No nudes? People weren’t buying it.
With nudity and more just a click away, Playboy did away with its signature nude layouts. But there was no rush to buy it for the articles.
So, to right a disastrous move by the 64-year-old men’s magazine, Playboy is bringing back naked women to its glossy pages with the March/April issue, reports the New York Post.
READ MORE: Photographer Bunny Yeager’s obituary.
Even chief creative officer Cooper Hefner, son of founder Hugh Hefner, criticized the move to ban nudes last year as a misguided attempt to attract mainstream advertisers and get the magazine onto more newsstands. Have you seen the modern and boringly chaste Playboy regularly on the stands? Didn’t think so.
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“I’ll be the first to admit the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake. Nudity was never the problem, because nudity isn’t a problem. Today, we’re taking our identity back and rediscovering who we are,” Hefner tweeted Monday.
But don’t expect the graphic, full-frontal nudes from Playboy’s early-’70s heyday when the magazine hit a peak circulation of 7.1 million copies a month and featured the work of famed photographers like Pompeo Posar, Mario Casilli, Richard Fegley and Bunny Yeager. These photogs shot models like 1977 Playmate of the Year Patti McGuire (who would soon marry tennis great Jimmy Connors) and the late Dorothy Stratten, along with actresses like Bo Derek, Farrah Fawcett and Joan Collins who bared all for Hef’s mag.
Today, circulation is 1/10th what it once was and the younger Hefner promises a fix.
For now, that means breasts ‘n’ butts, not the crotch shots that typified the magazine’s most famous incarnation.
Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.
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