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ITEM: Playboy magazine will stop publishing pictures of nude ladies.
It will still publish sexy pics, but they’ll be more the kind of stuff you find in FHM, Esquire or Loaded – only, you know, classy.
The reasons are simple enough: (1) thanks to the interpr0nwebs (or even just Tumblr), you can see nude ladies anywhere, and see them doing all kinds of things they never did in Playboy, and (2) Playboy’s circulation is down so much that it doesn’t have much to lose by dropping the nudity.
Arguably they should have done it a long time ago. As both a champion of First Amendment issues (both in terms of nude pics and in-depth articles addressing censorship issues) and an up-market single man’s lifestyle magazine, Playboy is not the relevant pop-culture force it once was – and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Part of that is because its reputation and editorial direction was built around an affluent bachelor lifestyle/philosophy – especially in regards to attitudes towards women – that has been outdated more or less since Reagan left office. Playboy’s mission statement played well in the 1950s and 1960s, but by the 80s it mainly got by via college kids and yuppies, as well as serving as a foil to the Moral Majority (or at least a classier foil than Hustler). To its credit, Playboy did try to evolve with the times, but they never really succeeded.
And while tastes may vary, IMO Playboy’s pictorials haven’t been sexy since 1982. They have tried to maintain a level of relative classiness, but it’s hard to be classy when the models look like shiny plasticine Photoshop mannequins. Feminists have always taken Playboy to task (and not always unfairly) for treating women as unrealistic fun-loving sex objects, but this actually became true aesthetically as well as philosophically.
I will say that while “I only read Playboy for the articles” is one of the great old jokes (and The Daily Beast’s Emily Shire will go out of her way to remind everyone that no one ever read them because Playboy is spank-bank material and nothing else), Playboy did put a lot of effort into the non-pictorial content. It published fiction from some of the top writers of the time, and the interviews were considered to be some of the most in-depth and insightful to be found anywhere. Even their stereo reviews were taken seriously. Sure, no one read Playboy just for the articles ever, but that’s not to say they didn’t read the articles, or that the articles weren’t worth reading.
So if that’s what they’re going to trade on now, it’s good that they’ll focus on that, though whether it will save the brand, I don’t know. And I confess, I don’t care that much.
As for the nudity, some people have waxed nostalgic about how Playboy was practically a rite of passage for guys my age – you never forget the first time you found yr dad/uncle’s secret stash and found out what ladies look like with their clothes off, etc. For me personally, there was no dad-stash. My first skin mag was either Penthouse or Oui (there was a lot of soft-focus, I remember that), and I found it whilst dumpster-diving. I was 13. It had an effect – it was definitely a step up from the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.
Interestingly, the Big Score was acquired during a youth church retreat. I was 17 by then, and we went camping by a river on the property of someone one of the advisors knew. The property included a cabin we were allowed to access, and inside the cabin someone discovered a crate full of Playboys.
Hallelujah, etc.
I guess it’s true that we’ve long since passed the age when young heterosexual men in puberty have their first Playboy moment on the path to sexual discovery. These days it’s probably “my first Tumblr account”, or “The first day I got a Pornhub link in my search results”. It’s not really the same. At least with Playboy you got some decent literature and journalism to go with it.
Anyway, I do think Hugh Hefner deserves credit for shaking up the establishment and paving the way for America’s sexual liberation. But we should also probably admit that the Playboy clubs with cocktail waitresses dressed as bunnies were just silly.
BONUS TRACK: One interesting by-product of the Playboy legacy was Playboy After Dark, a TV show that ran from 1969 to 1970. There was no nudity in it – it was basically a televised posh cocktail party at Hef’s place with some surprisingly decent musical guests that you don’t normally see playing at posh cocktail parties.
Like Peter-Green era Fleetwood Mac.
All that AND Arte Johnson drunk on a pool table.
No photographs,
This is dF
It will still publish sexy pics, but they’ll be more the kind of stuff you find in FHM, Esquire or Loaded – only, you know, classy.
The reasons are simple enough: (1) thanks to the interpr0nwebs (or even just Tumblr), you can see nude ladies anywhere, and see them doing all kinds of things they never did in Playboy, and (2) Playboy’s circulation is down so much that it doesn’t have much to lose by dropping the nudity.
Arguably they should have done it a long time ago. As both a champion of First Amendment issues (both in terms of nude pics and in-depth articles addressing censorship issues) and an up-market single man’s lifestyle magazine, Playboy is not the relevant pop-culture force it once was – and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Part of that is because its reputation and editorial direction was built around an affluent bachelor lifestyle/philosophy – especially in regards to attitudes towards women – that has been outdated more or less since Reagan left office. Playboy’s mission statement played well in the 1950s and 1960s, but by the 80s it mainly got by via college kids and yuppies, as well as serving as a foil to the Moral Majority (or at least a classier foil than Hustler). To its credit, Playboy did try to evolve with the times, but they never really succeeded.
And while tastes may vary, IMO Playboy’s pictorials haven’t been sexy since 1982. They have tried to maintain a level of relative classiness, but it’s hard to be classy when the models look like shiny plasticine Photoshop mannequins. Feminists have always taken Playboy to task (and not always unfairly) for treating women as unrealistic fun-loving sex objects, but this actually became true aesthetically as well as philosophically.
I will say that while “I only read Playboy for the articles” is one of the great old jokes (and The Daily Beast’s Emily Shire will go out of her way to remind everyone that no one ever read them because Playboy is spank-bank material and nothing else), Playboy did put a lot of effort into the non-pictorial content. It published fiction from some of the top writers of the time, and the interviews were considered to be some of the most in-depth and insightful to be found anywhere. Even their stereo reviews were taken seriously. Sure, no one read Playboy just for the articles ever, but that’s not to say they didn’t read the articles, or that the articles weren’t worth reading.
So if that’s what they’re going to trade on now, it’s good that they’ll focus on that, though whether it will save the brand, I don’t know. And I confess, I don’t care that much.
As for the nudity, some people have waxed nostalgic about how Playboy was practically a rite of passage for guys my age – you never forget the first time you found yr dad/uncle’s secret stash and found out what ladies look like with their clothes off, etc. For me personally, there was no dad-stash. My first skin mag was either Penthouse or Oui (there was a lot of soft-focus, I remember that), and I found it whilst dumpster-diving. I was 13. It had an effect – it was definitely a step up from the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.
Interestingly, the Big Score was acquired during a youth church retreat. I was 17 by then, and we went camping by a river on the property of someone one of the advisors knew. The property included a cabin we were allowed to access, and inside the cabin someone discovered a crate full of Playboys.
Hallelujah, etc.
I guess it’s true that we’ve long since passed the age when young heterosexual men in puberty have their first Playboy moment on the path to sexual discovery. These days it’s probably “my first Tumblr account”, or “The first day I got a Pornhub link in my search results”. It’s not really the same. At least with Playboy you got some decent literature and journalism to go with it.
Anyway, I do think Hugh Hefner deserves credit for shaking up the establishment and paving the way for America’s sexual liberation. But we should also probably admit that the Playboy clubs with cocktail waitresses dressed as bunnies were just silly.
BONUS TRACK: One interesting by-product of the Playboy legacy was Playboy After Dark, a TV show that ran from 1969 to 1970. There was no nudity in it – it was basically a televised posh cocktail party at Hef’s place with some surprisingly decent musical guests that you don’t normally see playing at posh cocktail parties.
Like Peter-Green era Fleetwood Mac.
All that AND Arte Johnson drunk on a pool table.
No photographs,
This is dF
