Nudes are old news at Playboy

[93JC]

Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand
By RAVI SOMAIYA OCT. 12, 2015

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.

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What are your thoughts on Playboy's decision? Is this an acknowledgement that Playboy's original mission—to liberalize sexual matters in the United States—has been fulfilled?

 

[Lark]

What are your thoughts on Playboy's decision? Is this an acknowledgement that Playboy's original mission—to liberalize sexual matters in the United States—has been fulfilled?

That's if you dont believe the Cold War myth about it being part of the propaganda war against communism.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

The reasoning is sound....they can't compete with the internet. But it was never as tied to nudity as much as other skin mags. Theoretically, one could read it for the articles--I even saw a version that they sold like that for academic institutions (including religious schools, lol).

But it was ultimately always selling a lifestyle.....not just skin......

 

[93JC]

Theoretically, one could read it for the articles--I even saw a version that they sold like that for academic institutions (including religious schools, lol).

The article I quoted goes on to talk about how the Library of Congress's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped has printed a braille version since 1970, save for a time in the mid-'80s when the Librarian of Congress ordered the magazine stop being printed at the behest of a few Republican politicians who had bees in their bonnets about it and withdrew funding. The American Council of the Blind, the Blinded Veterans Association, the American Library Association and (of course) Playboy Enterprises Inc. sued the federal government to have the printing of the braille edition reinstated on the grounds it violated the first amendment of the constitution; they won, of course. (The braille edition of the magazine is printed on thick paper not unlike a paper grocery bag and contains only the magazine's literary content; it doesn't have any pictures in it. )

But it was ultimately always selling a lifestyle.....not just skin......

What do you think this decision says about the lifestyle Playboy was selling?