Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand | Hacker News Reader

Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand

nytimes.com

151 pointsstanleydrew96 comments

For boys growing up in the 60's and 70's, a lot of time and effort was spent trying to get hold of a Playboy or even just a few pages. Imagine a whole neighborhood of boys playing "ditch 'em" (a wide-ranging and violent version of hide 'n' go seek) wherein the "seekers" would while away the countdown time by gathering at one player's house to peruse his dad's magazine collection--and manage to put it back EXACTLY as it was found lest the treasure trove be locked away. Imagine a middle school music class where an ancient radiator vent in the back of the room was known as a reliable drop point for a stash of pictures, necessarily folded and ripped from being alternately jammed into and removed from the hiding place. Oh well, what we were looking for (and so much more) is blase now. Times do change.

This is the key part to me: "The company now makes most of its money from licensing its ubiquitous brand and logo across the world — 40 percent of that business is in China even though the magazine is not available there" The actual magazine is kind of like Apple Desktop products. It's a direct link to their heritage and the original reason people were drawn in but it's not where the real money is made anymore so changes are fairly trivial to the overall business.

Even the magazine publishing rights have been licensed overseas in censorious Asian markets, which has given the brand plenty of opportunity to watch experiments with non-nude print editions.

Through a friend actually involved with the publication I found myself at the very sedate launch of VIP Magazine in Singapore, which had licensed the right to splash rabbit ears across the cover and a foreword from Hugh Hefner and some Western models to appear at the reception, but couldn't actually use the word "Playboy" (or, on account of Singaporean censorship, any actual nudity). The title is a bit of a giveaway as to the position they were aiming in for the Asian market. Even by Singaporean standards supercars were overrepresented in the car park; not sure whether that meant Mini's sponsorship of the event was a mistake or a masterstroke.

I understand the operation - which sounded very lean - failed, the licence was taken up by another publisher, and quite possibly failed again. Perhaps more to do with having the wrong title and paucity of content than lack of nudes?

Indonesia's nude-free Playboy Indonesia has the brand name in the title and appears to have enjoyed more success, despite (or possibly because of) attacks on its office and public campaigns resulting in the incarceration of its editor.

I'm not sure whether they've managed similar franchise publications in China, but I'd be surprised if they haven't had discussions on the subject.

There is nothing like being a wet behind the ears American kid, completely oblivious to the real world, arriving in China to live with a family and teach English, and seeing tons of Playboy apparel.

I could not even tell them. And this was in, IIRC, 2005?

Recently Playboy turned more into an outlet of Photoshop skills than actual tasteful photography it seemed like. It has been and hopefully continues to remain a source for reporting and interviews that are intriguing and somewhat hard hitting due to the uncensored nature. If it turns into yet another Maxim however its going to continue to stall. Playboy does have a place in the magazine world and its good to hear Heff is open to letting it evolve.

Good observation. The area between models' legs has been looking closer to the texture of a barbie doll than skin for some time.

Perhaps someday people will buy old copies of Playboy to fulfill their nostalgia for those early 21st century girls "wearing Photoshop".

This has nothing to do with gender issues, sexuality issues, societal changes, or Internet ubiquity. This is simply a flailing attempt to get press for a moribund flagship publication that is likely dragging down a profitable brand. This is a money and marketing decision and nothing more. Like New Coke, I can foresee Playboy returning to nude photos with some huge star in a few years.

I agree it's purely a business decision, but I suspect it's a genuine attempt to redefine the magazine -- essentially as a head-on rival to Esquire (which is pretty much Playboy without the pictures). This allows Playboy to address a larger market -- i.e. people who would actually be interested in the articles but don't want to be seen as buying porn.

Of course, it's still called Playboy, so... eh whatever.

>I agree it's purely a business decision, but I suspect it's a genuine attempt to redefine the magazine

What's genuine and non-genuine in those kind of business decisions though?

It's not like the CEO (or worse MBA team) running the show is actually "passionate" about redefining Playboy, making its mark on the publishing industry, etc.

I see more as "let's throw this idea to the wall to see if it sticks and makes money" attempt, more than anything "genuine".

I think when he says "genuine", he means they are genuinely giving it a try, not that they are doing it out of pure spiritual authenticity.

Most business decisions (and most decisions) are made on some other basis than passion, nothing wrong with that.

>I think when he says "genuine", he means they are genuinely giving it a try, not that they are doing it out of pure spiritual authenticity.

Yeah, that makes sense.

>Most business decisions (and most decisions) are made on some other basis than passion, nothing wrong with that.

Well, I prefer it to be the other way. And I could trace most issues with QA, scams, etc, on that. If they don't love and take pride in what they sell, they shouldn't sell it.

Loving and having passion for what you do doesn't contradict making rational decisions.

Many business loved by their owners have been destroyed because of emotional attachments to business models that someone just as passionate but more rational could have saved.

Genuine as in not a publicity stunt per the post I was replying to. Incidentally, I just saw coverage of this story that said the playboy website stopped showing nudes a year ago and quadrupled readership.

It has everything to do with internet ubiquity. They've realized they can't sell a product everyone can get for free.

Playboy should relaunch itself as a women empowerment magazine. There is a strong sense of empowerment for women to pose nude and playboy helped bring about this revolution (or can take some claim for it). We don't need another Vice but we do need a magazine that interviewed the likes of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, to do interviews on women leaders. It should be remembered that Christie Hefner has probably directed the company for a lot of its history and was instrumental in its development. In many ways, playboy is not inherently sexist or undermining women (do we consider a nude men's magazine to undermine men? no so the argument carries itself quite well I think).

That would be a good idea save for the mostly male audience of Playboy (mag/site). It's always tried to market itself as the Gentleman's magazine, and although it could try to market to women in terms of empowerment, I'd argue that it always tried to empower all people in terms of sexual freedom.

I don't think an all-male audience is where interviews on women leaders should go, simply because it won't sell.

If Playboy wants to be a fashion magazine, it will probably not remain one only for men. If it does, well... they won't make much money because women probably make up a large majority of fashion purchasers. I think if Playboy started talking about women business leaders, they could turn some heads. Honestly, I love me a smart business lady with chops, especially when she's not nude and has achieved a lot more than I probably will.

I would argue that they're not a fashion mag at all, at least in a clothing sense. The apparel they sell with a logo on it, that's definitely marketed towards women. But the magazine is supposed to keep men interested. They themselves have admitted that it's a loss leader.

Playboy used to be something you could keep on your coffee table, engendering sex-positivity while having tasteful and interesting gentlemanly articles. Interviews with MLK and others come to mind, as well as serializations of good books like Fahrenheit 451.

They no longer do this, unfortunately. It was easy enough to cruise on money, and now Playboy is a guilty pleasure for people who remember what it is and don't know how to use the internet for porn.

I want the tasteful Playboy back. I don't care so much about getting rid of the nudes, I just want something interesting to read.

>That would be a good idea save for the mostly male audience of Playboy (mag/site).

Playboys audience and marketing is mostly female. Their profit is from selling their brand and most branded products are female marketed.

Sure its sexist discrimination. It might be positive discrimination, but there's a flipside. I'm not sure though, I'm not a feminist and even they don't agree on one opinion. I won't argue that in its outlook on what men want, it would degrade men to instinctive animals.

edit: sent to soon

But the "Playboy philosophy" (which was a thing Hefner, at least, took very seriously -- see http://www.brooklynrail.org/2005/07/express/the-playboy-phil...) was always explicitly about liberating men: liberating them from the constraints of things like marriage and monogamy and propriety. It was interested in liberating women only insofar as it's difficult for men to live a swinging lifestyle in a culture where all the women are either monogamously married or saving themselves for such a marriage. Swinging men can't swing unless there are swinging women around as well. But women's lib, for Playboy, was always about them being freer to offer themselves sexually to men.

Women eventually reappropriated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation) its pages to enable a kind of female liberation that was about what women wanted rather than men, but that was something organic, not something the magazine itself created.

You mean something like BelleSF? That mag has art too. I dunno. It's like a whole couple of generation shifts they're dealing with.

I don’t see posing for men to jack off to your body as empowering.

Being taught to be ashamed of your body and to keep it covered all times isn't exactly "empowering".

This is a common feminist talking point. While I agree in this context it could be argued, ultimately it's about the woman having full authority over her body and how its portrayed. That includes the authority to display it in the nude and not be shamed into covering up.

This is about more than nudity becoming ubiquitous. Playboy's brand now relies much more on branded goods than pornography.

Quartz has a decent overview here: http://qz.com/522672/china-not-online-porn-is-why-playboy-is...

Even stranger is that their primary market is now women, not men.

Source? Hopefully with discussion?

The things which have a Playboy logo on them are marketed to women.

Earlier this year, a British tabloid called 'The Sun' dropped its infamous Page 3. This news immediately made headlines and everyone was talking/joking about it. A couple of days later, Page 3 returned and everyone realised that they'd been played; it was a great advertising ploy. The media forgot that it was The Sun's sister paper The Times that made the original, brilliantly sneaky, announcement! (Murdoch/News International)

I predict the same will happen in this Playboy's case...

http://www.theweek.co.uk/media/62168/page-3-topless-models-m...

Although it turns out that the "return" of Page 3 was itself the advertising ploy, inasmuch it was only a one-off. Since then, The Sun has apparently not carried pictures of topless models on page 3: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/mar/06/the-...

Vice is what playboy should have turned into 10 years ago.

Yeah, that or The Verge.

But a good editor and/or a strong website relaunch could make up for lost time pretty quickly - see Josh Topolsky's work on Bloomberg or the New Yorker's web overhaul 2 years ago.

Granted, I can't quite imagine how they can leverage their brand's err core identity without seeming hopelessly out of date. Cleavagey models would seem just as archaic.

This is all very subjective, but I've never found The Verge to be intellectually stimulating. It's just your run of the mill shallow gadget site, only with better graphics. It doesn't go in depth the way Anandtech does for example, and there's little of Arstechnica's investigative journalism. The Verge spends more time optimizing how their pages are designed than their journalism.

I largely agree, but it's a solid, well rounded lifestyle site, which seems consonant with Playboy's brand - I could see them becoming a slightly refined/nerdy Maxim. Vice would pair more naturally with Suicide Girls if the concept of sexifying journalism/writing is at all worthwhile in the digital age. Now, combining a hard tech site like Anandtech/Ars with attractive models? How generous of you to just leave a billion dollar idea right out in a public forum ;).

They've done some excellent long-form articles, though.

For example: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3740422/the-life-and-death...

I feel like Ars have been slipping since Hannibal left, and they closed down their open source section.

Perhaps their last great deep dive was the series of articles on the Amiga computer.

The most striking is perhaps how much of a tone change there was for one editor that moved to the site primarily to write about Android. Ever since he changed employer his articles seem to be all about highlighting what is wrong about the OS.

All in all i fear the site has gotten very agenda driven in recent years.

I think what Playboy's CEO said makes a lot of sense: "The difference between us and Vice is that we’re going after the guy with a job."

If we imagine Vice and GQ at two opposite ends of a spectrum -- Vice having the most substantive intellectual content but with a grungy punk aesthetic that wants to challenge and discomfort you, and with GQ having absolutely vapid content solely meant to showcase whatever suits or whiskey a sponsor is pushing but doing so with beautiful photography that's a pleasure to look at -- then it sounds like Playboy is positioning itself in the middle, like a thinking man's GQ or a convivial gentleman's Vice.

But after I saw this announcement, I checked out their revamped website and it just looks like a slightly more grown-up version of Total Frat Move: skeevy clickbait for bros in the back half of their twenties. If they really want to go after the Vice fans with jobs, I hope their content editors ramp up original material (which Vice does extremely well) instead of repackaging viral videos and listicles for referral traffic.

Right, looks like a toned down version of thechive.com - that's probably the opposite of what they want to be doing.

The mags, though, have contained serious articles. Alongside nude pictures of women.

I agree that they should probably move some of their serious content to their website, though. If only for marketing reasons. It would make the notion of reading Playboy for the news far less humorous.

Aiming for the middle may turn out to be a losing strategy, since they're going to be competing/fighting on two fronts, both at the lower and at the upper ends of the market. The other magazines just have to push one way if they need to and have free space on the other.

I get the feeling that the magazine will die along or even before Heff does.

Playboy's articles are a thousand times more thoughtful than anything coming out of Vice.

They certainly are/were good. Vice does a lot more, and focuses on a lot of investigative stuff which nobody else looks at though.

The Internet may have provided the final blow, but it wasn't what killed Playboy. What killed Playboy was success.

The first issue of Playboy hit the stands in December of 1953. The magazine espoused a philosophy that was pretty radical for that time, namely that sex was not just not bad but actually good and fun and something everyone should be doing. It was "sex-positive" in a time when literally nothing else in the culture was.

This boldness served them well from the '50s to the mid-'60s, as the rest of the culture slowly started to come around to the same point of view. The problem is that by the late '60s the culture had reached the same point that Playboy had, and it didn't stop there -- sexual liberation kept galloping on, reaching points that were far beyond anything Playboy had ever advocated for. By the early '70s, for instance, American culture was so saturated with sex that pornography was just another part of the cultural landscape (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Porn). Playboy had agitated against the censorship laws that had kept such films out of general circulation; but when those laws disappeared, it had nothing to say about the results.

Playboy, in other words, eventually got lapped by the changes it helped to create. The culture galloped along, but the magazine didn't do anything to keep up, so its relevance slipped and eventually tumbled. It was still selling a Mad Men view of sexuality in a world where divorce and cohabitation and premarital sex had all become part of everyday life. In the 1950s, Playboy was daring and edgy; by the 1970s, it was positively quaint. And while porn can be a lot of things, one thing it can't be is quaint. Nobody ever got turned on by something that was 100% safe, 100% familiar.

So Playboy started dying way back then, when it gave up its claim on cultural relevance, and the story of the decades since has just been the slow playing out of the inevitable.

Well-put. Just before the "Golden Age" you cite, there was the "Pubic Wars" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pubic_Wars) -- a back-and-forth between Playboy and Penthouse over who would show more. As you mention, Playboy got lapped by such competitors, and that time between about 1968 and 1972 is where the competition pulled away.

I subscribe to Playboy. Among all my magazines while their issues do have the occasional great article, the issues are just really thin and other magazines more often have better reads. What they do have is a brand. Getting rid of nudity may increase subscriptions which may increase ad space, but they're also getting rid of the main reason people many subscribe to Playboy. We'll just have wait and see if they can execute and deliver on what their brand demands of them. Pretty big gamble IMO.

Subscribing to Playboy to see naked women seems so archaic. It's ridiculously easy to find naked women on the internet for free, and with far greater variety than the entire history of Playboy.

Focusing on what makes them unique seems like a smart move, although time will tell if it is enough to save the periodical.

So are you suggesting that clothed women will be better for them than nude women because ...?

Or that they should not focus on women at all because the internet has everything?

(I am just asking for clarification, not disagreeing.)

Few people have bought Playboy for its pictorials for a couple decades, but that doesn't mean the pictorials didn't have meaning.

The nude women reinforced their brand and made them unique in the magazine world. Playboy was the unapologetic pro-sexual magazine, but with taste and restraint. Who else does that?

>So are you suggesting that clothed women will be better for them than nude women because ...?

If they take out the nude pictures they'll be able to put the magazine in more outlets.

A good chunk of the relationship between 20th and 21st centuries captured in one headline. Beautiful.

This bit is interesting, if the claimed causation is true:

In August of last year, its website dispensed with nudity. As a result, Playboy executives said, the average age of its reader dropped from 47 to just over 30, and its web traffic jumped to about 16 million from about four million unique users per month.

I have to call bullshit on this...not that the numbers as reported are wrong, but that the correlation is a causation. There's just no way that a single change from total nudity to very-sexy-poses is going to so drastically change and increase the audience (by 4x!) for a publishing website.

Think about it...how many people knew this change had actually occurred until we read it in the New York Times yesterday? Don't you think that if the change from nudes to non-nudes had been so noticeable that guys would've been telling their friends/bosses/IT people -- "Hey guess what, no more nudity on Playboy.com...we can finally read it at work!"

There must have been some other change, such as a change in editorial (publishing more things, or more junk, or publishing more of its great archive) or business (killing a paywall or obtrusive advertisements) that happened in this time period. Or maybe just a switch in how they measure analytics.

Lately I've been seeing playboy.com links showing up in the kind of places like Facebook where buzzfeed is ubiquitous. People are linking their articles now. I suspect that there are many reasons why this is happening, but certainly the fact that there isn't nudity at playboy.com is definitely a factor.

That was my guess as well, that nudity inhibits "shareability", which is important for traffic nowadays for this kind of publication. Though if this was an overhaul aimed at getting more pageviews by a younger audience, it's also likely there were other content changes at the same time, like type of article being written, which might have contributed as much or more.

The NYT article does mention that they made the change with the intent of making their site more Facebook friendly.

The lack of nudity may have taken them off some office firewalls too, not saying that would do it, but it would probably help.

I'll throw in a hypothesis: the change in content may have included a change in tagging, either by Playboy, or by third parties, related to the presence of nudity or other adult content. By changing the rating of the site, Playboy could have easily climbed out of the kid-safe or work-safe or whatever-safe content filter hole it was once in.

The Wired article says the change was made "in order to be allowed on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter" which led to the increase in audience.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/playboys-no-nudes-is-what-happe...

Saying "its website dispensed with nudity" seems misleading, when they just moved all that to a separate (paid) section, IINM.

"We only publish it for the articles."

Playboy is done mostly by women. I assume it is hard to think the whole day about "What do men want?"

It was more Photoshop than photos. They published naked pictures of Merge Simpson. I mean, really?

This is how it can be done different:

[NSFW] https://www.amypink.com/de/

FYI, that link is NSFW ^^^

I probably should have taken that as a given, but I didn't, so I figured I'd warn anyone. I unfortunately am at work, and just flashed two naked women in a tub on my giant screen before ninja tab closing. Godspeed.

Yes. My fault. Sorry. Added a warning.

Actually, I find the main pic on the front page with the two Asian girls terrible. But I saw some beautiful pictures there previously.

No problem, will follow up in a non-work venue :) Thanks for adding the warning!

"Diese Webseite verwendet Cookies, um Dienste bereitzustellen, Anzeigen zu personalisieren und Zugriffe zu analysieren."

It seems whenever venturing to European sites the likelihood of seeing a warning/disclaimer about cookies is very high. Is it really necessary though?

To be honest I think it's getting a bit ridiculous to announce that your sites has cookies, even if the EU (or whoever came up with this) insists you need to do so. If I were a website owner in Europe I would have just ignored this requirement as it's probably very unlikely to be prosecuted for lack of adherence.

Most small sites ignore it I'd say, but if you're a big company your legal guys will be much more relaxed if you don't just ignore EU law.

FWIW, Google has been pushing its European AdSense publishers to implement the cookie notice for a while now.

The Marge Simpson issue is the only one I've ever bought.

That's pretty cool. Always looking for interesting publications to strengthen my German.

> You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.

Just my personal opinion but this is a very sad truth about our society and how easy it is to see porn.

What makes it a sad truth? I personally see it as joyous, in that humanity is finally shedding the notion that our bodies and their needs are some sinful burden we must eschew.

Like said it's my personal opinion. However, there are tons of studies that support porn impacting society and relationships in a negative way. Just Google it.

Just yesterday there was an article on the modern resurgence stoicism on HN. While you see it as sexual freedom, others might see it as just another example of hedonism (which they don't believe is something worth striving for in life).

There are pros and cons to everything, and while it is normalizing a lot of otherwise healthy sexuality, it can also appeal to our most base behaviors and unhealthy desires.

All good things in moderation is more important and more difficult these days than ever before.

Back in the 90s when the print industry was still a thing my canned statement for whenever I passed a magazine rack was that Playboy should really start covering up the nipples so it can sit on the front of the magazine rack and compete with Frat-boy mags like Maxim, Loaded, and FHM. Playboy had great content and a great culture built up of esteemed contributors, it's a shame legacy pride kept them from making it to the next generation. I'm skeptical there's much left to salvage at this stage.

It's surprising that Playboy, as a print magazine, is still around.

The main competitor, Penthouse, is owned by Andrew Conru, the guy who did Adult FriendFinder. He's probably the most successful spammer, after beating California's anti-spam law in 2002.[1] Conru tried to buy Playboy a few years ago, but Hefner wouldn't sell.[2]

[1] http://www.dmnews.com/news/california-spam-case-appealed-to-... [2] http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/penthouse-owner-mak...

Soon Playboy will see that, no, nobody was getting Playboy for the articles.

Interesting to me that the comment right below yours (at the time) is "I only read it for the articles anyways"

This is a very old joke, originally intended to disguise the actual prurient reasons for "reading" playboy.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IReadItForTheArti...

Just like there are lots of movies that are watched for the plot.

Kind of an archaic joke in an age where few people read magazines from cover to cover. Also, I imagine this will give them a lot more prominent placement on the iOS and Android app stores. If they have world-class writers and some life left in the brand, this could be a successful pivot.

It's unfortunate the children of the future will not get that joke.

The article mentions that their site's readership increased significantly after they made it safe-for-work. Their core demographic also changed.

I only read it for the articles anyway

Playboy produces well written articles now, but will their business model survive removing their original reason for existing?

Netflix was originally just a DVD distribution company. They made a transition well...

Elaborate? To me this is more like if Netflix stopped distributing movies/shows and left you with an empty box, or if the current Netflix became IMDB.

I think it's more like if Netflix stopped distributing other people's movies and started only producing their own content.

Their business model is the same as Hello Kitty's: licensing their logo onto everything. They admit in the article that the magazine is a loss leader to promote the licensing business.

But will the logo continue to hold onto its status value when it's no longer associated with high-value (tasteful?) nude photography?

I know somebody who was a photoshoot model, she has plenty of products with the Playboy logo and her ultimate goal was a Playboy photoshoot (ultimately, it didn't happen). Maybe she'll buy more Playboy things to reminisce, but 10-12 years a lot of people won't be making the connection anymore

Eh, whatever

I feel like this is a namespace collision. Playboy magazine, Playboy sticker in China, Playboy shoes..

The "I read it for the articles" thing was always based on a kernel of truth. Here's a good starter list: https://longform.org/publications/playboy

I don't remember where I read this, so I can't really vouch for its reliability, but supposedly the articles were the magazine's original reason for existing. The story I read was that Hefner pitched a lifestyle magazine to publishers, but they were worried that the material he wanted to include - cocktails, interior design, arts - would be perceived as "too gay," and so discourage straight men from buying the magazine. Hence the naked women were added to make the reader feel secure in their heterosexuality.

I'm not sure how they can pull this off without rebranding. State, ISP, and end user devices/software filters exclude playboy by name. Right?

How can you distinguish between old rated X playboy, and new PG playboy.

I really thought that when they inevitably changed their "featured content" it was going to be including naked men, like a grown up (and less hipster) version of Ryan McGinley's work.

And for the first time I see something on HN after i saw it on Facebook.

This makes some sense as the only demographic group still interested in nudy mags are too young to legally buy them.

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