Figure 2 Suggested kitchen replacements, a la Playboy; clockwise from top left: The Playboy Penthouse, September 1956; The Kitchenless Kitchen, October 1959; The Playboy Patio Terrace, August 1963.

Playboy’s crusade against the kitchen takes place in kitchen replacements. Depicted here are a few versions of kitchen transformations which, over time, remove all recognizable nuclear concepts of the kitchen. The first iteration features a hidden kitchen, tucked neatly behind a shoji screen, with no allusion to the hygienic or practical functions of cookery.  The Kitchenless Kitchen suggests the complete lack of cooking space made up for in performative, transformative counters and crevices made to fit new, specialized contraptions rather than conventional dowry-shrouded appliances. The bachelor enters in. Lastly, the suggestion of a non-kitchen kitchen appears on the playboy patio terrace, where all practical or necessary functions are removed and replaced by the purely performative and social.