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Comment by pratyushag | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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