This project

Steve Sloca Steve Sloca" <gokings@comcast.net
Fri, 01 Aug 2003 19:19:52 -0400


Dan Stiffler wrote:
"However, I don't understand what Steve is expecting from PLAYBOY when
he calls for the European-style open-crotch shots, yet no pink or
manipulated labia.  Hell, Steve, PLAYBOY has been doing the spread-leg
number since the mid-70's.  We are both old enough to remember the
drama of Debra Peterson's centerfold...."

Yes, and there were a lot more of those spread leg photos in the 70's
and '80's besides the two you mention!  But then women started
shaving; and Playboy started to chicken out, retrenching to what Mark
Tomlonson calls the "I've got to go potty" legs-clenched,
hips-twisted-to-hide-groin poses.  And all the "from the rear" poses
then had to be shadowed and darkened in the "new" Playboy modesty.  In
light of what is out there in men's magazines, on the internet and in
porn, this unnatural posing and torso-contorting cover-up looks dated,
stilted and "namby-pamby" to a generation raised on steamier stuff.  I
am suggesting "trash the coverup," much in the same way Playboy
trashed the idea that nudity is evil in the '50's or in the way that
Playboy exposed pubic hair in the '70's; and maybe go a little further
with some fetish or girl/girl photos.  That is not that revolutionary
to anyone who is paying attention to the rest of the glamour media
these days.

Dan's thought that Playboy has to go even more backwards, all the way
to the pre-pubic hair '60's, for fear of losing advertisers is, I
suggest, a major error.  That would make Playboy even more dated, even
more "out of it" as far as the average adult consumer is concerned,
and even more "my Dad's magazine" as far as the younger generation is
concerned.  Will Playboy lose an advertiser or two if it gets a mite
more explicit?  Probably.  But I'll bet it lost a lot more in the
'70's when it started showing pubic hair; and it gained them all back
when the public kept buying the magazine.  Advertisers care about one
thing--sales return per dollar spent; and the bigger the circulation a
magazine has, the more an advertiser wants to be in it.  Sure they
worry about a "backlash" among some puritan-types, but they always
balance this against the potential new sales they can make by pushing
the envelope. If they want to reach an upscale male audience, because
that's where they get their most sales, and if Playboy can show them
that they have that audience in its subscriber base, advertisers will
take the chance in order to get that extra sales volume.  They did in
the pubic hair-filled '70's, why wouldn't they in the baby-bald era of
the '00's?

As the Rich column points out, we are already at the point where
mainstream TV portrays pornographers as "good guys" and lots of skin
and sex as commonplace entertainment.  The puritans may rant and rail
and pull their hair, but they are swimming upstream against a very
strong current.  Playboy should be riding the crest of that current,
showing the rest of the media just how the more explicit fare sought
by most men can be presented in a classy and indeed elegant package;
and if they can deliver the passengers (i.e. subscribers), all of the
major advertisers are going to want to ride on that boat.