Says Phillip Picardi, quoted in "I’ll make Playboy playful again, says its new gay editor/Phillip Picardi, a Catholic former Condé Nast wunderkind, also wants to attract women to the £30 magazine with more ‘artistic’ nudes and robust writing" (London Times).
How Catholic is he? We're told he's "a lapsed Catholic who recently completed a master’s at Harvard Divinity School in order to rediscover his faith (his thesis was titled: Is Jesus Kinda Hot?)." Is religion part of making "playful again"? You can find "an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude" in church:He wants to “destigmatise male sexuality”, he says, and “help men to build a healthier relationship” with the women in their lives. “I’m hoping we can be a space for men who feel caught between needing to be manosphere-adjacent and needing to be the performative liberal male,” he says.... “We should promote the idea that we can be excited about sex and we can be excited about each other and excited about touching each other,” he says with a cheeky grin.

This reminds me of a sequence in the movie "Blue Moon," about the songwriter Lorenz Hart, who was gay, though not openly. The character has this conversation with the bartender. From the brilliant screenplay by Robert Kaplow (commission earned):
HART: You know what the sexiest thing on the planet earth is? A half-erect penis.
EDDIE: Jesus Christ, Larry, nobody wants to hear this.
EDDIE: Who are you talking to?
HART: Me. I gotta talk to somebody interesting. I mean it though. A half-erect penis is a promise. A fully-erect penis is an exclamation point—as a writer it offends me; it’s too loud; it’s too adolescent; the story’s already over. But a half-erect penis: Is it going? Or is it coming? But women appeal to me precisely for their absence of penises.
EDDIE: Me too.
HART: They live in a much more interesting emotional landscape than we do. A landscape we can only dream about.

६४ टिप्पण्या:
Excellent description of swagger as in, "in kitchens, all the cooks are swinging dicks". Swinging dicks are not flaccid.
"But a half-erect penis: Is it going? Or is it coming?" Ah yes, the age-old question/concern.
Take Sunday off and go to church.
Give it a break. It’s the Sabbath.
However, for God’s sake, not an Episcopal Church.
Yeah henry tudor would be dissapointed men like to look at pretty girls if you dont know that
If Playboy is to continue, it needs new life. It used to feature top notch writing (when a man said he bought playboy for the articles, it was only a half joke). But I’m not sure a gay editor has what it takes. If he tries to create a magazine that also appeals to women, he’ll end up with a magazine that won’t appeal to anybody.
30 pounds for a magazine? That's an expensive book!
With Tim, people can get whatever level of sexual content or nudity they want on the internet. It is writing that will give it a distinction.
If I want something interesting to read, there's a world of free stuff out there. If I want to recreate the old Playboy experience, there's old Playboys.
If you think this is a sound plan, Playboy is publicly traded at PLBY. Good luck.
Harvard
"I've been with thousands of men, again and again, they promise the moon, they're always coming and going and going and coming... and always too soon!" - Lily Von Shtupp (Blazing Saddles - 1974)
Sounds like he wants to turn Playboy into Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmo.
Playboy is transitioning to offer the gay time of old.
Here’s what you could be doing this morning instead of pondering the usual BS pile of crap from another gay pervert.
You could go to services at a reasonably conservative church. (Male pastor.) You could sing hymns with a congregation. Everybody knows the words and melody. Just open up the hymnal. You could recite The Lord’s Prayer with a group of people.
I’ll be playing for such a service this morning. You could be hearing such great, historic hymns as the ones I’ll be playing:
Victory in Jesus
Great is Thy Faithfulness
The Old Rugged Cross
Lord, I Want to be a Christian
I’ll Fly Away
Try it. Put on your Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes. Don’t be a tightwad. Put ten bucks in the collection basket.
I wonder why they are trying to tear down Catholicism.
That is the main tool they use to destruct Christianity.
I guess that is the point.
If we were better people we would all be berean.
Like RAATs under feminism, corruption from within a la grooming with liberal license is a tired cliche of insidious character.
Achilles: I wonder why they are trying to tear down Catholicism.
That is the main tool they use to destruct Christianity.
Protestants seem to always be working on tearing down Catholics. And leftists always seem to be working on tearing down all Christians. And Catholics, Christians, and leftists seem to always be working on destroying the Jews.
And the Muslims are busy working on eliminating all of them while they bicker among themselves. (Hindus and Buddhists wait in the wings, one of them ready to fight, the other hoping to not get noticed).
Wait...this was supposed to be about Playboy. I have one thought on that: All things are meant to have a lifespan. Playboy had its time. It's done. There is a reason some things are called 'the past'.
Like they say, more nudes are good nudes.
He went to Harvard Divinity School to rediscover his faith? Perhaps to remake it. Hasn't he heard the famous description of it as "the left wing of the Democratic Party at prayer"?
Christians are trying to destroy the Jews? Really?
So, some gay fruit is in charge of a "men's" mgazine. Who's buying that?
“There is a reason some things are called 'the past'.”
Maybe it’s time to recognize an ally when you have one.
Obligatory “I bought it for the articles” comment.
Catholics and Christians are working with leftists to destroy the Jews?
Shouting Thomas - Nor the Unitarian Church. That is a DSA cult. A left wing social club.
The new Playboy, the magazine that will get you half-erect and keep you there.
with all that gushing over him - perhaps he can be US democrat pol?
"Protestants seem to always be working on tearing down Catholics. "
perhaps in Ireland.. maybe even the UK - but I don't sense that at all in the US.
Turning Jesus into a sexual being is a turn off. Stomach turning.
and very gay - in a sex and the city way.
Gay men pretending to know the male female sexual dynamic - boring, and often wrong.
That new editor. That's not gonna work out.
Wow, did this ever go sideways!
This is the media buzz being created for a men's magazine reboot? That quote with the sanitizing paraphrasing of the new editor leaves me feeling that Playboy is to be a gay men's magazine
I never heard a gay man accurately describe what hetero men are sexually attracted to in women. It could be because they have never seen it, but I can't be sure because I've never heard any man describe it. Of course, all hetero men know what those things are. I mean, I assume they do. It seems that some women know too, or at least stumble upon it regularly. These things are never spoken of, and I'm sorry, but I'm not authorized to leak that information either.
Judging from drag, I assume gay men have no clue what is sexy to hetero men.
Transformed into a gay and female thing, just like NPR and especially my local affiliate, KQED (San Francisco).
A trans couplet has binary attributes. One of whom may be gay, and the other is inevitably somber.
Someone who is chubby is soft and plump so it's a complete mystery how getting a chubby came to mean a full on boner.
Cis and homo in publication can sim a queer union in trans to groom a modern family of equivocation and indoctrination.
bagoh20 said...
I never heard a gay man accurately describe what hetero men are sexually attracted to in women.
You know this if you've ever viewed runway fashion models. But men aren't the intended market, I suppose.
Did anyone tell Kitty Carlisle the Truth?
Today is the Lords' Day but everyday should be the Lords Day, doing the work put forth in the Gospel, once a week Pharisees and Sadducees just soil the presentation. Gods presence isn't limited 'For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with you" Church councils do not make up the rules, God's WORD does.(sadly man has veered for convenience)
Bring back OUI.
The picture. An actual classic painting or recent AI project? (Sorry, am ignorant about these things.) Figures suggest classic; background suggests modern.
Capturing a post-coital moment?
The scene - a barren landscape, after eviction from the Garden
He - exhausted and exhilarated after having shot his wad.
She - who now bears the load, anguished and guilt-ridden, seeking guidance, clarification, or forgiveness. Was "go forth and multiply" just a mean joke?
Or are both participants male? Hips and hair of standing figure suggest female; absence of definite breasts suggest male.
serious question: What, the heck is a "£30 magazine"?
for that matter; what, the heck is a "print magazine"?
Zavier, it's Michelangelo, from the Sistine Chapel, showing the creation of Eve from Adam's rib. You are spot on about the androgyny, though: Michelangelo's women are basically musclemen with tits velcro'd on. And not very big ones, hence Eve's prayer posture hiding them.
Part of this tendency probably comes from the scarcity of female nude models in Italian Catholic society. Some comes from Michelangelo's homosexuality: he couldn't paint a naked lady from memory, since he had no experiences with them to remember. Maybe he also wanted to portray women as morally strong, so he portrayed them as physically strong. CC, JSM
Leonardo, on the other hand, used himself as the model for men and women. You can tell a Leonardo face across all his work. Part of why the Mona Lisa is so fascinating: it's a patron portrait fused with a self-portrait. CC, JSM
Thanks
Lorenz Hart and Moss Hart were both big figures on Broadway, but they weren't the same person. Kitty was married to Moss.
There are other places to get porn now. There are other places to get everything or find out about everything. IIRC a lot of Playboy was about men's products: clothes, cologne, cars, stereos. You can google whatever you want to know about those items. And soon AI will be generating the content anyway. Stereos don't seem to be a big thing anymore. Replaced by mobile phones?
The big new ideas phase comes right before a magazine or other enterprise finally goes under. In the 70s, Norman Cousins thought his magazine, The Saturday Review, could be split into four periodicals dealing with different topics. Of course it couldn't, and the magazine went out of business shortly afterwards. Consumers don't want the big new reboot and suddenly realize that they could do without the original product as well.
HART: You know what the sexiest thing on the planet earth is? A half-erect penis.
EDDIE: Jesus Christ, Larry, nobody wants to hear this.
Gotta go with Eddie on that one. That’s about where I stopped watching the movie.
“ I’ll be playing for such a service this morning. You could be hearing such great, historic hymns as the ones I’ll be playing”
Hope you include my fave, “Dropkick Me, Jesus”.
This is basically how Star Wars was ruined, by trying to reinvent it as a women's franchise and deriding the original audience of young men.
"It weirdly offers an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude, at a time when that is hard to come by."
Umm…am I the only one here depraved enough to notice the double-entendre there? Anyway, I think an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude will always be hard to come by, and therefore unlikely to appeal to Playboy’s target demographic.
Blue Moon (2025) is strumming on Netflix.
I got to check it out because it's part of the Woody Allen universe, the mystique one cannot say one is immersed in without it. Thanks.
I recall a Blue Moon Cafe in the upper east side that caught my eye frequenting Catch a Rising Star that was nearby.
One time I picked it to take a gal from High School I had had my eyes on but the lighting was too bright and the people behind us were loud to the delight of the gal from High School who was not hungry, at least not for Mexican. I see the place is now "permanently closed". Looking back all I knew about the place was that I liked the name Blue Moon.
Zobeida was one of the girls I had mailed mixed music tapes to. She was not a gal then. Calling her a gal makes it sound like we close. We were not.
“I wonder why they are trying to tear down Catholicism.
That is the main tool they use to destruct Christianity.”
And here I’ve always thought the Catholic Church was the main tool being used to tear down Catholicism.
As malefic as the Left is, the call has been coming from inside the house for a very long time now.
My Jewish dentist has finally gotten the memo about leftists. We've discussed a wide range to topics in the 25+ years I've been her patient (given the circumstances, she does most of the talking). She has always spoken cordially of Catholics and other Christians.
I remember that I wanted to read the Playboy interview with Jimmah Carter. I was around 12, I guess. The librarians liked me. I went every Saturday. My dad sat in the corner and did his crosswords. A gorgeous white marble mansion overlooking the (cliche warning) magestic Hudson River. They placed a desk in front of their sign-out counter, opened the magazine to the article, and watched me as I read it. I was disgusted by it, and it was neither well-informed nor interesting. When I met Jimmah and had dinner with Rosalyn in select groups of political women a few times at Emory, I couldn't stop thinking about how embarassing it must have been for her, though I liked neither of them.
I asked the librarians why my dad's tax dollars were paying for this crap. They said it was their board's choice. Amusingly, at the Bodleian Library in Britain, they have a lot of Victorian pornography, but you have to sit on a raised platform in the middle of the reading room, facing the librarians, to access it for research and must provide proof of intention and keep both hands on the table.
Unfortunately, I bet there are people who get off on doing that. I also bet there are no people who get off on thinking about Jimmah's *lust in his heart.*
I also took Zobeida to see ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ (1992) at the Carnegie Hall Cinema. They would play the same movie for months. Same with Barcelona (1994)
She had a better time at the movie than at the Blue Moon.
Poor Phillip, headed for the glass cliff, no doubt.
The Saturday Evening Porn
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