Because they're 'passé,' Playboy will stop publishing nude photos

People who read Playboy for the naked pictures will soon have to look elsewhere for their titillation: Starting with the March 2016 issue, the magazine will do away with full nudity.

The decision was made by top editors and founder Hugh Hefner, who agreed that Playboy and its nude women don't pack the same punch they did when the magazine launched 62 years ago. As CEO Scott Flanders so delicately told The New York Times: "You're now just one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture." The revamped magazine will keep its investigative pieces and interviews, and introduce a "sex-positive" female columnist and "PG-13" version of the Playmate of the Month.

The U.S. edition loses $3 million a year, but it's used as a marketing tool for the licensing business and international titles that do make money ("It's our Fifth Avenue storefront," Flanders said of U.S. Playboy). The print circulation is now at about 800,000, the Alliance for Audited Media says, but web traffic is up: In August 2014, Playboy removed nudity from its website to make it safe for work, and traffic soared from four million unique visitors per month to 16 million, The Times reports. The average reader went from 47 to just a bit older than 30, which is in line with the magazine's new target demographic: Young men living in cities. Even though it made business sense to shift Playboy's focus, it was still rough for the editors. "Don't get me wrong," says Playboy editor Cory Jones. "12-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it's the right thing to do."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.