Players Magazine

Black owned media like  magazines, newspapers, and media have acted as ways for promoting Black excellence, equality, social justice and news in the Black community for generations. Due to segregation and discrimination there has always been the need to create "safe Black spaces" to produce Black content. Players Magazine is an example of a Black space created to allow the production of Black content in its appropriate outlet. Players Magazine holds great significance because of how long its lasted. Historically,  Black newspapers and magazines longevity isn't nearly as long as Players Magazine has been.[15]

One of the justifications for Players was representation of Blacks for the African American public. However, there are a significant number of Black publications, for example Ebony, with the same target audience. What made Players unique was its intended purpose. In the past Playboy was considered an erotic magazine that fulfilled the adult males fantasies about women. Today it is considered a way for black/ African American community to get a look into the newest fashion trends and significant cultural changes for the time. for Black people, it also featured information on trends in movies and music, politics, and Black culture. A magazine such as Ebony[16] featured content on "black history, entertainment, business, health, occupations, personalities, and sports" (Glasrud) with a goal of inspiring Black people and showing models of success.[17] Both publications featured uplifting content relevant to black people, and clothed cover models, but Players featured seductive images, sexual icons, a centerfold, and three-to-four page spreads. Ebony also released annual swimsuit issues but the pictures could hardly be considered racy.

The content of Players brings to mind Mireille Miller-Young's 1980's research on the adult entertainment industry A Taste for Brown Sugar primarily "Colorism and the Myth of Prohibition".[18] She writes about colorism through its link to the antebellum era. At this time the "trade in black women as sexual slaves ... was known for prizing very light-skinned black women." They were valued for their proximity to whiteness but also fit stereotypes involving sexuality—being seen as exotic or sexually aggressive. Miller-Young also mentions another magazine marketed to black consumers, Jet, that highlighted primarily lighter-skinned models on its covers. This colorism blocks opportunities for the diversity found among black women to be seen as desirable and reinforces the politics within pornography and the sex media. While there are instances of Players magazine portraying colorist tendencies, for the most part, it was productive in showing the wide range of hair types, skin colors, and body types of black women, setting it apart from mainstream white sex media.[18]

The creative direction that Players reached for in their content often changed. Whereas "by the mid-1970s, Holloway House Publishing and Players had developed an effective formula for publishing black material, Morriss and Weinstock created specific rules, dictating the kind of texts that could be published in Players. Stories about African American history, black politics, international black issues, or African American arts such as sculpture or painting were prohibited. In their minds the only marketable black material was 'authentic ghetto literature'."[19] Players' formula grew so strict that it included explicit rules surrounding acceptable, publishable content. "[Players] could never publish any story about blacks in history ... No stories about the slave trade. No stories about emancipation. No stories about blacks in history at all ... no stories about Jamaica's Trenchtown, or South Africa, or apartheid ... You can do stories about music, but not about these arts that no one is interested in. Paintings, sculpture, and classical jazz ... No stories about politics".[19] This strict policy on content later fell as Emory Holmes gained access to content as editor of Players and the direction focused on content relevant to the everyday life of black Americans, and away from the fantasy "pimp" model pushed by Weinstock and Morriss.

Black people in sports

Writers for Players magazine inspired hip-hop innovators like Nas, Tupac Shakur, and The Notorious B.I.G.[7] In American culture, porn is a stimulus of a popular imagination stratified and, indeed, haunted, by race.[20] These portrayals, reinforce negative stereotypes about black people.[21] When the only representations audiences see of minority characters are negative, these portrayals manifest to society. These images influence how audiences view minorities. Minorities also face implications from this by internalizing these representations. Negative representations that are internalized are demoralizing and reduce self-esteem. These representations impact our expectations for characters in thinking about stereotypes, and the kinds of characters that we expect certain bodies to portray. According to Miller-Young, black women are undervalued in the porn industry.[20] Some examples that manifest themselves in the porn industry, is the binary that exists for black women; you are either a Mammy non sexual, or the Jezebel, inherently available and hyper sexual. Black women are also disproportionately viewed as aggressive, domineering, and unfeminine. Whereas black men are depicted as animalistic and hyper masculine.

When a simple Google search is done about the players magazine one can tell that most of the women on the cover's are Black women. Players magazine provides many cultural ideas for the Black community but at what cost to black women? The hyper-sexualization of Black women is not only prevalent in the Players magazine but has always been prevalent in media. The negative representation of Black Women have been shown through hip hop.[22] Depictions like the "baby mama" or the "sex-crazed gold-digger" paints this picture of how Black Women are seen as easily accessible at a cost.[22] Because these views of Black Women are so easily influenced by media it is easy to take advantage of a Black Woman's image. Leading people to believe that they too can profit off of the Black Woman's image.

Players' definition of a woman suitable to be featured often fluctuated. Where initially "Morriss and Weinstock had only three requirements for women to be featured in the magazine: the models had to look like they were eighteen years old, they had to have European features, and they had to have large breasts."[19] Having been an editor in 1975, Emory Holmes returned to the Players staff as editor for a second time in 1981. Holmes made changes to the magazine to refocus on "soldiers" and "prisoners".[19] The early Morriss and Weinstock version of Players magazine turned away many investors as it was considered "so low-minded, low-rent, vulgar, and unconscionable."[19] But Holmes reached out to gain support from these investors in his second appearance as editor in an attempt to change the image of the magazine. "[Holmes] started putting girls in the magazine that [he] would want to date, Sometimes they did have big tits. Sometimes they just had golden eyes, or a luscious smile, or an intense gaze, or something else that was just indefinable, ineffable."[19] Holmes indicates a shift in the magazine's selection and portrayal of models, with an increased focus around class signifiers, in terms of clothing, subject matter, or the women's bodies/features themselves, all in hopes of ditching Players' low-tier reputation and reframing it as a high class magazine.