Playboy Magazine Eliminates Reason for its Existence
Now you’ll really have to read it for the articles.
Playboy Magazine has announced a rather drastic change to its business model. Starting next March, the classic pinup mag will no longer feature women in the nude.
Ravi Somaiya reports at the New York Times:
Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand
Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.
Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.
Its executives admit that Playboy has been overtaken by the changes it pioneered. “That battle has been fought and won,” said Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
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 article goes on to say that circulation has dropped drastically since the 1970’s. It’s difficult to see how this decision is going to solve that problem.
In the Associated Press video below, it’s a female commenter who makes the same point.
One food magazine has capitalized on this news with hilarious results. Via Twitchy:
Unlike @Playboy, we will still be offering noods http://t.co/4KqXN5vjZp pic.twitter.com/gKwSMz6Xko
— Bon Appetit Magazine (@bonappetit) October 13, 2015
Classy noods? Saucy noods? https://t.co/7YUMkKz6fr
— Ron Nurwisah (@boyreporter) October 13, 2015
i can't stop laughing https://t.co/0HUecl0Zup
— Ada (@adatweetsthings) October 13, 2015
This is the best tweet today, everyone else go home. https://t.co/V6UIydX6s7
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) October 13, 2015
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Any word from PlayGirl magazine regarding them clothing their male models??
I think that says it all, doesn’t it? They are “just passé ” now. They self-immolated.
Saw enough boobs at the Democrat “Debate” yesterday….
You actually watched it?
yuck…
So what will teenage boys in barbershops fantasize about as they see waiting men waiting looking at the Playboys, Knowing the cover is as good as it gets?
Maybe now men will need to use their imagination when looking at a beautiful woman.
Real allure is making men wonder.
There’s this thing called the internet. Apparently, its main reason for existance is to provide any sexual fantasy whatsoever at the click of a button. It is so pervasive that a study on college men who had seen internet pornography and those that had not had to abort the study. They found no college age men who had not seen pornography on the internet.
My guess is that since TV, movies, and internet have filled the gaps the only limit is what photoshop and animators are willing to produce.
Vile. But it is the world we live in.
BTW I know you’re just joking. No way the American male is going back to using his imagination.
They ultimately became predictable and boring. The articles became reliably left wing and the women all seemed to be too perfect clones of some stultifying standard of perfection, airbrushed to look identical except for hair and eye color.
I haven’t looked at a Playboy mag in decades. But when I did put my hands on them, the first thing I always looked for were the Gahan Wilson cartoons!
Close the doors and stop printing. Everything including their articles can be found better online. There might be some lumberjack living in an old firewatch cabin somewhere in Montana that doesn’t have reliable internet or that option but he’s the only guy.
I haven’t read it in like forty years. What in the world could be propping it up?
Yeah, the internet killed it.
Why buy the cow? Free milk all over the place . . .
They’ll pick up where the New Yorker left off, and feature nude spreads of transvestites.
Actually, if you read the articles, you are really into self-abuse….