Readers of Playboy magazine can no longer claim that they are just buying it for the articles after it announced that it's reversing it's one year old ban on nude pictures of women.
The publication announced with great fanfare over a year ago that it was banning all photos of naked women in a bid to attract more mainstream readers and advertisers.
The magazine, which featured Marilyn Monroe on its debut cover in 1953, made the changes after circulation dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 at present.
The owners had maintained that its longstanding approach was no longer commercially viable in an era when the internet has made pornographic images widely available.
"You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free," said Scott Flanders, the magazine's Chief Executive at the time. "And so it's just passé at this juncture."
Well it now appears as if the new approach has failed. The magazine has confirmed that next month's issue will feature topless "Playmate" Elizabeth Elam as Miss March 2017 alongside the headline: “Naked is normal.”
Our March/April 2017 cover #NakedIsNormal https://t.co/FhCkcmnV0S pic.twitter.com/WSxMElDa94
— Playboy (@Playboy) February 13, 2017
The decision to reintroduce naked pictures comes as Cooper Hefner, the 25-year-old son of founder Hugh Hefner, takes the reigns as the magazine’s chief creative officer.
“I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem,” he said in a statement.
Although the magazine had long been at the receiving end of criticism from women's groups over its content, it also featured articles by such leading literary figures such as Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov along with in-depth interviews with the likes of Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Playboy was famously banned in Ireland until 1995, when a 34 year prohibition was eventually lifted.
Over three years ago former Miss World Rosanna Davison raised eyebrows after stripped off for the German edition of the magazine and later became a cover girl on the US Edition of Playboy.
