Playboy's Identity Crisis

The world’s most famous adult magazine went ‘SFW’ on 12th October, 2015 - when Scott Flanders, then Playboy’s chief executive, announced that future editions would no longer contain full nudity.

The change lasted for only one year.

‘Reading it for the articles’ had, at one time, been a plausible option - the magazine had published stories by Margaret Atwood and interviews with Malcolm X, Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jimmy Carter. But, in the internet era, Playboy had become more lucrative as a clothing brand than as a credible print title, finally ceasing publication in 2020.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly revisit the first issue, from 1953; dig into Hugh Hefner’s burial plot; and visit Playboy’s website, FOR RESEARCH…

Further Reading:

•‘Playboy to remove nudity from magazine’ (Channel 4 News, 2015): https://www.channel4.com/news/playboy-to-remove-nudity-from-magazine

•‘Playboy's Postfeminism Problem’ (Diggit, 2018): https://www.diggitmagazine.com/column/playboys-postfeminism-problem

‘Playboy Is Bringing Nudity Back’ (ThinkTank, 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiJzqwM4ibA

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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

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