Posted on 10/12/2015 9:36:18 PM PDT by dayglored
Founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, 89, who in his trademark silk pajamas has embodied the Playboy lifestyle, agreed last month with a suggestion by top editor Cory Jones to stop publishing images of naked women, the Times said.
At a time when every teenage boy has an Internet connected phone and the web is rife with pornography, the magazine has opted to continue featuring women in provocative poses, just not completely nude, the Times said.
"You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free," Flanders was quoted as saying in the Times. "And so it's just passe at this juncture."
The magazine that featured Marilyn Monroe on its debut cover in 1953 is making the changes after circulation dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 now, the Times said.
After its initial success, the magazine was attacked from the political right because of the nudity and from the left by feminists who said it reduced women to sex objects.
Some changes are still under debate, including whether there will continue to be a centerfold. Playboy magazine's sex columnist will be a woman, who writes enthusiastically about sex, Jones told the Times.
The magazine has always had intellectual appeal with top writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin and Alex Haley for men who liked to say they did not buy the magazine just for the pictures.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
This would have been maybe 1979.
He had a new Harley but had fitted it out to look like it was 1950s vintage. It got a lot of attention.
Ah, well.
All I can recall of biker mags in 1979 was Iron Horse running a glorious Meatloaf-on-a-Harley centerfold.
:)
Maybe. But wouldn't that be like no longer associating Ronald McDonald, or the "Golden Arches," with fast food hamburgers? Like McDonald's, PB may not just have an image problem -- or logistics, as in the internet competition. It's the culture. McDonald's is having a hard time keeping the young because of the shift toward healthier eating. McDonald's could start serving tofu burgers (yuck!) but then it is no longer . . . McDonald's. It's just a pale imitator.
PB didn't just sell pics of naked ladies. It created a whole cultural experience by catering to the "Madmen" ideal-- WASP, sophisticated, intellectual. ("What sort of man reads PLAYBOY?" was the recurrent ad.)
Which is why I enjoyed their editorial content. Excellent, thoughtful pieces, at least back in the 60s & 70s.(Hefner once said that intelligence is the greatest aphrodisiac.) That generation is dying out, along with their aspirations.
Will the younger men flock to PB, either print or online, for its editorial content? It might be too mature for them. If PB has to dumb down its content, then it will become no different than MAXIM or even ESQUIRE, which was also once a quality gentleman's magazine but now seems geared for either Metrosexuals or frat boys. Sort of a gay rag dressed up in "straight" clothing.
It wasn't just the internet that killed the quality men's mags. Frankly, I think it's all just the end of an era. PB might be able to revamp itself like Disney, but it might eventually go with Hefner to that big Playboy mansion in the sky.
“So now people WILL actually buy it for the articles.”
Playboy has actual articles?
What kind?
“He has a Harley-Davidson Road King and a Triumph Bonneville in his garage, but he doesnt ride them. He just sits on them and admires them.”
WT literal F??
I wondered if you knew about that part...
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