September Playboy depicts UO students
By MIKE LEE
Of the Emerald
“It was something you kinda
fantasize about, I suppose," said
Sonja Nelson with a cheerful
voice.
Playboy photographer David
Chan interviewed 300 hopefuls
like Nelson last fall when he was in
Eugene looking for “The Girls of
the Pac-10.”
But only Nelson, Vicki
Sponhauer, Anne Healy and
Debra Williamson, all university
students, were selected for pictor
ial display in September's Playboy
Magazine. They were paid $100
to $300 depending on their degree
of nudity.
How did Nelson go about turn
ing her fantasy into reality?
Back in December, Nelson and
about 300 other women flocked to
Chan’s souvenir-stocked motel
room for a week of interviews and
picture-taking “He just snapped a
Polaroid and then that was it,” she
explained. “I didn’t hear from him
until March.”
Chan spent the months in be
tween sorting out the results at
Playboy’s Chicago offices. “And
then in March,” continued Nelson,
“I got a telephone call from the
office in California. (The secre
tary) called and said ‘Would you
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Page 8
like to do it?’ and I said ‘sure.’ ”
“Well, not as quickly as that,”
she added. “It took some thought.
It wasn’t something you jump right
into, because it is a national
magazine.”
During the winter, the Pacific-8
Conference expanded into the
Pacific-10, necessitating an
Arizona visit for Chan. Finding the
work too much for one person to
handle, Playboy dispatched
three more photographers to the
Coast to help out. Arny Freytag, a
make-up women and Eddie-the
assistant came to Eugene over
Spring Break to do the final photo
graphy.
“It started early in the morning,”
said Nelson of her session. “They
had to rent the place where they
took the indoor pictures.”
When she arrived, “they had
some clothes and stuff for me” to
try on while Eddie-the-assistant
set up the lights.
“It was great,” Nelson recalled.
“He (Freytag) would come and tell
me how to set-up a pose.
Mostly I just did what I wanted to
do except for he’d say ‘move your
knee’ or ‘lift your arm higher’ —
just small things.”
For the one picture in the
magazine they spent “all day —
just roll after roll after roll” of film,
she said.
She didn’t worry about the type
of pictures they would take. “I’m
an art student,” said Nelson. “Half
my classes were drawing nude
models at school. It didn’t seem
like that much of a big deal. It’s not
like —” exploitation? “No, I don’t
think so at all. I’ve always thought
Playboy was very tasteful. It’s not
like Hustler. I couldn’t see doing
anything like that, or even Pent
house.”
The topic of her modeling hasn’t
exactly dominated her conversa
tions. "It’s not something that I just
talk about a whole lot — Oh,
guess what I did today...’ ” she
mimicked.
‘‘The session was several
months ago. There was a long
span in between where you’re just
kinda waiting,” she said. “Now is
probably the most that I've talked
to anybody about it, now that the
issue’s out.”
The conversations invariably
lead up to one question.
“ ‘Why?’ That’s what everybody
wants to know,” said Nelson. She
paused, pondered the thought. "It
was really exciting, it was really a
big ego-trip. I know that he inter
viewed over 300 girls from
Eugene — they only picked four.”
TV study finds viewers
dissatisfied with programs
By TODD ADAMS
Of the Emerald
Few people actively oppose vio
lence on television and American
consumers dissatisfied with tele
vision programming don’t rate vio
lence as the primary reason, ac
cording to a recent study done at
the University of Oregon.
That is why Americans will con
tinue to view violence on televi
sion, unless a small number of
people opposed to violence on
television can convince consum
ers to change their minds.
Jerry Medler, an associate pro
fessor of political science, and
Deanna Robinson, assistant pro
fessor of speech, conducted the
study in cooperation with Bissy
Genova, a professor in the School
of Information Studies at Syra
cuse University, New York.
"The major motivation behind
the study was a curiosity and a
suspicion,” says Medler. “We saw
an incongruity between TV ratings
and the promotional propaganda
of a coalition of anti-violence
groups.”
According to Medler, if violence
on television is a source of major
concern, then why are some of the
more violent shows on television
ranked high in the ratings?
In hopes of pointing out this in
congruity, Medler and Robinson
set out to sample the American
consumer in the Eugene
Springfield vicinity.
“We conducted interviews in
the late spring of 1977,” says Med
ler. “This was at the height of the
publicity about TV violence.”
A random telephone book sam
pling was taken of 149 Eugene
Springfield residents, then a
follow-up sampling was con
ducted among 126 Syracuse high
school teachers with the help of
Genova.
“We wondered if our findings
were particular to the Eugene
area only, so we went 3,000 miles
away (to Syracuse) and
picked a homogeneous group of
high school teachers,” says
Meddler.
According to Robinson, who
had done some previous work
with Genova, high school
teachers were selected because
of their probable knowledge of the
TV violence campaigns and be
cause of their similar income
bracket and educational back
ground.
“The only major weakness with
the sampling was its size, which
means that the findings we arrived
at have a larger potential margin
of error than would a larger sam
pling,” says Medler.
Designed after the model of
political economist Albert Hirsh
man, five distinct consumer
viewing categories were drawn
from the sampling’s results, an in
novative idea, according to Med
ler, because television has never
been thought of as a consumable
product.
The five consumer viewing
categories are: (1) people who
don’t like TV programming; (2)
people who cannot think of any
way to express discontent with
programming; (3) people who
knew ways to express their view,
but who didn't; (4) people actively
expressing a view, and (5) people
who accept programming as it is.
Combining the results of the
Eugene and Syracuse studies the
researchers found that these
same five consumer viewing
categories could be applied to
both studies despite the fact
Eugene was a random study and
Syracuse was a homogeneous
study of a class of people.
In addition, approximately the
same percentage of viewers could
be found in each of the five
categories for both studies. For
example, only 14 percent of the
viewers in the Eugene study were
people actively expressing an
opinion about television pro
gramming. The Syracuse study
figure was 17 percent.
Both studies required people to
answer a series of 49 questions,
and among those who said they
disliked television viewing, the
majority said violence was not a
primary reason for their dislike.
Even those viewers classed as
active protestors of TV violence
were reluctant to endorse at
tempts at curbing violence by prior
censorship.
An article on the study is ex
pected to appear soon in an issue
of “Communication Research,” a
professional journal of journalism,
speech and public opinion.
Tuesday, August 8, 1978