Playboy's The Year in Sex # 1 - 1987 Reviewed (1988)

The year was 1976 and Americans were celebrating the Bicentennial with souvenir coins, parades of tall ships and pageantry in the streets. Some of their elected representatives, however, were doing their celebrating between the sheets. You may remember Ohio Congressman Wayne Hays and his secretary, Elizabeth Ray, but who recalls Representative Robert L. Leggett, who that year admitted to two illegitimate children and a sexual liaison with a Congressional aide? Nor did politics provide the only fertile field for muckraking journalists, who duly reported the misbehavior of men of the cloth, as well. The Reverend Billy James Hargis of the Crusade for Christian Morality, for example, was accused of seducing both boy and girl students at his American Christian College in Tulsa. Sizing up the situation, the editors of Playboy decided it was time to add a new retrospective feature to the magazine. After all, Playboy had long been chronicling developments in the fields of cinema and music; why not an annual report on another of its areas of expertise, sex? So was born The Year in Sex, which made its debut in the February 1977 issue with a rundown of the events of 1976. We've been checking up on the world's sexual temperature every year since in the pages of the magazine. Not until 1987, however, did accounts of prurient pratfalls pile up to such an extent that we considered devoting a special edition to the subject. And here they are, the clay-footed politicos and evangelists, the see-you-incourt celebrities, the entrepreneurs out to make a buck and, of course, the bimbos. We hope you enjoy this first Year in Sex, a Playboy Special Edition.
1987 Reviewed
Wild! Wacky! Wonderful!

Hitting Below the Bible Belt
Jimmy Bakker, Tammy Faye Bakker, Jessica Hahn (nude).

Bodies Politic
Gary Hart, Donna Rice (nude), Ilona Staller (nude), Monica Coghlan (nude), Maria Whittaker (nude), Bess Myerson (Miss America 1945), Jennifer Wesner (nude), Pierrette Le Pen (nude).

Artists' License
Thomas Hart Benton, Ontario's Petroglyphs Provincial Park, Chicago's Sculpture Park, Doug Johns, Pablo Picasso.

Sales Figures
Gloria Leonard, Wendy Severn.

Sex Styles of the Rich & Famous
Lucy de Barbin (author of Are You Lonesome Tonight?), Deborah Presley (proclaimed daughter of Elvis), Mamie Van Doren, Joan Collins, Mike Tyson, Shere Hite (nude), Brigitte Nielsen (nude), Carrie Fisher, Grace Kelly, Princess Stephanie (nude), Bebe Buell (nude), Ava Cherry (nude), Candice Bergen.

Blue-Pencil Specials
Iman and Mark Kleckner (nude), Terry Creedon (Windsor Castle gardener) (nude).

The Year in Safe Sex
Missy (nude)

Still No Biz Like Showbiz
George Michael, Samantha Fox (nude), Madonna, Vanna White (nude), Karen Finley (nude), Carol Doda (nude), Jeanne Marie Schuder (nude), Kim Evenson (nude), Lisa Bonet (nude), Amanda Donahoe (nude), Maruschkaa Detmers, Federico Pitzalis (nude), Elvira, Valerie Kaprisky (nude), Don Johnson, Traci Lords (nude), Amber Lynn (nude).