The pages of Playboy will soon feature nudity again

Hugh Hefner with The Girls Next Door.
(Image credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images)

Not that it matters because you definitely only read it for the articles, but a year after ditching nude photos, Playboy is bringing them back.

"I'll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but nudity was never the problem because nudity isn't a problem," Cooper Hefner, the company's chief creative officer and son of founder Hugh Hefner, said in a statement Monday. "Today we're taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are."

The company had decided it was time to step away from full frontal nudity in 2015, and Pamela Anderson was the last one to bare all for the January/February 2016 issue. Playboy's circulation has diminished over time, dropping from 5.6 million in 1975 to around 800,000 in recent years, Reuters reports, and that was one of the reasons behind the change. In addition to reintroducing nudity, the March/April 2017 issue (emblazoned with the headline "Naked is Normal") will also include features from the magazine's heyday, including "The Playboy Philosophy" column that ended in the 1960s. Cooper Hefner said this edition is a "reflection of how the brand can best connect with my generation and generations to come."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.