Op-Ed: Cardi B Becoming the Creative Director of Playboy Is Actually a Big Deal
By Jessica Wise
This month, rapper and public figure Cardi B was named the Creative Director in-residence at Playboy.
Your knee jerk reaction might be, “Duh! Of course the lady who wrote ‘WAP’ and stripped for a living is now working at Playboy.”
Let’s unpack this though. How many strippers do you know who end up owning the strip club? For that matter, how many junior associates do you know who end up running a multi-million dollar business? Sure it happens, but there’s only one seat at the top in any company, no matter what industry you’re in.
Here’s why an ex-stripper from the Bronx winning a leadership role at one of the top publications in America is a big deal:
She’s the first and a WOC.
Until now, Playboy has never had a resident Creative Director, and now the first one is a brown woman. Cardi is also trailblazing her way through Playboy’s legacy as a founding member of their upcoming digital platform, Centerfold (Source: Billboard.com). In addition to being the first, she shines a light on the women of color who have been holding up the adult entertainment industry for years. By taking this seat of power, these women will be able to participate in an industry that looks like them at the top, too.
Men have been running Playboy for years, but there would be no Playboy without women.
While men are the primary consumers of Playboy in the US (Source: Statista.com), it’s on the backs of the women the magazine portrays. As female readership of the magazine has also increased over the years, it’s essential that the intersectionalities of the readers and the women who appear in the magazine are reflected in leadership. When this is done, it opens opportunities to keep the growing female audience in mind as well as keep up with the ever-evolving trends of aesthetics, thematic elements, and concepts.
Playboy can now move into the future.
Cardi B’s entry and the rise of Centerfold demands a new structure in Playboy’s creative department. She’s a millennial, a former adult entertainer, and now an empowering icon for women who want to embrace their sexy side. This is where the adult entertainment industry must go too, especially now that millennials and Gen Z have grown up and consume entertainment electronically. A platform like Centerfold, led by a sex positive young woman, means the company can survive in this new age of digital content, as well as produce content that is still sexy and consumable without violating or demeaning women in this new wave of feminism in adult entertainment.
It’s time to challenge the male gaze.
When content is run by men, it’s going to be produced as men see it. As of 2017 though, women make up nearly half of Playboy’s readership (Source: Statista.com). For a platform that portrays all women, and is read by a significant number of women, it would be more than reasonable to expect a woman to be included in high-level creative decisions. By challenging the male gaze, with a woman’s eyes instead, Playboy readers will now be able to enjoy more than one kind of creativity.
Unconventionally employed women deserve representation and good workplaces too.
Historically, women of color have faced both outrage when they chose this kind of work and violence when they didn’t at the hands of predominantly white media and in their own communities. From the torturous conditions of a kidnapped Sara Baartman to the inequitable criticism of “WAP,” intersectionality plays a major role in how these women are treated by society. Women who couldn’t choose for themselves were not seen as women, or even human beings. Now women who have chosen this line of work and seek to pilot their own careers are seen as less-than, stupid, and unladylike.
You want Cardi B and women like her to use their minds more than their bodies? This is one way that sentiment is coming to fruition. By the way, the two ideas don’t have to be interchangeable. In fact, a mind-body connection in an industry that thrives on the physical is essential to success. Having an experienced female entertainer in power could be the missing link to women in adult entertainment gaining more proper equities, be it improved safety on sets or greater creative control in the handling of their images. These women are just as capable and deserving of being seen as women with brains, business savviness, and creativity.
Will Cardi B’s tenure as Creative Director solve all the problems of women in adult entertainment and media? Of course not. Symbolic change doesn’t mean radical change. However, it opens the door. Even if she is unable to accomplish much as the first, the next will.
