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Playboy Drops Nudity As Internet Fills Demand
HughPickens.com writes: Ravi Somaiya reports in the NY Times that as part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy Magazine will still feature women in provocative poses but they will no longer be fully nude. "That battle has been fought and won," says CEO Scott Flanders. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture." According to Somaiya, for a generation of American men, reading Playboy was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill consumed by flashlight. Now every teenage boy has an Internet-connected phone instead. Pornographic magazines, even those as storied as Playboy, have lost their shock value, their commercial value and their cultural relevance. The magazine will adopt a cleaner, more modern style. There will still be a Playmate of the Month, but the pictures will be "PG-13" and less produced — more like the racier sections of Instagram. "A little more accessible, a little more intimate," says Flancers. It is not yet decided whether there will still be a centerfold.
So after 60+ years Playboy is going to make themselves completely irrelevant? I mean, who is actually going to buy it now?
Sure, the internet is full of smut, but Playboy was always a little classier.
Now they're, what exactly? I just don't see people wanting to buy Playboy with no nudity. At that point, get a Victoria's Secret catalog.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
;P~
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I got playboy for the articles ... Really .... for the articles .. i need to know how to make a perfect vodka martini.
Now you really will be reading it for the articles!
I think something other than a flag will be at half mast...
...because of the internet. It was because it (somewhat prudish, overly hyped, plasticy models/photographs) failed to keep pace with the actual SEXUALITY provided elsewhere, whether print or digital. Worse, their type of stuff became iconic, somewhat supplanting natural/living sexuality, and further confusing the already sexually embattled American male.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Oh well, I guess it was bound to happen with the availability of any type of smut on the internet.
Goodbye and farewell fond memories of the Swedish Bikini Team.
They always stated that it was about the women, but really it was the fantasies they sold it. The one thing they have missed out on for years is the lingerie.
This is an opportunity for them to work with lingerie companies. At least this way "reader" will know what each model/actress is wearing and by that for their partners.
The problem is that due to the new Puritan SJW "all male sex is bad"
All-male sex IS bad! If you're straight...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Was there an era where buying playboy was considered conservative and respectable?
We need a new time form for things that people now claim were ok back then ;-). I suspect than may now 50ish man will have bought Playboy 30 years ago, but only now realise that everyone did, and thus may be less prudish about it.
Stephan
stock prices for implant manufacturers dropped 50% today.
They are down from 4.5 million subscribers to 800,000.
Is it even note-worthy that they finally admit defeat?
We dont read as much about his romances anymore. There was an interesting documentary a few years ago about how he regained control of the magazine after letting other people manage it for while and goign off directions he didnt like.
All-male sex IS bad! If you're straight...
Well...that's not exactly true. For hetro-women it's one of their biggest draws, same reason why women are the biggest consumers yaoi and slashfiction.
Om, nomnomnom...
Playboy in Brazil is mostly models, sub-celebrities and even tv stars to its pages, so at least it has that incentive to keep selling magazines. Sure there is tons of porn and nudes on the internet, but not from these women we fantasize.
Playboy has been putting out monthly glossy "books" and other products (e.g. videos, etc.) of classy nudes for decades now, in addition to their flagship magazine. I suspect that it is just that magazine that is going PG, and that their other revenue streams from nudes will be preserved.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The new SJWs are the anti-SJW crowd. For fuck's sake - Playboy is dying because you can watch women act out your most depraved fantasies and seemingly enjoy them for FREE!!!!
You need to get off your high horse and relax. Perhaps some free porn might help.
$15 mo for 1 channel that does not have porn anymore?
HBO / MAX still has some and they have good TV shows and movies. With like 8+ channels.
So after 60+ years Playboy is going to make themselves completely irrelevant?
As per the article, the Playboy website ditched nudity a while ago. The traffic to the site increased fourfold...
The key to understanding what they are doing is that they were always a lifestyle brand, nudity not even being the primary reason why people paid attention to them. That was just one aspect of forward thinking based around personal freedom they embraced.
Playboy is shedding nudity to reach a broader audience and it's plainly working. Too many these days want to shun expression of sexuality altogether, and Playboy is perfectly positioned to rebel against this prudish movement (currently led by feminists).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think anyone has bought Playboy for the nudes in a long time. For over a decade, anyone literate bought Playboy for the articles. In the '70s, it was nice to check out Miss November, but by the time I was in college, and I found the stories by Nabokov, Marquez, DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, and articles by the top essayists, journalists and fiction-writers in the world (and coincidentally found out about web porn), the nudes in Playboy had ceased to be much of a draw.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Don't need any nudie pics.
I only read it for the articles, you know.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Hugh Hefner handed top control spot of the company to his daughter Christie in 1988. She resigned on the 2008/2009 new year boundary.
The magazine's market performance has apparently been gradually declining since then, starting by dropping back to 11 issues per year in 2009. (What mix, if any, of Chistie leaving because the writing was already on the wall, the third generation's changes resulting in a slide, and/or other factors may be a good subject for a post-mortem analysis and publication, some time in the future.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I can't believe it took this long for some cuck to blame "SJWs" for this story.
MRAs, you are slipping. A story like this should have been an "all hands on deck" moment for you, and the best you can come up with is one pitiful anonymous coward who thinks this is "anti-masculinity".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Obligatory: WoW "The Internet is for Porn"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Then again, the only thing more pathetic than buying Playboy for their tepid, over-airbrushed nudes would be Playboy with "clothed women in provocative poses"
Seriously, isn't that Maxim? Who the hell buys their circulation of 2.5 million?
-Styopa
You're gonna block all Internet access to your house pretty soon with a total block on HTTPS.
Also IT won't pay well under any circumstances for much longer, since Facebook and MS have fooled the US' politicians into believing in a "STEM shortage."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The SI swimsuit edition is always a blockbuster, even though there's no actual nudity (though lately it's become pretty darn close.)
So there's still a huge market of guys [I assume it's 99.99% guys] who pathetically pay to ogle sexy women in magazines, even if the women are partly clad.
What will be the difference between Playboy and Maxim (or any other Maxim clone) now?
Esquire was more racey pre Playboy. In response to Playboy, Esquire tuned down it prurient appeal and survived. Nothing new here just the usual course of the revolutionary becoming established and being displaced by the new revolution. Playboy may or may not survive but it is wise to try to adapt.
Hugh Hefner based Playboy on the idea of revealing the sexy side of "the girl next door." It was an innocent notion, part fantasy, part reality, presented with taste and class over several interesting decades of changing social values.
Well done, Hef. The internet has made you obsolete, but will never replace you.
For decades we've sworn we buy it just for the articles. Sales may actually improve with the last wives objection gone.
You see people reading magazines in public? Other than the grocery store rack and waiting rooms at the doctor or mechanic they are more or less extinct around here. Everyone reads on their phone or tablet.
Without the expectation of nudity, no the forced lack of it, the parties will be a like a day at the beach. The vegas style pool parties will now always be better. oh so sad.
Yeah, I'm going to come right out and say it: Playboy has been on a fairly steady decline ever since Hef let his daughter start running the joint. They not only failed to gain a significant place in the online world, they also failed to deal with the wave of competition they had from the likes of Perfect 10 back in the 1980s.
If you look at any of their videos from the last 15 years or so, you'll want to slap their directors and cameramen and tell them to quit it with the artsy shit and actually hold a shot that shows bare breasts for more than five seconds at a time.
I wouldn't hire a man to run a women's magazine, and it's just as asinine to let a woman run a men's magazine.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Didn't know she ever took a shot at closing down Playboy. I just remember those bullshit "tipper stickers" that the record companies agreed to in exchange for who knows what.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It will open up a lot of new distribution channels for them. You'll see them up front in airports and reputable gas stations and the like. The brand is the main thing that will separate it from GQ type magazines, but you won't be a pervert for picking one up for the plane ride.
X
Maybe sooner. Maybe this March issue with no nudity is just the setup for ...
the best ...
April Fool's Joke ...
OF ALL TIME!!!!!
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I wonder what role Sexting plays in all of this, are the teenagers of today too busy fapping over each other to worry about the airbrushed images of a print magazine?
A better approach than blocking HTTPS in terms of surveillance effectiveness, yes :-P and many corporate networks indeed do this.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
She resigned on the 2008/2009 new year boundary.
Correction: Jan 31 2009
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I like how SJWs always respond with namecalling and mocking whenever accused of anything, instead of actually refuting anything that's said.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
"We're Playboy, and we're embracing our own irrelevance!"
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Playboy without nudes would be like Sports Illustrated without swimsuits. Wait, maybe I need to rephrase that.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As a former investor in Playboy Enterprises, I got to see first-hand that the basic problem with the company is Hef. No matter what is on the masthead of the magazine, NO decision of any import happens without Hef signing off on it.
As the creator of the brand, certainly he is due some consideration.
But I have to be extremely blunt and say that Hef is simply out of touch with what readers wanted, and it's been this way for years. Hef has yes or no approval on every centerfold, so if it seems like a lot of them look similar, that's because Hef is choosing them. Even as editors stand there and offer up candidates, Hef has final say. Note that he has almost nothing else to do with the magazine, has no interest in financial stats and figures or reader feedback. If Hef wants a skinny blonde (and that is usually his type), Hef gets it. Month after month.
Taking this even farther, most years the magazine and website had reader voting to choose the Playmate of the Year. They make somewhat of a big deal about the voting process, at least online. None of it means anything. Hef has final say. He alone picks the PMOY. The editors can suggest their own ideas and they can present the public's vote. But Hef makes the call. End of story. It tends to be whatever playmate he is interested in that day. There is a lot more I can say about what keeps him interested, that but it's third party stuff. Some of the ladies have written their own books about it.
Hef meddles in other ways as well and it had been driving the editorial staff up a wall as they watch the magazine dying and the brand struggling and they cannot do anything about it.
The TV channel, oh god I don't even want to talk about it. It's a bunch of awful game shows.
Taking the company private a few years ago cutoff what little outside input there was. I got a nifty little Bunny logo pin as my thanks for being an investor and my shares were deemed worthless. I don't mind the loss of the money. I invested because I believed the company had huge growth potential if they simply monetized their unique brand. They've done some of it with fragrances and other novelties. They NEED to monetize the Playboy Bunny image, i.e. the Bunny girl. That is iconic and basically Playboy's alone the world over, except Japan where it's been embraced outside of Playboy. So there is an opportunity to take the brand and the bunny girl likeness global, as a sexy but safe image which Playboy can promote as uniquely theirs. Nah. Hef didn't want to hear it. They've done very little with it except for occasional publicity events, like putting a bunch of bunnies on a bus and driving them around Hollywood. Then they don't even promote it. How is THAT supposed to build the brand? These ladies look amazing and the costumes really show off what makes the brand unique. They need to be everywhere.
Fine. It's his company. I know.
I used to have a lifetime subscription to the magazine but I called them a couple years ago and had it stopped. It was getting my blood pressure up seeing some of the things that happened after the company went private.
The new editor, whom I do not know, has his work cut out for him. He got Hef to agree to this change. It is a good sign that he may in fact be allowed to reinvent things. I wish him well.
Sig for hire.
As Playboy removes nudity from its magazines, subscriptions to National Geographic suddenly skyrockets! Or for those who can't afford National Geographic, there's always the Sears catalogue. :P Recall Moe on the Simpsons?
As a former Playboy photographer, I can attest to the change in Playboy in the past 20 years. It went from being a magazine that provided some of the most stunning figure photography of the most stunning females to average photography of mostly average females. I was once told by a snot nosed twenty-something photo editor that the image editing department could make a Polaroid photo look like it was shot by Pompeo Posar. So much for the hours spent getting perfect lighting, flawless makeup, and just the right poses. A bevy of Mac computers and Photoshop were the end of it. I can remember one centerfold that mysteriously lacked a navel, and another that had five fingers and a thumb, thanks to the Photoshop geniuses.
I can honestly say that I have never looked at an issue since quitting Playboy more than twenty years ago.
If you want nudity, at least there's still Playgirl.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Playboy has lost its focus. The appeal of the girl in the centerfold is that there was enough story and enough photos of her living her life (even if sometimes fabricated) for you to imagine her as someone you could actually meet in real life. The "girl next door" used to be a not-very-explicit photo series of someone you would want to get to know. But now Playmates, with the occasional exception, are as generic as blow-up dolls. As generic as --- porn on the internet. With which the magazine can't possibly compete.
It'll be interesting to see where they take this. If "no more nudes" means generic starlet wannabes only a little more covered up, they're not getting it, and readership will suffer further. Because let's face it, the articles are usually not worth reading.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.