An Editors’ Letter

Dear Readers,

Last spring, we were lamenting the state of media over margaritas at a Mexican restaurant across from the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. We discussed how sex, humor, and provocative opinions had suddenly vanished from the web. Judging by Twitter, it seemed like everyone was outraged about everything, from Kathy Griffin to Roseanne to Backpage to the NRA. But in private (and on Signal), the populous was confessing their allegedly unpopular opinions about the war on free speech, sex, and humor. It was as though we all knew we had to act a certain way to save ourselves from being cancelled, but behind closed doors, we could let nuance flourish.

Everyone was acting like a neutered partisan puppy, and we did not want to hang out at the pound anymore. The only way to change this was to create a platform where people could speak their complicated, sometimes contradictory, but always genuine points of view. We planned a new media outlet, then we discovered the publication existed—and Mish already worked there.

To millennials and Gen Zers, a penthouse is the nice suite on the very top of a high-rise that takes up a whole floor. But to those who were born before 1985, Penthouse was an iconic men’s magazine run by New York artist and gold chain-covered eccentric Bob Guccione. Under his direction, Penthouse toed the line between where Playboy pussied out and Hustler went too far. Penthouse was controversy with an intellectual purpose. Guccione valued literature and provocative, thorough journalism as much as he did art and gorgeous naked women. As Camille Paglia told the Hollywood Reporter, unlike Playboy Bunnies, Penthouse Pets were erotic, powerful, sensual women, or “femme fatales.” Penthouse was always a publication that valued salacious sleight of hand, stunts, and press—even negative—more than anything else. Penthouse went to weird places, nabbed daring stories, and wasn’t afraid of crazy headlines. It was simultaneously Gawker before Gawker and Richardson before Richardson, but with investigative reporting good enough for the New York Times. (When the Unabomber mailed his manifesto, he sent it to three publications: the Times, the Washington Post, and Penthouse.)

In the Ronald Reagan era, Guccione’s project took on a more important meaning. The Republican administration had launched a war on sex, trying to outlaw everything from porn magazines to bareback gay sodomy. At several points, conservatives united with radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin on a joint kamikaze mission to annihilate Penthouse. In response, Guccione doubled down. Through his combination of art, tits, ass, and sass, he defended all Americans’ right to read, think freely, and jack off.

The eighties hold many similarities to today’s scary times. Online journalists work day and night to “cancel” people who offend others. In between posting selfies on Instagram, millennial feminists have begun worshiping Dworkin and her sexphobic, censorious sidekick Catharine MacKinnon. In Washington, D.C., self-proclaimed progressives Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders have voted in favor of FOSTA-SESTA, a bill that targets sex workers in the name of “human trafficking.” The eighties are back, baby!

Although Mish is a former feminist blogger and Mitchell is a gold star gay man, we fell in love with Guccione’s methods and styles. He was more high/low than any homosexual, more open-minded than any modern feminist. For the past six months, we have tested Guccione’s model to see if it would work in the twenty-first century. First, Mitchell wrote the definitive profile of Stormy Daniels, which was picked up by the Rachel Maddow Show, the Wall Street Journal, the Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Paper, People, Page Six, In Touch, Spin, the Daily Mail, the Daily Beast, Jezebel, HuffPo, Bossip, and more. VICE called it “one of the most hotly anticipated pieces of political journalism of the year.” A few months later, we published Leah McSweeney’s critical op-ed about how Asia Argento and Rose McGowan hijacked the #MeToo movement. Although Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, and other female celebrities attacked Leah, roughly 500,000 people read the story. (The starlets backed down after the New York Times confirmed that Argento had paid off a boy accusing her of rape. Embarrassing!) For our experiment’s grand finale, Penthouse tweeted the first annual New Puritans List. Ranging from conservative looney tune Laura Loomer to woke avenger Michael Avenatti to President Trump to Kirsten Gillibrand, the article rankled America’s most obnoxious, pearl-clutching censors. Penthouse released the list in segments on Twitter, and it went viral.

For over a quarter of a century, we have kept our vintage pictorials and journalism in a vault. This goldmine will finally be released online. More importantly, every weekday we’ll be publishing two or more pieces about the most provocative topics of our time: the culture wars, cancel culture, free speech, sex workers’ rights, controversial pop-culture figures, high/low art, music, erotica, and sex and relationships. Of course, we’ll also be publishing artistic images of our gorgeous Penthouse Pets and other accomplished women.  

At penthousemagazine.com, we are filling a hole (or three) that desperately needs plugging. To complete these goals, we’ve recruited our favorite cultural critics: Sydney Leathers, Claire Lehmann, Michelle Lhooq, Leah McSweeney, Miles Raymer, Mandy Stadtmiller, Art Tavana, Toby Young, and more that we’ll announce in the coming weeks.

We hope you’ll join us on this journey. Bottoms up!

XO,

The Editors