Close X
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
ADVT 
Interesting

No More Nudes In Playboy

Darpan News Desk IANS, 13 Oct, 2015 11:30 AM
    In upsetting news for nearly 800,000 readers of Playboy magazine, its top editors have decided to strike out nudity from the pages of the publication.
     
    Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, met its founder Hugh Hefner and presented the idea of removing explicit photos from the magazine.
     
    Hefner, now 89, agreed to the proposal and the redesign will be unveiled in March 2016, New York Times reported on Monday.
     
    "You are now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it is just passe` at this juncture," Scott Flanders, the company's chief executive, said citing digitisation of sex as the reason for the redesign.
     
    "The redesign is more pragmatic. The magazine had already made some content safe for work in order to be allowed on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, vital sources of web traffic," Flanders added.
     
    "Playboy will retain its tradition of investigative journalism, in-depth interviews and fiction. The target audience," Flanders said, adding, "The difference between us and Vice -- a magazine famous for its investigative journalism -- is that we are going after the guy with a job."
     
    According to the new plans, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses but they will no longer be fully nude.
     
    "The magazine will adopt a cleaner, more modern style. There will still be a Playmate of the Month, but the pictures will be "PG-13" and less produced," Jones, chief content officer of Playboy, said.
     
    "A little more accessible, a little more intimate," he added.
     
    The digitisation of sex in the form of pornography hit the magazine culture. It lost shock value, commercial value and cultural relevance as now every teen has an Internet-connected phone instead, the report added.
     
    According to the Alliance for Audited Media, Playboy's circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about eight lakh.
     
    In August 2014, when the website waived nudity the average age of its reader dropped from 47 to just over 30, and its web traffic took a nosedive from 16 million to four million users per month, Playboy's executives said.
     
    Many like Dian Hanson, author of a six-volume history of men's magazines and an editor for Taschen, expressed surprise at the decision and asked, "But taking the nudity out of Playboy is going to leave what?"
     
    Playboy was founded in 1953 and revolutionised sex in America by changing people's perspective towards nudity.
     
    Marilyn Monroe was featured on its debut cover in 1953. Actors like Madonna, Sharon Stone and Naomi Campbell posed for the magazine at the peak of their fame. 
     
    The company earns from licensed editions around the world but the US edition loses about $3 million a year, Flanders said.
     
    Playboy has bath products, fragrances, clothing, liquor and jewellery among other merchandise.

    MORE Interesting ARTICLES

    Kids understand familiar voices better

    Kids understand familiar voices better
    "This study shows that children were able to integrate knowledge of what a person sounds like and use this to their advantage," said study author Susannah...

    Kids understand familiar voices better

    Post a 'sick selfie' to get office leave!

    Post a 'sick selfie' to get office leave!
    "Showing off a hangover and to prove illness to friends or co-workers emerged as the most common reasons for uploading a...

    Post a 'sick selfie' to get office leave!

    Break-ups can shoo away your Twitter followers

    Break-ups can shoo away your Twitter followers
    They tracked these users from November 2013 to April 2014, filtered the data and arrived at a group of 661 pairs, who had been in...

    Break-ups can shoo away your Twitter followers

    Miracles Do Happen: Man presumed dead is alive

    Miracles Do Happen: Man presumed dead is alive
    In a rare incident, a man presumed killed by Ebola in Liberia regained consciousness when he was lifted into a body bag by a burial team, it was reported Sunday....

    Miracles Do Happen: Man presumed dead is alive

    In pain? You are likelier to spot pain-related words more often

    In pain? You are likelier to spot pain-related words more often
    If you are suffering from chronic pain, there are chances that you would pay more attention to words like ache, agony, distress and pain than to non-pain...

    In pain? You are likelier to spot pain-related words more often

    Modesty holding women back at work: Study

    Modesty holding women back at work: Study
    Do you find yourself holding back in conversations and hiding your true credentials? Ladies, it's time to make a change and banish the barriers and be...

    Modesty holding women back at work: Study