The Universe of Discourse

Girls of the SEC
I'm in the Raleigh-Durham airport, and I just got back from the newsstand, where I learned that the pictorial in this month's Playboy magazine this month is "Girls of the SEC". On seeing this, I found myself shaking my head in sad puzzlement.

This isn't the first time I've had this reaction on learning about a Playboy pictorial; last time was probably in August 2002 when I saw the "Women of Enron" cover. (I am not making this up.) I wasn't aware of the December 2002 feature, "Women of Worldcom" (I swear I'm not making this up), but I would have had the same reaction if I had been.

I know that in recent years the Playboy franchise has fallen from its former heights of glory: circulation is way down, the Playboy Clubs have all closed, few people still carry Playboy keychains. But I didn't remember that they had fallen quite so far. They seem to have exhausted all the plausible topics for pictorial features, and are now well into the scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel stage. The June 1968 feature was "Girls of Scandinavia". July 1999, "Girls of Hawaiian Tropic". Then "Women of Enron" and now "Girls of the SEC".

How many men have ever had a fantasy about sexy SEC employees, anyway? How can you even tell? Sexy flight attendants, sure; they wear recognizable uniforms. But what characterizes an SEC employee? A rumpled flannel suit? An interest in cost accounting? A tendency to talk about the new Basel II banking regulations? I tried to think of a category that would be less sexually inspiring than "SEC employees". It's difficult. My first thought was "Girls of Wal-Mart." But no, Wal-Mart employees wear uniforms.

If you go too far in that direction you end up in the realm of fetish. For example, Playboy is unlikely to do a feature on "girls of the infectious disease wards". But if they did, there is someone (probably on /b/), who would be extremely interested. It is hard to imagine anyone with a similarly intense interest in SEC employees.

So what's next for Playboy? Girls of the hospital gift shops? Girls of State Farm Insurance telephone customer service division? Girls of the beet canneries? Girls of Acadia University Grounds and Facilities Services? Girls of the DMV?

[ Pre-publication addendum: After a little more research, I figured out that SEC refers here to "Southeastern Conference" and that Playboy has done at least two other features with the same title, most recently in October 2001. I decided to run the article anyway, since I think I wouldn't have made the mistake if I hadn't been prepared ahead of time by "Women of Enron". ]

[ Addendum 20070913: This article is now on the first page of Google searches for "girls of the sec playboy". ]

[ Addendum 20070915: The article has moved up from tenth to third place. Truly, Google works in mysterious ways. ]

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