Playboy Magazine was great stuff in the 60’s & 70’s and even had good stuff into the early 80’s but for at least the last 10-15 years or so the women in the pages are such obvious implant and surgery queens the results are almost anti-erotic.
Beyond this, who would pay for this? There are better looking women on the internet for free. What is Playboy’s business model these days?
Good question - I did see that Christie Hefner resigned, so not sure if that is the final nail in the publication or not.
As a Gay guy, I was never exactly their ideal demographic, but I actually did pick up copies from friends and read the articles - they always had some good interviews and some interesting articles. Haven’t seen a copy in a few years though, so not sure how it holds up (with regards to articles) today.
WAG: They still make lots of $$ from liscensing stuff. Playboy keychains, jewelry, hand bags, pillows, blankets, wallets, hats, etc.
Better living through airbrushing.
Actually, Playboy Enterprises is suffering some big financial woes right now, but they’re mostly related to the side projects (ie., online content, Playboy TV, Spice, Playboy clubs and the like). Circulation of the magazine is pretty stable at 3,000,000 copies, which is down a lot from their heyday but still more than any of the “lad mags” (Maxim, etc.)
I don’t know exactly why so many people still pay for it. I guess some people really do read it for the articles… and of course it’s only place where you’re going to see the naked celebrity du jour (usually female WWE stars, these days). Circulation for the celebrity centerfold issues (like Katerina Witt and Rena Mero, for example) is invariably higher than normal.
Fun fact: the NLS publishes Playboy in Braille. No pictures obviously.
I have been receiving Playboy for free for the last 20 years. I signed up for a one year subscription in 1987 and after the term ran out I still continued to receive it. I think their records must show me as having a life time term. I did get my monies worth, once in a while I get a card asking I still want to receive it, I do not reply and they keep sending it to me, 20 plus years. They have had a recent format change and it’s about half the size it was a short time ago.
I can’t stand Playboy, or a lot of the big magazines now. They retouch photos to such an extent that it’s often more like looking at a painting or a computer rendering than a photograph. This happens in other magazines where celebrities appear nude or semi-nude. What’s the point? Some chick undressed and a photographer got to see her and take pictures, but I don’t get to see the the photos. It seems like the only way to ever see celebrities nude anymore is in captures from movies.
They used to have pretty good fiction & political writing. And the interviews. And the Adviser, or whatever it was called.
I suppose there’s a lot of content there one is not getting from net-porn.
I paid for a sub a few years ago and still get on for free now. I think they do it to keep their sub numbers up for advertising purposes. Their writing is still quite good. Or so I hear. My dad gets a free copy of the Wall Street Journal based on him living in a rich community. They just toss it in the driveway every day.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
I haven’t purchased copy of Playboy in 16 years or so–since college–and even though it was for the articles.
Read it with from about mid-70s to early 80s. Formative years, don’t you know. I stopped reading it when I realized it was all one big lie.
And the cycle could only be stopped by outgrowing the need to model yourself on someone else.
I love their cartoons, but the last time I bought a copy, there were a total of ten in the whole issue. The book compilations of the cartoons are brilliant, especially the Eldon Dedini book.
I just finished Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, by Steven Watts, an oddly tedious and very long biography.
And even after reading it I’m still asking myself the same question as the OP. (Watts spends three-quarters of the book on Playboy’s first 25 years and crams the next 25 into 100 pages. And stops talking about the magazine. It’s really not very good.)
Who buys it? Youngish men. Same as always. Why? I have to guess for the articles. It can’t be for the pictures these days. But Hefner understood perfectly how totally insecure young men are. They want instruction in all the details of being grown up. What to wear. How to act. What to say to women. That never changes at base, even if the superficial details of the answers change. Playboy was always about fantasy and aspiration, both in the unattainable “girls next door” but just as importantly in the total lifestyle needed to attain the attainable girl. All the comedy “guy” movies of today are about the same insecurity. Seth Rogan is the new Tony Randall.
I frequently get mailed ads for a subscription so cheap that it’s hard to resist, like $1 an issue or less, so sometimes I bite. For that price, there’s always something to enjoy.
But they long ago gave up the wholesome “girl next door” concept for Playmates, and switched to overblown and overgrown, serious models. That’s when the Playboy image jumped the shark.
But I’d pay to see a Playmate jump a shark.
I had a subscription from when I was 11. My family had a cabin at a nudist camp, so pictures of naked women were nothing special. I really did read it for the articles. I’m 48, and the time period when I was reading it was one of their strongest. I had a subscription again a few years back, but they started transitioning towards trying to serve the Maxim crowd and I let it lapse.
I interviewed for a job at Playboy in the late 90s. Nice offices with original artwork everywhere - I kept seeing paintings I recognized from the magazine. Every single person I talked to was female. They told me they had a difficult time hiring men because of the “girlfriend/wife factor”, too many spouses unhappy with their men working around potential naked women. I turned the job down because they wanted me to work out in Schaumburg rather than downtown Chicago.
I still enjoy Playboy. They still attract a lot of very good writers and introduce some new talent.
While there are lots of better places to see naked women (though they do attract very beautiful girls and have fantastic photographers), the one thing Playboy can deliver that no one else can is celebrities posing naked. Many women who would never pose naked otherwise will do so for Playboy, largely based on their reputation for style and class in this area.
I’ll keep subscribing until Jennifer Love Hewitt gives in and poses!
There is a prurient streak within me that likes seeing celebrity womwn naked, and Playboy has always delivered the goods: In my own heyday as a reader, Bo Derek, Farrah Fawcett, Drew Barrymore, Madonna, all the Bond girls, lingerie spreads with Bernadette Peters and Kathleen Turner back when that was a big deal, etc.
The celebs they get now just aren’t that appealing to me. WWF’s China? Kim Kardashian? Who are these people?
Her centerfold would be one page for her forehead and one page for the rest of her.
Funny though. Playboy prided itself on its “counterculture” views, didn’t it?
If everyone’s doing… well, they should stop doing it!
Imagine, for instance, a Salma Hayek spread, not re-touched, with analog photography! Or… I dunno… a Britney Spears au naturel. (Emphasis on the non-retouching).
Even some men-and-women pairings… Why not add homosexual spreads? (Both male and female?)
I guess what I’m saying is that Playboy used to be at the forefront of society’s evolution. And they grew stale when they embraced the yuppie lifestyle during the '90’s. If they want to become relevant again, they need to embrace the frontier.