THE ICONIC SEX MAGAZINE FOR WOMEN HAD ROMP ARTICLES THAT WEREN'T TRASHY, MEN WHO WERE MACHO AND NATURAL, AND A DESIGN THAT MADE MOST MAGAZINES LOOK LIKE MIMEOGRAPHS. LONG LIVE VIVA!

Every era gets the male nudie mag it deserves. The closeted ’60s had physique rags. The AIDS-anxious ’80s had plastic Playgirl. In today’s niche universe, perfect-ab fests like Blue compete with backlashy zines like Butt.

    And then there was the big-budget dirty magazine that time forgot: Viva.

    Launched by Bob Guccione Sr. in January 1973 as a female counterpart to Penthouse,Viva debuted with an allegedly political purpose, a splashy, decadent design, and a print run of one million copies. Edited by Guccione’s wife, former model Kathy Keeton, the magazine touted itself as “a new generation of magazine for a new generation of women.” (This was later amended to “the first superwomen’s magazine with balls.”) The first issue included fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, an interview with Norman Mailer, an article titled “Smell: The Next Erogenous Zone,” and, thanks to pictorials titled “The Picnic” and “The Boxer,” the shocking promise of naked men—alone and with women. (For the first issue it was just a promise; the dicks were obstructed and airbrushed out. Reader outcry forced a quick correction.)

    Nude dudes were a hot idea in 1973; competitors Playgirl and Foxylady also launched that year. But what separated Viva from the pack (and makes it interesting today) was its art direction and, yes, the articles. Viva knew just how much prurience and how much flash to borrow from its slutty older brother, and yet it was class all the way—gauzy elegance with a hint of disco decadence bubbling underneath. The magazine’s art-deco logo—which predated Studio 54’s by four years—seemed to throb off the page. The layouts were as good as any of the era, and often innovative: in one, a couple romped in a clear glass bathtub filled with blue water; a spread called “Apartment Life” posed a nude, muscular couple, Helmut Newton-style, within slick, wide-lensed interiors.

     Most issues had a couples shoot and a guys-only story. The twosome were either set in a fantasy narrative (for example, a gentlewoman’s suitor eats mango off her crotch in a field before retiring) or a real-life scenario (for really fit bodies) shot in hazy, languid tones around sun-washed apartments and beaches. The single beefcake profile would either concentrate on one character—a boxer, a pool player, a “sun-bronzed California god”—or be a series of dramatically lit classical nudes. Some of the centerfolds were timeless. The shoot with Shep Messing, the ball-bearing–buttocked goalie for the New York Cosmos, lives online today. “Nudist rock star” Kim Milford was shot in his dressing room at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Ben Murphy, the star of a prime-time series, romped in a field with a female friend and put his hand down her pants. (Imagine Patrick Dempsey trying that today.) The production values were huge, and everyone looked like they were having a great time. Whatever porn was, this was not it.

     Of course, not every story was a winner: a spread titled “Sexy Sexy Hairdressers” involved egregiously tan, obviously gay guys dancing around a fully clothed woman, holding gold-plated blowdryers.

     Interspersed with the skin were serious features such as a report on psychosurgery, an “interview with a lesbian,” and earnest women’s-lib discussions like “Why I Want Sex to Be Different for My Daughter.” (“I don’t want a penis,” wrote the essayist, “and I don’t believe my daughter wants one either.”) There were interviews with celebrities like Jack Nicholson, James Caan, and Anne Bancroft, and soon-to-be celebrities like a 24-year-old Arianna Huffington (then Stassinopoulos). A roundtable with indie legends John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, and Peter Falk remains fascinating today. A review of the original Our Bodies, Ourselves, an editor’s letter about going to her first X-rated movie, and a piece called “Sexual Liberation Is Here to Stay” are charming in their ’70s innocence.

     At the time, critics were unaroused. In a review of the magazine’s debut issue titled “Viva Viva?” Time magazine complained that the text was thin, the majority of articles had male bylines, and—in a criticism that would be leveled at every sexually oriented mainstream magazine since—the overall package just wasn’t sexy. (They didn’t know how good they had it.) A March 2, 1975 New York Times article entitled “Pornography for Women” claimed that “women haven’t warmed to the subject” and reported that Viva lost $3 million on its first twelve issues.

     In this environment, the party couldn’t last. In March 1976, Viva dropped nudity and repositioned itself as a more traditional competitor to Cosmo. (A young Anna Wintour soon joined the staff as fashion director.) The magazine promptly lost almost all of its male readers (“twenty-five percent of its circulation,” claimed the New York Times, somewhat conservatively) and Guccione pulled the plug in January 1979. A postmortem in the Times called Viva “slick and graphically striking” and declared it “a pioneer in the publishing of pictures of male nudes.” The magazine never made money.

     Sometimes it seems the best things never do. Viva died early, preserving its legacy in baby oil and Charlie perfume. Because it was spared Playgirl’s ’80s-era devolution into an oily Chippendales yearbook, Viva stands as a testament to the best of its era—natural bodies, managed decadence, and the idea of sex as fun and liberating. It’s a party worth rediscovering. Michael Martin