To be honest, as far as naked women go, a magazine making thier bones off them is a loosing proposition.

What made Playboy a successful magazine, and still a successful operations is that, after you're done with the sex, there is excellent political, opinion, and lifestyle reporting.

I've always felt this had a subtle feminist influence on young men, to forever associate beautiful women with political theory, and literary criticism.

Granted it's still a male fantasy (as much as any fantasy) that a woman should be both beautiful, sexy, and articulate on subjects of interest to men be it global politics, or the latest in automotive technology, but is a much more complex fantasy than what Playboy gets accused of.

While magazines like Hustler delight in thier Misogyny Playboy has always held their women in high regard, insisting that they atleast present the image of education, intelect, and activism.

You can hate Christie Hefner for dealing in sex, just as you can hate anyone for that work. However I think in the way playboy handles sex, it far more about personal empowerment for both sexes, than it is about any kind of opression. The Playboy ideal is that men want sex, and women want sex, and both are impossibly attractive and interesting.

That's a fantasy, but it is all our fantasies. Wouldn't you as a feminist want an impossibly handsom impossibly interesting partner? Wouldn't you want to be impossibly atractive and interesting as well?

I don't think I've ever seen anything with the Bunny logo that depicted women as anything other than attractive sexual beings who choose attractive passionate partners. I don't think I've seen a Bunny Logo on a rape, or even a Peeping, and actually in their inside out series detailed quite a bit of complex sexual interactions with a twilightzone flair.

You can toss Playboy in the smut bin, along with Hustler Magazine, Madame Bovery, and Harlequin, or you can actually examine the content and decide if it meets the criteria for smut (you'll know when you see it).

If all sex is dirty, then I suppose it is as dirty as all sex, but if there will be degrees, then perhaps Playboy is what feminist porn for men would look like.

With a few exceptions ususally based around religious requirements multiple children as a status symbol is rare.

Most people perceiving children as status enhancers focus on quality not quantity, ergo you have your perfect little snowflake, and then dedicate your being to giving them eveyr opertunity to reflect your own success. In some cases you may get two children here (an heir and a spare as the old saying goes) but even there children as a status symbol are the exception not the rule.

The rule for procreation is that people have children to build thier family unit, which they may or may not do depending on the status of their family unit to begin with. In that, ones stability of family unit is usually the more pressing concenr, hence the delay of the addition of a new family member.

The underlying idea, that education and birth control options leads to choices that lead to a decline in population, are sound. This is why you will see the most children among those in wealthy countries with the least ammount of options. Both the poor, and those women who have opted out of the rat race.

In both cases you are looking at minorities. The vast majority of middle class people (lower and upper) find themselves with a 0 - 2 child family, which leads to a net reduction in population.

While models may anticipate young motherhood, older motherhood still has the very basic limiting factor that was anticipated in previous modles.

The more you postpone child bearing the fewer children you can have.

Likewise as you postpone child bearing the more attractive other child rearing options become (i.e. adoption from over populated countries).

When you look at native born populations they are falling, that's all there is to it, immigration keeps the populations of wealthy nations rising, and this is held up at least in the US by census data.

The underlying theory, the more options available to people the less attractive any single option becomes, is still very sound and the numbers so far presented hold it up.

While in the past child rearing was a singular option for many people, in our modern age, Marriage isn't even as attractive an option as it once was.

You combine this with people postponing child bearing until a doctor is required at conception and delivery and it's pretty hard not to see a negative growth model for human population in the west.

Now, in countries where there isn't upward mobility for both sexes you may find this outcome skewed away from lower population growth, but the nature of free society suggests that such equality will be achieved, and said negative population growth will be the norm.

This is the problem when you take a single data point out of context and try to extrapolait a whole from it.