No nudes makes Playboy a dull boy

Playboy’s decision to finally stop publishing pictures of nude women is a sign of the times. A few decades ago, teenage boys, and possibly a few girls, would be getting vicarious thrills by peering at these "forbidden" images, which promptly would be hidden away under the pillows, or at the bottom of the desk drawer, the next morning. An introduction to the female form through Playboy was a rite of passage for young men, something that was cherished and valued when they became older, as could be seen by the stacks of Playboys painstakingly preserved through the ages. Why? It was part of your childhood, a reminder that once upon a time your had been young and innocent about love and sex; and Playboy had been the naughty friend that guided you through.

The sad truth today is that Playboy cannot play that role any more. Some would claim the web, which can bring you explicit pictures at the click of a key, is to blame. Others would claim that the teenage angst phase is now slowly but surely getting over, with oversized young boys and girls straightaway transitioning into adults.

Is this true? One cannot say. What one can say with confidence is that sex has become a less taboo topic, than was the case before. Witness the racier Mills and Boon books today; witness the 50 Shades of Grey series sold on mainstream shelves; and witness, bedroom scenes even in saas-bahu serials.

How possibly can an image of a naked woman compete with all that? The simple answer – it can’t. And so like Archie, Playboy’s nude woman must die.

This brings us to the second part of the dilemma. What would readers do with a "clean" Playboy? Is Hugh Hefner likely to give us his version of The Spectator? One does not know. What we do know is that Playboy is, like most other organisations, trying to reach out to that mysterious internet audience through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and so on.

But for that its content must be whiter than white. And so the reader/viewer is presented with a strange dichotomy. While consuming mommy porn through 50 Shades... and explicit images through porn sites; he will now turn to Playboy for news. The wheel has come full circle. The time to play is over.