Players Magazine
[1] Once new black-centric magazines came in to the fold, publications such as The Messenger, Opportunity, and The Crisis would regularly show and portray photographs and short descriptions of Black life in America, specifically Women, to enlighten the masses as both moral and aspirational figures.
Morris and Weinstock, who were both white, had a long experience in the realm of men's magazines as owners of Adam and Sir Knight.
While the company did release serious biographies, it made a large share of its money from sensationalist books about sex workers and alternative lifestyles.
[3] When Holloway House struck gold with several accounts of the sex trade in the African-American underworld, in particular those by real life macks Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, Morris and Weinstock realized the demand for mature ethnic entertainment.
This prompted the creation of a series of novels starring Iceman, a fictional pimp turned vigilante patterned after Slim, and a brand new adult magazine called Players.
[4] Players straddled the line between the mainstream aspirations of Playboy and the braggadocio associated with urban street cultures, with thinly veiled allusions to gold diggers and quick material gain.
[5] The magazine made no effort to hide its large inmate readership, featuring a letter from prison in virtually every reader's mail column.
[12] Iceberg Slim himself penned short stories which would form the basis of the 1979 anthology Airtight Willie and Me, published by Holloway House.
[13] Georgia State Senator and future NAACP Chairman Julian Bond was another notable contributor to Players.
Black writers whose work as featured in Players includes: Amiri Baraka, Alex Haley, Julian Bond, Huey Newton, Stanley Crouch, Chester Himes, Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim.
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.
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".
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.
[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.
[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.
Reading the Street: Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines, and the Rise of Black Pulp Fiction (PhD thesis).
