13 October 2015 - Playboy to stop publishing photos of naked women
Activer le mode zenPlayboy magazine to stop publishing pictures of naked women
Amanda Meade (The Guardian)
Playboy magazine will stop publishing pictures of fully nude women because the ubiquity of internet pornography has made such images “passé”, the company’s chief executive has revealed.
In an interview with the New York Times, CEO Scott Flanders said founder Hugh Hefner, 89, had agreed with a proposal to stop publishing images of naked women from March 2016.
The redesigned Playboy, 62 years after it was launched by Hefner, will still feature a Playmate of the Month and provocative pictures of women, but they will be rated PG-13 (a rating that cautions that material may be inappropriate for children under 13).
Flanders told the NYT: “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
In other changes, the sex columnist will be a “sex-positive female” and the target of the magazine will be young employed males. “The difference between us and Vice,” Flanders said, “is that we’re going after the guy with a job.”
Read on...
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"I read it for the articles"
Margaret Hartmann (New York Magazine)
Six decades after it helped launch the sexual revolution in America, Playboy is putting some clothes on. The New York Times reports that in March, when the magazine launches its latest redesign, it will stop featuring fully nude women. Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive, acknowledged that Playboy has fallen victim to the movement it started, saying, "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture."
Playboy's circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 today, and the redesign is aimed at capturing more millennials who did not grow up with the magazine stuffed under their mattress. As the old joke implies, Playboy does have a history of producing great journalism, and it will continue publishing interviews, fiction, and investigative pieces. It will also feature more visual artists and a "sex-positive female" columnist. "The difference between us and Vice," Flanders said, "is that we’re going after the guy with a job."
Read on...
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Editorial Policy
Playboy, sans nudes? When 'I read it for the articles' becomes editorial policy
Clem Bastow (The Guardian)
When I was first at university, I took refuge from the vagaries of a Bachelor in Fashion Design by signing up for a gender studies elective. We had a terrific and uncompromising lecturer who ruled the classroom with an iron fist, and she would accept citations in essays from only one periodical: Playboy.
It was, in an academic sense, the ultimate vindication of the vaguely apocryphal claim, “I read it for the articles”.
It’s amusing, then, to see that the magazine itself has finally adopted “I read it for the articles” as an official editorial position, this week it announcing it would no longer run nude photos of women.
The company’s CEO, Scott Flanders, decried naked spreads as “passe”, telling the New York Times that Playboy’s new PG-13 tone would be “a little more accessible, a little more intimate”.
This likely has a lot to do with the skyrocketing traffic (and plummeting age of the average user) the Playboy website received last August when nudes disappeared; finally, visiting Playboy was “safe for work”, and probably the reason I’ve not been barred from the wifi while writing this.
Read on...
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The history of Playboy
(The New York Times)
Hugh Hefner had been working as promotion copywriter at Esquire in Chicago when the magazine decided to move its offices to New York. He decided to stay behind and start a magazine of his own.
The first Playboy appeared in December 1953 with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. She had not posed for the magazine, but Hugh Hefner bought the famous nude photo by Tom Kelley from the John Baumgarth Calendar Company and initially called the picture featured inside “Sweetheart of the Month.”
Mr. Hefner has said he created the magazine with the goal of featuring “the girl next door.” For some – like Jenny McCarthy and Anna Nicole Smith – becoming a Playboy Playmate was the starting point of a celebrity career. By the 1980s, already famous actresses and entertainers including Bo Derek, Madonna and Drew Barrymore viewed appearing nude in Playboy as a way to promote, rather than hinder, their careers. Pamela Anderson has appeared in 13 different issues.
As the joke goes, Playboy was indeed known for its interviews. Among the more memorable ones included a 1962 interview with Miles Davis by Alex Haley, one with Vladimir Nabokov in 1964, and one John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1981, a year before his death, and a 1976 chat with Jimmy Carter, then a presidential candidate, in which he said “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust.”
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13 October 2015 - Playboy to stop publishing photos of naked women, La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), octobre 2015. Consulté le 26/12/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2015/13-october-2015-playboy-to-stop-publishing-photos-of-naked-women