Playboy without nude women?

There are many ways to over-extend your brand.  Like Harley Davidson cake decorating kits, or Star Wars coffee creamer.  But this really takes the cake in terms of outright abandoning your brand identity.

Playboy is going to try and enter the space of general lad's magazine by no longer having pictures of naked ladies. It has long been the case that Playboy did carry good journalistic stories, but without nudity--what exactly is it?

Probably just a new entrant into the lad magazine space already crowded by bolder, hipper, and more authentic-feeling magazines like GQ, Maxim, Esquire and FHM.

Wither Playboy

After three solid decades of the perfect combo of hard journalism and soft porn, Playboy Magazine got its ass kicked by the internet and spiralled into decline. Since the eighties Playboy has struggled along on the back of a trashier mag and licensing fees.

Now Playboy seems to be at a branch in the road.  One option is Hugh Hefner taking the company private.  the other is a buy out by the class-free zone of  Friendfinder/Penthouse--one of the few outfits that could make the Heff look relatively refined.

I just hope that if Playboy goes private, Hefner does to.  I can respect a pinup mag with a pedigree, but his reality show is a boil on the butt of popular culture. In my (admittedly not-terribly-important) opinion, porn magnates should be obscene and not heard (or seen).

Portuguese Playboy Jesus

I guess we are supposed to be shocked by the Portguese Playboy's photo-epitaph for the author Jose Saramago. Or maybe we are meant to be smugly aware of not being shocked because we are all people of the world.

I get that this is the author of O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo / The Gospel According to Jesus Christ which depicted a very human Christ. I am just not entirely sure how this translated to some very run of the mill shots of Jesus amongst the boobies.

Jesus doesn't look very Jesusy. The shots don't seem very well composed, and worse of all--even the boobs aren't being dsiplayed to best advantage. Shame on you Portuguese Playboy, be as sacriligous as you want, but remember the main point of the pictures.

Make nice pictures of nice boobies.

Okay?

See also:

• Playboy cover archive
• All three pictures