Playboy Admits It Can’t Out-Naked the Internet, Will No Longer Publish Nude Photos

It’s really just for the articles now: in a New York Times feature yesterday, it was revealed that Playboy is planning ‘to drop’ images of nude women.

According to the company’s chief executive Scott Flanders, there was nothing Playboy could offer in the nudity department that surpassed the Internet’s offerings:

That battle has been fought and won. You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.

Playboy’s website stopped hosting nude pictures in August of last year, in a bid to become more SFW and meet the community guidelines of Twitter and Facebook. According to The New York Times,

There will still be a Playmate of the Month, but the pictures will be “PG-13” and less produced — more like the racier sections of Instagram. “A little more accessible, a little more intimate,” he said. It is not yet decided whether there will still be a centerfold.

Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders told Entrepreneur last December, “You could argue that nudity is a distraction for us and actually shrinks our audience rather than expands it.”

It will be interesting to see how Playboy’s readership changes in the coming months (ooer)–to be honest, I’m surprisingly okay with the Playboy website’s ratio of dude-bro sexism to interesting articles from feminists I admire, and I might even check out the print version if it’s as supportive of women’s voices.

Playboy isn’t my favorite cultural institution, for a lot of obvious reasons, but I do admire their willingness to adapt. Thoughts, gang?

(via Mashable, image via Shutterstock)

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