‘The Right Thing To Do’ — Playboy Makes Bombshell Decision That Will Forever Change The Magazine


Playboy, the godfather of gentleman’s magazines, has made a bold announcement. Having been “overtaken by the changes it pioneered,” starting in March 2016, women featured in the glossy pages will be clothed. The stunning revelation that has (presumably) floored men around the world — likely a product of an erotica market heavily saturated with free digital media — was conceived by Playboy’s chief content officer Cory Jones. From The New York Times:

“‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Mr. Jones said of the decision to dispense with nudity, ’12-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it’s the right thing to do.'”

digital media playboy changes
Hugh Hefner (middle) founded Playboy Magazine in 1953. (Photo Credit: Alexander Hauk/Wikimedia Commons)

Gentleman’s magazines have been under threat from easy-access digital media for years. Many of Playboy’s competitors and imitators have been buried due the accessibility of free pornography on the Internet. Playboy, while still active, has also felt the effects. Print circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to just 800,000 today, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

Playboy’s new kinda-SFW image has been in effect on its website since August. According to executives, the website change has been very successful. Playboy.com saw a leap of 12 million more monthly unique visitors and the average age of its reader drop from 47 to 30 following the shift in content. Playboy finally cracked the coveted millennial market. This must have been a promising, welcome change considering that recent efforts to revamp the magazine have largely failed over the last several years.

Playboy will develop a cleaner, more modern style that Cory Jones calls “a little more accessible, a little more intimate.” The magazine will also feature a “sex-positive female” sex columnist, who Jones says will write enthusiastically on the topic. Playboy will still feature investigative journalism, cultural essays, interviews, and fiction. The magazine’s changes have been focus-group tested and are geared toward capturing and holding onto the millennial audience.

Playboy may also be expressing interest in gaining readership among women. From Jezebel:

“… the magazine has clearly courted that market with features on ‘women’s issues,’ like college sexual assault or Gamergate.”


It’s true that free-access digital media has crippled the erotic magazine industry. Many of Playboy’s imitators and competitors have been decimated by Google searches and generic xxx.com websites for two decades. The magazine must adjust with the times and as disappointing as it may be that future men may not have the intimate relationship with Playboy that their predecessors have had, the ease of access for erotic digital media may likely have forced necessary, if not positive change to an American institution.

I’ll always remember the April 1997 issue with Kelly Monaco for obvious reasons. Perhaps with the changes in Playboy’s business model, the next crop of young men will also develop sentiment for the magazine for reasons of their own.

Featured image by GabboT, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

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