Long ago, when I was just a wee thing, really, I was browsing through a flea market with a boyfriend who found some old Playboys. Naturally, he bought them. Naturally, he said with a smirk, he just wanted to read them for the articles. The joke was on him; some previous owner had carefully razored out the centerfolds.
As a result, the one time I read Playboy, I did read it for the articles — and it turned out the articles were pretty good. There were interviews with famous, interesting people. (I seem to recall one with William F. Buckley.) There was short fiction. There was an overall gestalt of mod hipness that now reads as faintly amusing. (Vodka cocktails are the next big thing? Do tell.)
All in all, it was surprisingly serious stuff, next to — well, I suppose the centerfolds represent the most serious subject in the history of the human race, but they weren't intellectually stimulating.
Now it looks like we'll all be able to read Playboy for the articles, because the magazine is recasting itself as a straight lad mag, no nudity required, or even allowed.
As a business decision, this makes perfect sense. The Internet has killed the print skin trade. It offers video, chats and incredible variety, and as long as you're careful to scrub your search history, you don't even need to hide your tablet at the back of the closet.
Playboy's American print magazine now loses millions of dollars a year. It is essentially a loss-leader for the Playboy brand, which is licensed hither and thither across the globe. That brand is well-established, right down to its bunny logo. At this point nude photos may cost the magazine more audience than they bring in.
On the other hand, what is the brand without the centerfold? Playboy has always had an odd tension between the editorial content and the visual aids.
In its heyday among the mod generation, the writing essentially peddled the fantasy of being a more sedentary James Bond: a sophisticated and urbane man about town, drowning in lady friends. The New York Times quotes Hefner's first editor's letter, which sketches the demographic he envisioned: "If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you. … We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d'oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex."