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Playboy Magazine Will No Longer Feature the Occasional Nude Woman Alongside Its Journalism

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | October 13, 2015 |

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | October 13, 2015 |


In a shocking and sad development for those who buy Playboy Magazine for the articles, Playboy Magazine will now feature just the articles.

Well, not quite, but 62 years after Marilyn Monroe featured on the first issue’s cover and in the inaugural nude centerfold, the magazine has noticed that this internet thing — with its ability sole purpose of accessing any nature and quantity of filth — is probably here to stay, and so in a bid to carve out a new niche for itself will now abandon its bare-all attitude and go PG-13. Tasty, tasteful, please someone buy this PG-13.

Considering the fact that Playboy’s circulation has dropped from a 1975 high of 5.6 million to today’s low of 800,000, this is probably a sound business decision. The 89-year-old still-editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner and his team would have paid attention to the doomed fate of their once-mighty competitor, Penthouse, who decided to face the looming porntsunami of the internet head on by (in paraphrased last words that must be read in a 12 year old boy’s voice), ‘going even more hardcore!’ Penthouse of course disappeared beneath the waves.

Decades before the porntsunami began to first form, however, Playboy Magazine made money. Serious money. And, perhaps even more significantly, it made itself into an icon. That damn bunny silhouette could be seen everywhere. With this kind of clout, a publication whose success would eventually allow an octogenarian man to live at a Naked Woman Mansion while perpetually clad in a smoking jacket and swapping out 20-year-old girlfriends every five minutes could style itself as a Serious Magazine and actually attract some real talent.

To wit, some of the writers who have had material published in Playboy over the years include Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Haruki Murakami, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Ray Bradbury, Gabriel García Mrquez, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, and Margaret bloody Atwood (!). The 20th century was a weird time.

But those days are over, and seeing as now all the great writers write for PornHub (probably), Playboy as it once was is also finished.

As one its chief editors, Cory Jones, said of the decision: ‘Don’t get me wrong, 12-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it’s the right thing to do.’

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