We apologize to devoted Playboy readers, but according to Yahoo! Finance, your men’s magazine is about to be filled with naked pictures. Chief creative officer Cooper Hefner, son of Hugh, announced the magazine’s decision to embrace nudity once more.
The reversal comes about a year and a half after Playboy said it would no longer publish nude photographs. The publication still had some suggestive pictures scattered among its interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates and other luminaries, but the decision to oust full nudes from its print pages followed the choice to remove them from the digital ones as well, the latter of which ended up boosting traffic. The magazine’s founder and scion didn’t suddenly get on prudish on everyone, though. As Hefner the younger put it: “Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem.” He does admit that Playboy’s previous approach to naked photos was “dated,” but eliminating nudity from the magazine wasn’t the right move either. So, Hefner & Co. are “taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are,” beginning with the March/April issue, which has the headline “Naked is normal.” There will still be plenty of good reads in there for the rest of you.
[Thanks to reader Daryl Walker II for the tip]