Playboy magazine and nudity are practically synonymous with each other. But not for much longer. The magazine has made an extraordinary decision to stop running images of nude women.
The decision was okayed by the 89-year-old founder of the magazine Hugh Hefner last month, according to the New York Times. Playboy will still publish provocative pictures of scantily clad women. They will, however, not be fully nude.
Playboy was started by Hefner in 1953 with sex symbol Marilyn Monroe on the cover and centrefold. Playboy's circulation peaked at 5.6 million in 1975. Today it is at a modest 800,000.
The Internet has made Playboy's content seem tame in comparison. With more graphic images available at the click of a mouse, Playboy is trying to reinvent itself and appeal to a younger demographic.
In August last year, it discontinued the publication of nude photos on its website and was rewarded with a sizable jump in traffic from about 4 million unique users a month to 16 million. The change also saw the average age of a reader drop from 47 to 30.
It remains to be seen if the change will make the flagship US edition of Playboy profitable. The US edition makes a loss of about $3 million a year. However, the magazine is profitable if money from global editions is included.
The company does not make most of its money from the magazine but from merchandising its brand. The iconic Playboy bunny logo appears on bath products, fragrances, clothing, liquor and jewelry among other products.
