in shoe boxes on high shelves and cluttered

garages, or proudly displayed in stacks on the backs of porcelain thrones. Costing just

a few dollars a piece, these mythic relics contained all the mysteries of sex, style,

and masculine success, and yet, their taudry nature made them both admired and reviled.

I'm talking, of course, about nudy mags. Glossy-paged periodicals fall to the brim with boobs

and butts in every state of objectification imaginable. It may be hard for some of you to

fathom a world where people used to buy physical copies of porn, surely the embarrassment

of getting recognized, leaving a store with a copy of busty co-eds five in hand would

preclude that, no? But believe it or not, there was a time when magazines with naked women

in them were more than just sticky forbidden treasure to be passed around in groups of horny teenage

boys. In their heyday, the leading publishers didn't just print smut. They built nightclubs,

doubled in Hollywood, and dove headfirst into the major social issues of the time,

the least surprising of which being censorship and free speech.

There have been claims and counterclaims of the empowerment that came with having women

bear at all, and the most popular pornographer of them all took credit for kickstarting the

sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. But whether it was thrusting the progressive movement

forward or just along for the ride, the adult magazine industry underwent a monumental shift

of its own, right at a major turning point in American culture. This change was predicated on

the question of how far you could go while still maintaining some semblance of respectability

in the mainstream, and it resulted in a war, albeit the quietest war you've never heard of,

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