Marilyn, Marge and Moss naked: 60 years of Playboy magazine
She will appear in the January/February 2014 edition of the magazine (available on December 17) – a sneak preview of her shoot was in this month’s issue.
Moss follows a long line of celebrities who have appeared in Playboy, going all the way back to a naked Marilyn Monroe in the very first issue in December 1953. Unlike Moss, Monroe didn’t have a Playboy shoot – her image came from a calendar shoot she did four years earlier when she needed the money. But a savvy young journalist from Chicago called Hugh Hefner bought the rights to the photo and slapped it in the middle of his new magazine. Playboy was born.
Sixty years later, is the magazine doing Moss a favour or is it the other way around? In August, the credit rating of Playboy Enterprises was lowered by financial services company Standard & Poor’s, amid fears the famous brand could be about to disappear.
At that time, the magazine was already in the midst of an editorial reboot, prompted by research that suggested its most valuable assets were the bunny logo, the mansion, founder Hefner and – no surprises here – the bunnies.
Playboy was at its most successful 40 years ago – in 1972, seven million issues were sold each month, which perhaps explains why the magazine’s rescue attempt involved returning to its roots, albeit carefully-selected ones.
An example is the July/August 2013 issue. The cover featured 25 synchronised swimmers forming the iconic rabbit head logo – an obvious nod to the art-directed aesthetic of Playboy’s 1960s golden era. In the same way, the models currently favoured by Playboy have more in common with the bunnies from the first issues of the magazine. Double-D surgically-enhanced models are a thing of the past. Quirkier cover stars – Marge Simpson stripped off for a ‘shoot’ in 2009 – are more common.
MORE: Marge Simpson recreates Kate Moss Playboy pose
Recent issues have included interviews with British actor Idris Elba, a guide to creating the ultimate dinner party and an article offering advice to women in long-distance relationships. The message is clear: Playboy is no longer a magazine to be read under the bed sheets or purchased by older brothers for younger siblings. One in five readers are female and the average age of readers is 37.
Like it or hate it, Playboy is a brand that become part of the culture – its bunny logo is instantly recognisable and the magazine helped invent the phrase, ‘I buy it for the articles’.
But despite its recent attempts to adapt, sociology professor James Beggan, from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, believes magazines such as Playboy can, by their nature, never change their spots. He said: ‘There is probably less stigma attached to Playboy than there was years ago, but wherever there is nudity, there will be embarrassed sniggers, because people generally seem to have trouble talking about sex.’
Professor Steven Watts, an expert on American intellectual and cultural history at the University of Missouri-Columbia, believes the connotations thrown up by the magazine haven’t changed – they just exist for different reasons.
‘The stigma is at about the same level,’ he said. ‘A big difference was that, in the early days, religion was the primary barrier to buying the magazine and now it tends to be feminism. In both cases, for different reasons, the pressure was for “respectable” people not to buy and read Playboy. But now, as then, for people who don’t feel subject to such social pressures, getting the magazine is no big deal. But I doubt that Playboy will ever be seen as a coffee table book – sex, morals, gender roles and so on are just too much hot button issues for that to ever take place.’
In an age where viewers of pornography get their fix online, you could be forgiven for thinking that the magazine’s biggest threat is the internet. However, the brand has had these bases covered for some years. Playboy Enterprises holdings include a TV station, digital network, online division, radio station and apparel and collectibles lines, as well as nearly 30 international editions.
Pornography might well be easily accessible online, but the perception of the magazine was obviously key to the success of Playboy Enterprises as a whole. Today, about 1.25m copies are sold each month and although that’s significantly less than the seven million copies in the 1970s, the team behind the magazine are confident that the future is bright, citing the coup of Moss as proof that it’s here to stay.
‘This is a massive global brand,’ said Playboy’s editorial director, Jimmy Jellinek. ‘You need a global icon in order to celebrate that – that was the impetus. You’re talking about the face of Burberry – the biggest supermodel in the world – on the cover of Playboy. She’s the perfect partner to help launch the next 60 years.’
And Moss’s reputation is unlikely to suffer as a result of her decision to pose for the magazine, something which illustrates just how accepted Playboy has become.
‘Getting mainstream models and actresses works more to enhance the prestige of the magazine and does not really hurt those who appear on the cover,’ said Prof Watts. ‘Examples are Cindy Crawford, Madonna and Sharon Stone. Over the past 50 years, Playboy has become a lot more mainstream. What it showed and advocated in the early days of the magazine with regard to sexuality and lifestyle are now part of the culture and really not that controversial.’
Although Playboy may have ditched the surgically enhanced models, it cannot possibly lower the ‘impossibly high – and often emotionally and physically destructive – standards of beauty faced by women’, according to Dr Adrienne Roberts, a lecturer in the school of social sciences at the University of Manchester.
She added: ‘Women often impose these standards on themselves. They are, after all, the main consumers of most fashion magazines, but this has been conditioned by decades, if not centuries, of sexist advertising and other structural gendered expectations.’
She doesn’t see Playboy as some kind of force for social change. ‘I’m just not convinced that this great cultural shift can be brought about by a magazine otherwise dedicated to objectifying and commodifying women.’
Although it’s impossible to predict whether the magazine will still be around in 60 years, Hefner, now 87, certainly won’t be. When the ultimate playboy heads off to the Playboy Mansion in the sky, what will happen to the magazine?
‘That depends on the brand’s work to create new products and marketing strategies,’ said journalism professor Robert Jensen from the University of Texas. ‘The corporation could easily be profitable without him.’
Prof Beggan goes one step further and suggests that his death could well see the creation of a new, more successful Playboy magazine. He said: ‘I don’t think that the loss of Hefner would have that great an effect, in that the image of Playboy would still exist as the bachelor/hedonist lifestyle. I also feel that given Hefner’s current lifestyle – the off-then-on marriage and the multiple blonde girlfriends – he is seen as less credible as a businessman, editor, social change agent and more of a caricature of his former self.’
Whenever ‘Hef’ does pass away, it will be some funeral – he owns the burial plot in an LA cemetery beside the remains of – yes, you guessed it – Marilyn Monroe.
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