It’s an open question whether the men who now turn to Pornhub and its ilk for the kind of “entertainment” that Playboy built an empire on even noticed....Did the women (and others) who frowned on the magazine notice?
The magazine’s new leadership team consists of a gay man (the executive editor Shane Singh) and two women (the creative director Erica Loewy and Anna Wilson, who is in charge of photography and multimedia), all millennials. Recent feature articles include profiles of Andrea Drummer, a female African-American chef who runs a cannabis-centric restaurant in Los Angeles, and King Princess, a genderqueer pop singer who is as a symbol of self-acceptance to young L.G.B.T.Q. fans....This reminds me of the sort of protest where there's a takeover of a space and an attempt to repurpose the space for the protesters' cause. I can't think of a good example of that tactic working, but I do remember protests in Ann Arbor, circa 1970, where a part of campus called Regents Plaza was renamed "People's Plaza."
And of course, I remember the Wisconsin protests of 2011, where protesters who were very unhappy about the GOP sweep of both houses of the legislature and the governorship filled up the state capitol and had the chant "Whose house?/Our house!"
So the erstwhile protesters have taken over Playboy. It wasn't just an attempt. It was successful. But now what? If the protested-against oppressors cede the space, does the space matter anymore? I suppose it matters that the institution is shut down, but when you talk about continuing it, according to the ideology that motivated you to oust the old guard, you've got to make the institution function in some way that is appealing to somebody other than you, the people who took over the place.
Posts
94 comments:
Playperson?
I can't imagine who would subscribe to this magazine.
Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler differed in their treatment of pussy. It settled out in how gynecological the treatment had to be in order to take over a sales niche, Playboy at the least and Hustler at the most. But they all found gynecology was necessary in the end against the competition.
Too funny. Kind of like the dog catching the car it was chasing.
women always want to be in men spaces yet men avoid women spaces like the plague
Go woke, go broke.
City Journal on the decline of men’s magazines: https://www.city-journal.org/the-end-of-mens-magazines ... (and I believe there was also a podcast on their 10 Blocks podcast channel).
It’s a wider cultural decline, not limited to men, although men were the target audience.
They are simply undoing Hugh Hefner's quid pro quo: you buy my magazine and I'll show you naked girls.
The new quid pro quo: you TALK about our magazine and we'll give you Woke.
Hefner just died before he could be impeached.
I am Laslo.
Our Beloved Professor Althouse asks...
So the erstwhile protesters have taken over Playboy. It wasn't just an attempt. It was successful. But now what?
I would assume, Chapter 13
but i'm not familiar with bankruptcy law
Woke Playboy is ____ Playboy.
Hmmm. Can't think of anything.
The biggest news is that Playboy is still around. Is it still a magazine or just online now.
Great post, Althouse.
I think similar thoughts when it comes to all the various protests and critiicism of the NFL, and how they try to incorporate some of the changes. Why listen to criticism from people who really don't care about you and don't have your interests at heart? There's no winning, because they want you gone. And *their* lives won't have changed one bit once you're out.
"It’s an open question whether the men who now turn to Pornhub and its ilk for the kind of “entertainment” that Playboy built an empire on even noticed...."
Pornhub has an extensive collection of gay and trans "entertainment", too.
But I am assuming the consumers of those products are heroic and self-empowering, unlike the deplorable cis men.
Let porn unite us, not divide us.
I am Laslo.
Read about the latter part of Hugh Hefner’s life. It alone is the greatest refutation to Heff’s sexual revolution bullshit. His “girlfriends” were hookers disgusted with themselves for earning a living by letting a lecherous old man (hopped up on boner pills) treat them like a piece of meat. It’s no wonder he’s a personal hero of Bill Maher’s, a 63-year-old man who still thinks the end all be all of life is smoking weed and fucking whores. Two men who were rejected by women in their adolescence and were never able to get over it.
As Iowahawk puts it here https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/664089892599631872?s=09
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
#lefties
Nice memories as a kid. I remember one time my friend and I got caught with a Playboy in elementary school. I had no idea what they were for, and it wasn’t really mine, I was just with him when he got caught. So we were dragged to the principal’s office by one of the lady teachers, and I remember even the principal’s face as he said to me, in a mock scold, I sort of thought, but didn’t understand at the time. “If you ever find another one of these, you be sure to bring it straight to me!”
As I began to understand what they were for, I liked Oui better, because there was a lot of girl on girl in Oui. And I didn’t really miss “the articles.” Of course the Penthouse Letters are legendary still, for good reason.
Playboy lost me in the 1980's. I'll not lament it's passing. Things change.
“Entertainment for All” means everybody except normies.
"when you talk about continuing it"
Do they?
"according to the ideology that motivated you to oust the old guard"
Well, that "ideology" was to despise and defeat the old guard. Mission accomplished.
"you've got to make the institution function in some way that is appealing to somebody other than you"
Really? Sure, the thing can go under, but who cares?
Though I yield to our hostess Playboy expertise, my sense is the old guard ceded ground when its old-guard customers fled. This was not a hard-fought battle in the culture war.
Over the last few years, we've whittled our magazine subscriptions down to one.
National Geographic. And that one is on thin ice, what with its unceasing drumbeat for "climate change bad, man bad" causes.
Cancelled Wired when they went far left and Woke. Same with Esquire.
Let's see if they can survive by putting half their possible subscribers into the "basket of deplorables".
Better start learning to code guys. Or maybe take Liz Warrens advice and start selling auto insurance. *snort*
you've got to make the institution function in some way that is appealing to somebody other than you
No. That's why you took it over. The power display is supposed to attract other people.
Some call it "convergence". It's when SJW "entryists" enter an organization and begin to agitate for more "inclusion" and "tolerance" and other "values" until they then control it and turn it's catual, rather than stated or historical, mission to promoting their issues exclusively. Then the organization suffers because it's no longer in the business it claims to be. Iowahawk had the pulse of it:
1) Find a respected institution.
2) Kill it.
3) Gut it.
4) Wear it as a skin suit while demanding respect.
Silly people taking over an irrelevant relic.
At some point, like Time and or Newsweek, the owners of Playboy magazine will sell it for $1.
You heard it here first!
“Towards a new masculinity.”
Yeah, chicks dig guys who reject traditional masculine values, so this mag will be a real hit among the normies it purports to want to change. I guess we are “cis-masculine” because they get the traditional words and we now get the rejects. But they don’t hate us!
This has to be giving some feminists heartburn, since they were doing their best, in some cases, to hide their hatred for men.
Iowahawk stated it best:
Identify a respected institution
Kill it
gut it
wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
A gay man and two women cannot successfully run a magazine dedicated to the interests of heterosexual men.
Actually you don’t have to make it appealing if you are assured of a bright employment future if you kill it off. And is there any doubt that these folks are the equivalent of “made men” in the mafia, guaranteed advancement in academia or some NGO? The shareholders get stiffed, but not the good people.
The irony, of course, is that Playboy's editorial staff always skewed heavily female, who lauded it as a great (and very well-paid) place to work.
But it sounds like SJW "wokeness" is going to destroy it along with so much else.
Every time Ann mentions playboy I always think of her upbringing. She was proud as a girl that her father read playboy and had it always present on the coffee table in their house. This was back in the early 60s! Talk about weird and she says Trump is weird.Ann remember what your christ says about casting stones.
This would be as if Starbucks decided to stop selling coffee and instead try to sell veggie smoothies. There's probably a market out there for veggie smoothies, but probably not among people who come to Starbucks for coffee. Offering a coffee-flavored veggie smoothie won't do it. And that's what apparently is on offer at the erstwhile Playboy, now seemingly rebranded as Playpersun.
I haven't seen a copy of Playboy in over 40 years. Since my mom stopped putting one in my husband's Christmas stocking. If it's "Entertainment for All", does it now include pictures of naked men as well as naked women? Does the Playboy Adviser take questions about sex from lesbians? While I thought some of the cartoons were funny, the centerfold never did much for me, and I wouldn't guess gay men would get turned on by naked women, either. Do they alternate the sex of the centerfold every month? Has there been a transgender Playmate of the Month yet? There used to be a lot of ads for sexy lingerie. Can I find a good pair of granny panties advertised? Who is "all" y'all?
Hearkening back to yesterday's Thomas Sowell post, he also wisely said: “People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want."
I'm pretty sure that men's magazines were already dead. Men had pretty much moved on to the greener pastures of Internet porn a long time ago.
Your "erstwhile protestors" who have "taken over Playboy" aren't really conquerors who overwhelmed and ousted an opposing force - they're more like squatters who found some abandoned property to occupy.
"People's Park" in Berkeley is still not a dormitory.
Playboy lost me when they put a male in the gatefold.
My personal favorite in the “co-op the opposition’s venue” is Andrew Breitbart’s takeover of Carlos Danger’s press conference in 2011 or so. That Breitbart had been falsely accused by the creep of hacking Weiner’s Twitter account Made the co-opting all the sweeter.
So, Playboy has become a woke skin mag with a strong LGBT editorial focus. That should work.
Best shot is probably turning Playboy into a parody of its '60s self. Presided over by a grizzled pipe-smoking slime ball in a stained bathrobe, endlessly spinning out his philosophy. But humor is not the SJW strong suit.
Rename mag
Poser
Playboy magazine is a zombie magazine. It will be a Marie Clare clone if it lives at all.
Once THEY(you know the other) take over a pox on all their houses.Goodbye Girl Next Door.
All we have left on the magazine racks are People and The Enquirer.What a revolting development that is. And The Enquirer cover has near death pics or reruns of a forever young Princess Di.
Entertainment for none seems more like their achievement.
You go to Playboy not for sex, but to pretend sophistication about sex. IF you really want sex, you run for Democrat and have your staffers service you.
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. There's that poem by Larkin where he wonders about who was the last person to pray in an old, abandoned church. I wonder who was the last person to use Playboy for wanking. He's probably in late middle age now.....It's sad to see a venerable institution whither and die, but we all have to move with the times.
Playboy has been running on fumes since the 80s. Kept afloat by men too sentimental to cancel their subscriptions. It’s role was wanking material with plausible deniability. But once men realized that “I read it for the articles” was less believable than “the check is in the mail”, they dropped their pretenses and just went for the better wank material in Penthouse, Hustler and others.
I wish the new, woke Playboy luck.
Of course the joke was I read it for the articles but the old version had some quality writing and interviews. Do these millennials even know that? Do they believe their woke stuff will work like that for their peers? Good luck to them...
Except it hasn’t been a “boy’s club” for a very long time. It’s been a corporate club. And when such things disappear or change radically, no one really cares. Odds are they moved on well before the shift. The Left carpet bombs but no one wants to live in the government tent cities they erect in the ruins.
Media companies need to know their audience and focus relentlessly on serving them. These moves sound like Playboy is targeting an audience whose existence is, to be polite, yet to be proven. It's not clear that you can do anything with a print magazine, but the Playboy brand should have value in other media-- web, podcast, et al. They can't win in the just plain porn-on-the-web category, as that market has been flooded. So they need to focus. I'm not in their (desired) demo, but I assume that there is a market for an old-school, unapologetically masculine whiskey-and-sports-and-steaks-and-sex proposition. That would be a niche, but God knows it's a bigger niche than whatever it is they're doing now, selling traditional t&a to gender studies majors.
I think Playboy had a good run, but it's over now. It died with Hefner. R.I.P.
rhhardin said...Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler differed in their treatment of pussy. It settled out in how gynecological the treatment had to be in order to take over a sales niche, Playboy at the least and Hustler at the most. But they all found gynecology was necessary in the end against the competition.
Playboy used to keep the niches out of sight, demurely hidden. When they put them on display all the time, it got old.
"At some point, like Time and or Newsweek, the owners of Playboy magazine will sell it for $1."
I'll bet NAMBLA would buy it. For $2!
Your Social Justice Warrior doesn't so much have a problem with men wanting to look at nude women. What they hate is that men want to look at pretty women.
As someone who just read Playboy for the interviews (the Johnny Carson, John Wayne and Marlon Brando Ones were good) - I wonder why "Playboy" still exists. Once the internet came along with non-stop 24/7 porn for every perversion (want Japanese midgets having anal sex? You got it) and taste, why pay $5 for magazine with a tasteful glossy picture? And the rest of the magazine was just the usual liberal crap, you could get anywhere.
There most be a lot of boomers who just keep reading these old fashioned magazines well past their sell date. I'm STILL seeing Newsweek/Time at the Dentists Office!
I never liked Playboy. Not out of repressed puritanical grounds, either. I just thought it actually impeded one's quest to meet and date real live, attractive women.
To me, I saw an unscientific correlation between guys who owned and saved stacks of Playboys and their lack of healthy girlfriends. Again, I didn't run around condemning Playboy or pornography in general. I just focused on meeting quality women in the real world, and enjoying the depth and complexity (and sometimes heartache) of those relationships.
So, Playboy never made any money off me and to the extent they were woke and got more woke, well, good riddance.
John L Sullivan (1989). "All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing." Just another example of this truism.
It's now GQ, only for gays.
Blogger Clyde said...
Offering a coffee-flavored veggie smoothie won't do it.
How would that differ from their current model of selling coffee flavored beverages with chemicals?
Here's a tip for Starbucks: Why not try selling coffee?
Just plain old coffee flavored hot water?
I get dragged into a Starbucks about once a year and have never been able to get an actual cup of coffee. You know, like I can get in any McDonalds, Dunkin or gas station.
John Henry
If Playboy really wants to make a splash. How about a centerfold of a M>F transgender with their dick hanging out.
Caption: Is Susie McSalley woman enough for you?
John Henry
Do they still have a "What kind of man reads Playboy" page? Back in the day they showed a somewhat fanciful idea of their average reader.
In other news, Gloria Steinem to take over as editor-in-chief of "Captain Bill's Whiz-Bang."
Calypso Facto,
well said about "making money". Amen, amen and amen.
Also this, which I suspect many here will recognize
“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.
-Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d'Anconia
When we go out to work, to "make" a living, that is exactly what we are doing. We are creating money/value that did not exist before. We are literally "making money"
The folks at Playboy seem to have the idea that they can just milk something someone else created. They don't have to actually "make money" they can just loot what remains until there is nothing left to loot.
John Henry
For all the jokes about it, Playboy did get some really good writers in their pages.
I remember back in the 60's they published anthologies of short stories that had appeared in their pages. I had a number of them. I wish I had them still.
I mainly bought the magazine for the pictures of nekkid women, though.
In the south there's a difference between 'Naked' and 'Nekkid.' 'Naked' means you don't have any clothes on. 'Nekkid' means you don't have any clothes on and you're up to somethin'.
-Lewis Grizzard
John Henry
It's now GQ, only for gays.
So... it's now GQ?
They're changing the name of their mag to Soyboy cause they're not playing.
Sounds like the print edition has been losing money for years with no hope of ever being profitable again. It is already down to quarterly editions, so the next step is probably ending it altogether. I don't whether the online business makes money either- I doubt it given the availability of Pornhub and other free XXX-rated video sites. So, it is probably appropriate to see the magazine and its business collapse on the heads of the present management- it would be a well deserved failure, and I write this as someone who has very fond memories of the magazine from my teen years (I even subscribed to the magazine in my 20s).
Playboy has been a non-entity since at least the mid-90's, done in by the internet which provides pretty much any type of porn for free (and without having to leave the privacy of your own house).
This isn't protesters taking over an institution, this is protesters finding an abandoned shack and moving in.
...Thomas Sowell post, he also wisely said:
“People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying.
You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want."
And THAT is the difference between Capitalism and Socialism
Business provides what people ask for
Government tells people what they'll get
Do any cis gender straight males still read any of these "mens' magazines ?"
Lots of magazines for men who hunt and fish and own guns.
A few for those who like war birds and history.
They did have some good interviews and writing, I'll give them that.
I subscribed to Esquire for a couple of years in the late 1980s or early 1990s. They had good writing and fashion stuff for actual men. Then they went all woke -- mainly back then it was just full-blown political leftism -- and I canceled.
Darkisland said...
For all the jokes about it, Playboy did get some really good writers in their pages....I mainly bought the magazine for the pictures of nekkid women, though.
The joke that wasn't a joke--there was some great writing in Playboy, but nobody bought it for the great writing.
Can't believe Playboy still published. I only subscribe to the NYer to keep my on eye on the looeys, in hopes McPhee will write something and to win that gd caption contest.
Althouse says:
This reminds me of the sort of protest where there's a takeover of a space and an attempt to repurpose the space for the protesters' cause. I can't think of a good example of that tactic working, but I do remember protests in Ann Arbor, circa 1970, where a part of campus called Regents Plaza was renamed "People's Plaza."
I think Iowahawk put it best:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/664089892599631872?lang=en
Not that Playboy is a respected institution, necessarily. But the point and the process seem fairly visible.
Playboy was a "respected institution"? LOL! It was a "girly magazine" with pretensions of significance.
I wonder why "Playboy" still exists.
Almost all of Playboy's value comes from overseas brand licensing. The magazine exists to maintain the brand's link to its own past as these markets aren't exactly current on American culture.
If you want to know how this is going to end consider how men in Moscow and Buenos Aires are going to think about going to the local Playboy club once they hear the Playmate of the month is a man.
My father would sometimes have Playboy in the house. (1960's)
As a girl, not interested in the nekkid ladies.
However, I often would look at it for the really good and cutting edge science fiction short stories. Some of the early works of the most prolific and respected Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors. You had a hard time back then (pre internet by a mile) to find these works as they weren't in many libraries at the time. Magazines were the way to get this material until they were published in books, paperbacks or compilations.
NOW you CAN!!!PLayboy book of science fiction and fantasy
Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Some Americans understand that. Many, probably most, do not. Examples range from Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders down to our own Robert Cook, roesch, Freder, etc.
If you define coffee as that shit McDonalds purveys, then no, you won’t be able to find a cup of it in Starbucks. What is it with the false consciousness of their customers?
Darkisland: "How about a centerfold of a M>F transgender with their dick hanging out."
With hair tastefully airbrushed out, of course. Woke Penthouse if you prefer au naturale.
I gave up PLAYBOY after I got married...50 years ago.
Almost all of Playboy's value comes from overseas brand licensing.
Back in the day, all the boats coming back from Mexico and making their way up the Baja coast always had a stack of old Playboys. They were more valuable than bribes.
I used to know a woman who would have been a great PLAYBOY editor. Raging and active hetero (a friend of mine accused her of being a nymphomaniac) who loved looking at naked women, either in erotica or in strip clubs. (Male strippers, a la Chippendale's, bored her.) I once asked her why, and she said, "Projection."
When I was 10 I was changing my baby brother's diaper. When I was about 12, Mom told all her bridge club friends that I was available for baby sitting and good with babies. Somewhere about this time I was also a BSA Den Chief to Cub Scouts.
The first thing I would do after the kids were asleep would be to toss the house for Playboys. Many times I was successful. Fifth or sixth grade, look at all those tits!
When it was junk day in our town, my gang would hop on our DIY sting ray bikes to cruise for interesting reading material by the curb. Occasionally, there would be a treasure trove.
@ Dust Bunny Queen
My father would sometimes have playboy in the house
Did I misread one of your old posts where you said it was a staple on the family
coffee table.
As a girl I was not interested in nekkid girls.
How about your father?
You never looked?
However I often would look for really good &and cutting edge Science fiction……
People back then didn’t buy it for science fiction stories.
Many more technically advanced SF stories available back then.
I have been reading most of your posts for the past few years and have not gotten
the impression that you are interested in science. Rarely have seen any posts on
science or technology.
Nice try Ann.
Whores, all whores !
Branded whores, no matter how they squigle and wiggle away from whorism.
But why is the Christmas tree a Holiday tree ? Also, white supremacy should never be any but white, you know. Sorry white supremacy is currently identified as soup, but it's ok to just be.
@Sam L, congratulations on your golden anniversary.
Garden & Gun is a pretty good bet if one is turned on to Southern entitlement porn.
Kids today have no idea how hard it was to find pictures of naked women before access to the internet became ubiquitous! I'm old enough to remember that there was a Playboy channel in the early days of cable television.
As it peters out (so to speak), I won't miss it.
I stopped "reading" either Playboy or, my favorite, Penthouse, (the women in Penthouse looked more like my girlfriends, normal, brunette, petite, and appearing to enjoy sex), when, at the end of my twenties, I got married and moved on adulting with marriage, career, home and kids. What I do miss are the magazines of my college years and beyond that instructed me on adult male lifestyles and fashion; the old Esquire and GQ. Now destroyed by the leftist SJWs. *That* I miss.
Now what? Playboy dies. It won't be corrupting boys and young men anymore, but it is weird that these people cannot do anything that is not derivative.
I didn't know that Playboy still existed. I cannot fathom why anyone would purchase a copy. And, I doubt the SJW's have any chance of saving it.
I'm really sure that Hefner's magnum opus "The Playboy Philosophy" is right up there in the Left's "Great Book Library".
I mean, c'mon: nubile females, whatev morals, "spread'em and let'em" advice to the femmes...
What's there for a Progressive not to luv!?
Ask Bill! Ask Jeffrey! Ask Al Franken! Ask Jizzy Jackson!
AA, let me make this easy for you to understand. The concept has been well understood for some time.
David Burge
@iowahawkblog
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
#lefties
9:39 AM · Nov 10, 2015
Lol, people were way ahead of me with the skin-suit thing. My first horrible exposure to this concept was in Silence of the Lambs, but apparently this would be right in your wheelhouse, Althouse, because of your local celebrity Ed Gein.
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