I don't quite know what I want to say about this

In a recent issue of the Journal of Popular Culture, authors James K. Beggan of the University of Louisville and Scott T. Allison of the University of Richmond argue that the women of Playboy magazine are getting “tougher.”

Beggan and Allison...found a pattern to the way that Playboy's wordsmiths described the women who graced the magazine's centerfold. They were typically strong, career-oriented, aggressive and, in a surprising number of instances, downright "tough." Adjectives suggesting vulnerability, submissiveness or passivity appeared less frequently.
But are these women really as they were described? Perhaps not, Beggan acknowledges. But it doesn't matter: "This is the image of them that is being presented to men."

OK, but is the text describing the Playboy models really what men are paying attention to? If a woman is posed in a vulnerable an submissive position in her picture, I think that’s going to trump any “aggressive” text descriptions.

-From Feministing.

I think there's something in here about what I call "bionic bimbo" feminism, after reading Where the Girls Are, by Susan J. Douglas. After the feminism wave of the '60s and '70s came a vogue for TV shows that put up a front of being about strong women but were in fact a bit of a sham. Think Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, Bewitched, I think Buffy more recently.

As Douglas put it:

They would show us women with power, but only in comic book settings that could never be mistaken for reality. This power had to be kept secret, as the women who possessed it masqueraded as regular women, as lower-class women, as women with absolutely no power at all. Given their power, it was critical that these women be hyperfeminized, with large, gravity defying breasts and perfectly souffleed hair.

So if it's true that women are being presented in Playboy magazine as "tougher," does that really mean anything when they're also presenting themselves as figures of fantasy? I actually don't have a problem with that, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I did.

But I wonder if people aren't kidding themselves. I don't believe that posing in the nude is an inherently anti-feminist act. But I don't know if it's any more likely that because a 14-year-old boy sees "tougher" language next to a picture of pubes, he's going to grow up admiring women as people.