October 12th, 2015 -- by Bacchus
Goodbye Playmates
According to the BBC Newsday show currently playing on my radio, Hugh Hefner has approved a redesign of Playboy magazine that will remove all the nude photography, as part of a major repositioning of Playboy as a “lifestyle” brand.
Younger readers of this blog will be like “So?” And the very youngest will be like “Magazine? What’s that?” But for a lot of readers of my own generation, a Playboy was probably the first nude image we saw. No more nudes in Playboy is like no more sports on ESPN. It’s big weird news that reminds us that the 21st century is deeply odd and getting odder fast.
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Sign of the times. Then again, when was the last debut of a “video” on MTV?
Pornocalypse comes to Playboy. Of all places. It was a common sense business decision, apparently. Porn is everywhere, so Playboy had long lost their edge, and in an age of sanitized social media, their only way to make it into mainstream platforms (Facebook et at) to – in their mind – secure a viable future (doubtful!) was to clean their act up and hide the nudity that offends the terms of service of those platforms.
A say day, if confirmed.
Could it just be a PR stunt and the BBC fell for it?
*sad* day, I meant.
That’s actually a really good point. I’ve been aware for some time that they are trying to capitalize on their brand image in various mainstream ways that are more lucrative than porn, but it never crossed my mind that they, too, would be struggling with social media terms of service. Big players like them often get special breaks, but at the end of the day, you’re right — dumping the nudes makes sense from a social-marketing perspective. And it’s the ultimate “porn brought us here and now we’d like it to go home” #pornocalypse moment.
I read somewhere that Hefner made more money off of licensing the bunny logo than on the magazine. And of course the key clubs vanished years ago, an earlier business model that outlived its usefulness.
I read some of the feedback on Twitter. A bit too extreme, as if there would be no women posing in the magazine at all. So many of the nude women in porn online are posed unnaturally (for lack of a better word). Playboy can bring back some mystery and likely sell a lot more lingerie, lotions and potions too.
In the words of the legendary young baseball fan “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoeless_Joe_Jackson
Just when Miley Cyrus plans her first nude concert.
Maybe they’ll come back like Classic Coke…
I’ll bet the free publicity sells a LOT of “last nude” issues…
There goes “Honey Boo-boo’s” comeback career plan, for when she turns 18…
I learned everything from you, Bacchus…
After being a Playboy subscriber for 25+ years this is a real punch to the face. Playboy magazine with NO nudity?….good luck with that. See ya!