Women’s voices driving Playboy’s change in tone
The magazine goes from topless to thoughtful in its first non-nude issue.
When the radically transformed Playboy hits shelves Friday — for the first time in decades without full nudity and outside its opaque plastic bag — the magazine will be missing a rallying cry that has graced the cover since its 1953 debut: “Entertainment for Men.”
Instead, in a wink at the technology that has helped undermine it, the cover will feature an amateur Instagram model, shot in the style of a Snapchat selfie, over what in 2016 amounts to digital flirtation: the comehither call-out, “heyyy ;)”
Playboy’s first non-nude issue, perhaps the magazine’s biggest reimagining since Hugh Hefner debuted a centerfold of a naked Marilyn Monroe, marks a risky gamble for an American publishing empire overrun by the boundless sex and storytelling offered freely online.
But instead of rebuking the digital age, the glossy icon has sought to emulate it: With social media-inspired photo shoots, explorations of topics such as birth control and immigration and a reinvigoration of the kinds of thoughtful journalism it published in the ’60s — much of it now written by and reporting on women.
“Nudity’s not provocative anymore. It used to be progressive — Hef pushing the morals of America — but nudity doesn’t serve that purpose anymore,” said Cory Jones, the chief content officer at Playboy Enterprises’ headquarters in Beverly Hills.
The racy magazine, though Jones disagrees, will probably still not be “something you feel comfortable leaving on your coffee table.” Though there is no fullfrontal nudity, pages are dotted with women in varying stages of undress, or in the buff but covered up by wellplaced hands and fluttering sheets.
A gallery of centerfold Dree Hemingway, the daughter of Oscar-winning actress Mariel Hemingway and great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, is stylishly subdued, as if taken from a high-fashion magazine. “Put down your phone. Get back into reading. Feel something,” she says in an accompanying interview.
Those changes will probably do little to quiet the criticism that Playboy sexually objectifies women. But its articles include nuanced interviews and deep reporting aimed at attracting any modern reader, regardless of gender.
Eight pages in the upcoming March issue are devoted to an interview with Rachel Maddow, whose staff of 20 is celebrated in the second sentence because women outnumber men.
Erin Gloria Ryan, a former editor and writer at Gawker’s feminist blog Jezebel, wrote a cheeky paean to her intrauterine device, which she said “has the potential to lead women into the next sexual revolution” under the headline, “God Bless Birth Control.”
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, who fulfill the grungiest of millennial stereotypes as two twentysomething New Yorkers on Comedy Central’s “Broad City,” sit for an interview in which they own up to being “totally up-front and proud feminists.”
Women’s voices will also form a regular foundation on which the new Playboy can push boundaries. A recurring feature, “No Filter,” is dedicated to “a woman who’s making waves in entertainment.” Playboy Advisor, the magazine’s longrunning advice column, will now be led by Rachel Rabbit White, a candid journalist and blogger who went viral in 2011 when she declared Feb. 22 “Lady Porn Day.”
For its “guiding light,” the company says it has looked toward the Playboys of the postwar ’50s and swinging ’60s, when the magazine was known not just for centerfolds but also its coverage of literature, art and music.
Left unsaid in that grand vision, of course, is that the magazine will sprint away from the lurid reputation it gained in the decades since, as competition from more adventurous magazines such as Hustler pushed Playboy to thin the features and fiction while piling on more flesh.
Editors see the authenticity of social media as a cure for the scourge of lateage Playboy’s overly produced, airbrushed shoots. One six-page spread consists of mostly unedited selfies taken by artist and model Myla Dalbesio. The cover profile centers on Sarah McDaniel, a Snapchat-andInstagram starlet known for her “campy mix of perfectly squared selfies and biting, salacious wit.”
Buttoning up could also prove good for business. When Playboy.com was relaunched last year as “safe for work,” traffic skyrocketed, to 20 million visits a month from 4 million, Jones said. The median viewer’s age also plunged, to 30 from 47.
How well the magazine will sell — and how long editors can commit to thoughtful writing when so much of it is already available on mobile phones — remains to be seen. But they’re optimistic that readers who see that first come-hither cover will give its pages a read.