Where the Sun (and Rupert Murdoch) leads, Playboy (and Hugh Hefner) follow. The axing of Page 3 girls in January this year is being followed by the elimination of fully nude women in Playboy magazine.
And the reason offered for the change of mind, as articulated by the chief executive of Playboy Enterprises, Scott Flanders, is somewhat similar to the one advanced by the Sun.
Nudity on a page, either newsprint or glossy, is passé. In these digital days, where anything goes, “tame” airbrushed photographs of naked women look hopelessly old-fashioned.
But it sounds from the Flanders interview in the New York Times as though the revamped magazine is about to replace one set of unwanted images with another set.
Evidently, nudes will be supplanted by semi-naked women in provocative poses. And there will still be the obligatory playmate of the month.
Clearly, Flanders and Hefner are responding - albeit awkwardly - to the market reality. One US issue of Playboy in November 1972 sold more than 7m copies. Regular circulation during 1975 reached 5.6m.
And now? In the States, it sells barely 800,000, which is resulting in an annual loss of $3m.
Playboy-alike mags over the past decade have been closing or covering up (and then closing). The digital revolution has swept them away.
And Playboy’s change of content, supposedly promoting the “sex-positive female” while continuing to carry “investigative journalism, in-depth interviews and fiction” to attract “young men who live in cities” also looks doomed.
The whole Playboy thing is obsolescent, as is Hefner, who is 89. Yes, I know Murdoch is 84, but he’s a horse of a different colour.
Sources: New York Times/The Guardian/LA Observed
