They have been selling Playboy-themed merchandise in a chain of Melbourne jewellery shops, right opposite the kids' stuff. On one wall, you could find Disney trinkets, stick-on earrings, puffy stickers and Silly Bandz elastic bracelets. Nearby, there were chunky rings spelling PLAYBOY, bunny hoop earrings and a pendant consisting of gold legs leading to an arse with a bunny tail.
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The shop, Diva, has dozens of Melbourne stores from Camberwell to Werribee. While loads of grown women shop there too, Diva's Melbourne Central store was full of schoolgirls when I popped in recently. ''Have you finished school?'' asked a saleswoman. ''No, we're actually going on an excursion,'' said one girl. ''Oh. Awesome!''
Less awesome was the two-metre ''Playboy for Diva'' poster hanging in the store's window. There's something off about a shop that sells to young girls (''Little Divas'') embracing Playboy, though it's not new. Playboy bunnies have appeared on kids' pencil cases in England. Still, as one Australian mother wrote on the website of lobby group Collective Shout: ''It's very difficult to explain pornography in an age-appropriate way to a 10-year-old.''
The Playboy range has prompted furious debate on Diva's Facebook page. ''OK, so I'm not being a prude (my job is in the adult industry) but playboy is PORN,'' wrote one woman, ''and I know that Diva is REALLY popular among girls aged, like, what, 9-16? Diva should be about encouraging girls to empower themselves and their individuality.'' Others have suggested that this is trivial stuff. That the bunny is fun. Full stop.
In response, Diva tweeted: ''Playboy is not for everyone and we are sorry if you take offence to the new range but lots of our customers love it.'' The company declined to discuss the issue with me but the online campaign, including a petition with more than 5000 signatures asking for the products' removal, appears to have hit home. This week, the bunny poster was gone from Diva's Melbourne Central store and the jewellery was selling for half-price. In another shop, most bunny pendants were in a cupboard. A salesgirl told me they were due to be ''shipped out''.
I'm heartened by the community response to this creepy convergence of prepubescence and porn, but Diva's Playboy foray prompts another question: why is the logo of a company chiefly aimed at men's pleasure being sold to women?
Marketers have recast the bunny as something cute, playfully retro and slightly wicked. Playboy, the mythology goes, was about freeing society from 1950s-style repression, and certainly the magazine took progressive stances on matters such as the Vietnam War, social welfare and abortion.
But Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's version of sexual liberation was male-centred and one-sided. According to historian Steven Watts's biography of Hefner, he liked his women submissive and required that girlfriends be faithful while he played around. One of the saddest things in this book is a birthday card written in 1964 by Hefner's then girlfriend Mary, a door bunny at the Chicago Playboy Club. It pleads: ''Although I nag you so very much - please don't evict me from your rabbit hutch!''
Squeezed into their tight uniforms, Playboy bunnies could be fired for dating a customer (so much for sexual equality). And as Hefner observed in 1962: ''Our girls in Playboy are called Playmates … and they complement and suit a man in his needs. And in the process, of course, they fulfil their own needs and desires. Have you ever known a really happy woman who was domineering and competitive? I haven't.''
Playboy's website today is clear about its target audience: ''Entertainment for men,'' it proclaims. The website is tame by the standards of today's gonzo porn but, according to journalist Kira Cochrane, Playboy Enterprises also owns Spice Digital Networks. Spice's Xcess channel features hardcore films boasting of condom-free, barely legal sex, and women who must be ''subdued''.
Clearly, some women like or are intrigued by the Playboy fantasy. A recent reality TV show, The Girls of the Playboy Mansion, was watched mostly by women. Women do buy bunny merchandise. And Hefner's daughter, Christie, has claimed many read the magazine. In our hyper-sexualised culture, few women want to appear prudish. But Playboy's is a narrow, male-centred version of female sexuality. Maybe if other versions were more widely available, a lot more of us would embrace them.
If a jewellery chain really wanted to give women a frisson of risque excitement - adults, that is, not kids - why not cater more explicitly to female desire? How about some bling tastefully referencing the Mandate Male Revue? Or might this be too threatening an expression of female lust? As Hefner's daughter told author Ariel Levy in the book Female Chauvinist Pigs, men are still uncomfortable ''with being the objects of women's fantasies and gaze''.
The truth is there's still a lot of anxiety in our society about the complex, varied realm of female sexuality and the idea of genuine women's equality. The nostalgic mainstreaming of the bunny, with its connotations of woman-as-plaything, is about selling one unequal stereotype of female sexuality, not embracing women's diverse appetites.
Suzy Freeman-Greene is an Age senior writer.
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