Playboy to cease publishing photos of nude women

That got to say something about the American culture lol

But to reply to your response to Mrgeezer, the only way I can see this move averting the brand demise is if it were to completely transform its target audience. Young men who are willing to commit to an avant-garde and more sensual auto-erotic brand constitute a niche that won't sustain a monolithic brand like Playboy. Now young women, on the other hand, may be Playboy's salvation, but the brand would never consider such a 180'.

@MrGeezer:

I think by making articles and interviews the primary focus of the magazine, with the money behind it, Playboy can do well as a Men's magazine, pictures of women are necessary though, but can be secondary.

Two lines taken straight from The Big Lebowski. If you haven't seen it then I definitely recommend that you watch it.

@Aljosa23: But aren't they still going to be showing girly pictures, just no nudity? If the naked ladies are the problem, then I'd think they'd want to do away with ALL girly pictures. Distance themselves from that stuff entirely. But simply putting clothes on the ladies isn't going to remove the association that it's a magazine for men to buy in order to look at women.

I second that. Amazing movie.

@MrGeezer: Yeah that's what it seems like. They compared the nudity level to Instagram pictures lol.

Yeah, I don't disagree with you that they need to rebrand themselves so people don't see Playboy as just a porno mag. My point is that they need to go a lot farther than this if they want to survive. Playboy has always had great articles and interviews, the mere fact that they are seen as just a porno mag shows that they have a BIG problem with their public image. Slapping some clothes on the ladies isn't gonna fix that. That'll just make people start comparing them to something like Maxim, and lots of people view mags like Maxim as just porno for guys who are too young and/or timid to buy real porno. This is like putting a band-aid over a spurting neck wound. If they want to survive, they need to SERIOUSLY change their image. That'll probably require getting rid of the girly pics entirely. Keeping any girly pics looks too much like trying to hold onto some of their readers, but what's the point? Any remaining readers almost surely continue to buy Playboy because of the articles, while the ones who just want porno apparently already left.

Well I have lots of porn so it doesen't matter to me...

No biggie, playboy has always been more of a lifestyle magazine than a porno mag.

Who the hell still buys porn mags anyway?

Especially Playboys, where all they've ever shown is air brushed tits and basically nothing else?

I was going to make an analogy, but you beat me to it.

I buy Retro Gamer Magazine once every month from Barnes and Noble, so I do.

If you buy it every month, why not subscribe?

It's an import magazine from the UK technically (the US is always a month behind as we get the prior month's issue). They're asking quite a bit for a subscription because of it.

I think it's a bold move, but it is kind of an interesting one. Porn is readily available online, from any device that can browse the web.... That frontier has been long won.

Maybe I'm in the very small minority, but I've always been a fan of magazine format, and I wonder if this move actually could be a good one for preserving the publication.

I also don't think it's impossible for a renown brand to change its image. A little company called Nintendo did, at one time, run a love hotel after all.

@lamprey263: @lamprey263:

I'm not a Plaboy reader, or watcher. I don't visit any website of pornography.

But, I always thought one of Playboy's niche was for actresses and other media celebrities to take it off and give and in depth interview (both physical and mental inter "view") for publicity and career advancement. I thought actresses and others did this to help jumpstart their career or advance their waning career. Obviously, you can't get a collection of authentic nude photos of every actress over the web.

I always thought that Jess McDonell would need to resort to posing nude for Playboy to resurrect her career in a few years after she's alienated all or most of her fans / all or most of her fans and followers lose interest in her--turn their backs on her / ignore her.

I agree, the mind is the biggest erogenous zone.

Leaving something to the imagination is more powerful than nudity.

Times changes all

Or at least the net does

Except when she is standing right in front of you.

Translation: America and its corporate world has gone to the dogs, so now we just thought up another idea to make it worse. Let's get rid of Playboy and its magazines. More destruction, and more boredom on its way.

I miss Nintendo Power magazines, still baffles me they all of a sudden get yanked from further production at the end of 2012. Seems like some buffoons decided to have them be stopped because they thought the world was really gonna end on December 21st, 2012.

@Toph_Girl250: See, the thing about magazines is that they're supposed to be profitable. If Playboy or Nintendo Power doesn't make enough money for a long enough period of time, then they're gonna get dumped. If that makes the world more boring, then tough shit. It's no one's job to entertain society by publishing a magazine when that magazine isn't profitable enough to be worth it. And at some point we have to accept that if enough people stop buying it for it to be canned, then it was ALREADY too boring to be worth people's money. If people value the entertainment from magazines like Playboy, then all they need to do is buy the damn magazine.

It's tough to call Playboy "pornography". Nudity, whether observed for pleasure or simply just observed, is not always porn. And the last time I was actually aroused by Playboy photos was when I was 12; now it's like "Oh look, pink puffy nipples. So anyway there I was with a fish on my hook THIS BIG and..." it just does not seem like a big deal any more to see a naked women.

I'd sooner call them "tasteful photos of attractive, naked ladies" than "porno". Though I suppose the connotation of porn varies from person to person and region to region.

With that said, I think it is a smart move; they will both open up new markets (women, people put off by nudity, etc) and not have to compete with the millions (billions?) of free, actual porn on the internet. Playboy has some good journalists and writers, it will be nice to see what they can do now that they are the sole focus of the publication.

It's funny how many Playboy models there are out there; my neighbor dated a former model for a few years. She was an idiot and a gold digger lol. Dumped him, married a plastic surgeon 4 months later, and after a year and a set of fake boobs later, divorced him; I imagine she is living pretty damn well right now.

I agree that classifying Playboy as pornography isn't necessarily apt; I just didn't know with what to attribute it. I guess nudity should work. Personally, I call pornography anything that's intended to titillate the audience, and classic Playboy is of that category.

At any rate, I doubt the new targeted audience would be sufficient to sustain a monolithic brand like Playboy as it's a very niche one.

I thought they were still going to show nudity just not pubic hair in photos? At least thats what Bill Maher reported on his show on Friday.

I actually used to buy Playboy for the interviews. Playboy probably has had some of the best interviews in journalism with influential people. The interviews are frank and uncensored and they often pushed the boundaries. Theres a bound collection of them you can get as a coffee table book thats excellent.

@transk53:

"Except when she's standing right in front of you."

You made an excellent point.

As a kid I was allowed to read my dad's Playboy magazines but only at home and with him there. I was educated on the naked female form at a young age because of this and since he was always in the room while I was reading/viewing the pages it meant that I had to use my imagination later if I decided to manipulate myself. Usually I just let the feelings go and had a lot more energy when dealing with real life female humans.