It was probably the least important news of last week, but NPR reporting that Playboy will no longer feature nude women must have stricken a chord, cause I decided to blog about it.

Hefner and Playboy was all about nude women, and the common joke was that you bought it for the great interviews. I sneak out some from my father in my adolescence as I found the “interviews” fascinating.

Seriously, today these photos are PG-13 material (Marilyn in red satin is almost funny, unusual stretching!) and the entire concept of the “good life” and magazine for gentlemen are something of the past.  "If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you," wrote founder Hugh Hefner in his first editor's letter (NPR 10/13/15). Well today the magazine has obviously lost its appeal for anyone between 18 and 80, and is looking for new ways to stay alive. According to the figures they had 5.5 million readers in 1975 and about 800,000 today.

Hugh Hefner has always defended himself as a promoter of “sexual liberation” but circumscribed to men’s ideas of what female sexual liberation means. A beautiful, sexy woman is one of the many things a gentleman aspires to HAVE, including a Rolex, a German car and Italian shoes.

The girls featured in the magazine all “dreamed” of ever being a Playboy centerfold. They did not dream of being scientists, mathematicians, writers etc. The fact that Hefner has featured articles by well known feminists was opportunistic. It was buying insurance against possible lawsuits. “By depicting women solely as physical objects, we rarely see them as powerful” says Jennifer Kramer (Lind, 210). Playboy has always exalted women’s beauty as a defining quality. By defining women by their beauty instead of women as a whole, Playboy has contributed to dehumanize them and objectify them. Their sexuality is limited to how desirable are they for men.

I seriously doubt that Playboy will change in any way their philosophy about women by just not showing any nude female images. Maybe people are evolving and reconsidering the entire concept of this artificial “gentleman’s world” and the role of women in it.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/13/448182158/playboy-magazine-to-stop-publishing-nude-images