Steiner, Amanda Michelle (August 25, 2015). "First Look: See the trailer for season 2 of EastSiders". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved October 29, 2016. Maybe this does it. Peter Bloch, Penthouse 's then-executive editor: "It was the best-selling issue of Penthouse of all time. Hands down. A complete sellout in, like, two days. You couldn't get a copy. So there were guys paying—and this is something I saw with my own eyes—a dollar for a peek. A peek!"

Riemenschneider, Chris (August 12, 1995). "Lollapalooza Fans Can Dance Till Dawn at Post-Concert Rave". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-03-06. I’m getting ahead of myself, though, because I should explain the story first: Traci Lords was the biggest porn star in the world in the mid 1980s. Then, in July of ’86, it was revealed in dramatic fashion—the FBI busting down Traci’s door—that she’d been underage for virtually her entire adult career. This was a huge scandal, and one I was totally unaware of, because at the time it broke I was seven years old. Gingold, Michael (June 13, 2013). "The 2013 FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards Results!". Fangoria. Archived from the original on December 30, 2013 . Retrieved August 27, 2016.Satuloff, Bob (May 27, 1997). "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The Advocate. No.734. p.93 . Retrieved March 13, 2016. Broeske, Pat H. (January 31, 1988). "A Model of Fitness". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved March 15, 2016. Rodriguez, Alexander (January 3, 2020). "Traci Lords: American Pop Icon and Sexual Terrorist". Gay Entertainment Directory magazine . Retrieved May 8, 2023. Kevin Smith named her an American Pop Icon, John Waters named her a sexual terrorist, Treviano, Jorge (January 2012). "Traci Lords the Dancefloor". GayCalgary.com. GayCalgary Magazine. p.46 . Retrieved June 4, 2020. And I teamed up with Ashley West to investigate the mystery, because how could I dream up a better partner? He’s the creator of the Rialto Report, a web and podcast channel that documents the golden age of porn, and was a consultant on all three seasons of HBO’s The Deuce. Plus, Ashley has his own special connection to Traci, which will be revealed in episode six.

By the beginning of 2007, Lords became unexpectedly pregnant. [64] [65] She first announced her pregnancy in June: "I kind of thought the children thing was off the table. Now I'm expecting a boy! We're stunned and thrilled. I just want you to know, these 36-Ds are mine. I haven't had a boob job, she laughed! I am 5 1⁄ 2 months pregnant! But now I'm starting to show. And my husband is happy with the changes in my figure." [66] [67] On October 7, 2007, at the age of 39, she gave birth to a son, Gunnar Lords Lee, her first child with her husband of five years, Jeff Lee. [68] Jordan, Jennifer. "Traci Lords refuses to go topless due to breastfeeding", ParentDish, November 3, 2008. That Guccione zigged where Hefner zagged is no surprise. Out-Hefnering Hefner had, after all, been his goal from the start. When he brought Penthouse from England to America in 1969, he placed an ad in the New York Times depicting the Playboy logo, the bunny, in the crosshairs of a gun, the caption reading, "We’re going rabbit hunting." And Guccione shot to kill. To wit: the Pubic Wars (an actual coined phrase, appearing in such august publications as the Wall Street Journal), which he won by showing short-and-curlies in the February 1970 Penthouse, a full eleven months before Playboy.Pinsker, Beth (November 13, 1998). " Boogie Boy is weirdly sublime". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved March 13, 2016. I felt," Williams said of the moment she learned that she'd appear in Penthouse, "like I had been raped." Yes, most certainly there is a hysteria about sexting. Yes, some attitudes have changed so that seemingly every instance of nudity is a sex crime. I am aware of the definition and as I have not seen the images in question, I think it can be presumed that someone posing for Penthouse would be posed in some suggestive / erotic way. Let us not forget that the Supremes upheld the Knox conviction which, as I recall, involved video of fully clothed little children, not doing anything particularly erotic but the camera was zoomed into their (fully covered) “naughty” areas. The story of Traci Lords, though, doesn’t seem like the most obvious Hollywood saga—after all, it takes place over the hills in the San Fernando Valley. But for Anolik, host of the new podcast Once Upon a Time in the Valley, Hollywood and the porn industry that Lords dominated in the mid 1980s are far more closely related than either might admit. “The porn industry is overtly about what the movie industry is covertly about: sex and fantasy, objectification and exploitation,” Anolik said. “It’s the movie industry without the pretense. Or the hypocrisy.”

The GQ answer to your question is in your OP. Something that has never been prosecuted is probably not illegal. Williams, though, was also, at some level, a victim of herself. As it turns out, she didn't put up much of a fight for her title in part because there was a second set of photos, this set shot with a different photographer and with her in bondage gear. "People can forgive one mistake," Williams told Rolling Stone , in 1985, "but if the other pictures come out, everyone will say, 'This girl took us for a ride.'" (Guccione, incidentally, would get his hot little hands on those photos, too. He ran them a few months later, in the January '85 issue, the cover once more featuring Williams and George Burns, and this time reading "Oh, God, I Did It Again!") a b Jordan, Pat (April 1990). "Traci Lords With Her Clothes On" (PDF). GQ: 250–304 . Retrieved March 15, 2016.Because my mind is in the past (the mid-eighties) and in the gutter (the porn biz) for reasons that will become clear, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the September 1984 issue of Penthouse . How to convey the magnitude of the frenzy? During late May 1986 (around three weeks after Lords' 18th birthday), authorities were informed that she had been underage when she appeared in the porn movies. She had lied (according to Lords, it was a "white lie") to law enforcement, photographers, producers, directors, co-workers, and the general public for two years. The owners of her movie agency and X-Citement Video, Inc. were arrested (see United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc.). She was taken into protective custody and hired high-profile lawyer Leslie Abramson. On July 10, district attorney's investigators searched Lords' Redondo Beach home as well as the Sun Valley offices of Vantage International Productions (a major producer of adult movies) and the Sherman Oaks offices of modeling agent Jim South. South and other industry officials said that Lords, who was seeking employment, provided a California driver's license, a U.S. passport, and a birth certificate, which stated that her name was Kristie Nussman and gave a birth date of November 17, 1962. Leslie Jay, a spokeswoman for Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, also said Lords showed identification indicating that she was older than 18 before the illicit photos for the September 1984 issue were taken. [19] When investigators used Lords' fake birth certificate and fake state identification cards to locate the real Kristie Nussman, Nussman said that her birth certificate had been stolen a few years earlier and that an impostor had apparently forged her name on official forms. Two adults who knew Lords, but who requested anonymity, said they saw her picture in the adult magazine Velvet during July 1984 and telephoned the district attorney's office to inform authorities that she was underage, but that an investigator told them, "There isn't anything we can do about it." [20] [21] Hefner emerged from the scandal looking like the Not-So-Bad guy. He certainly said all the correct things about respecting a woman's sovereignty over her body and image, her right to say no. And anyway, Ashley and I aren’t in the business of deciding what’s right and wrong. We are investigators, not judge and jury. And we don’t see Traci’s story as a morality play. Our subject is a complex human being, and our portrait of her is rendered in the subtleties of light and shade. I will, however, say this: We regard Traci as a feminist icon, and she captured this status in the least likely way imaginable. Moreover, her story, properly told, provides the key, we believe, to understanding late-20th-century and early-21st-century American pop culture.