Wednesday, October 21, 2015

On The Media: Playboy Covering Up!

Playboy decided to cover up and show no more nude women. Starting March of next year, it will be official but it might hurt the industry given that last year Playboy revamped its website making it safe for parasol at work, its web traffic quadrupled ranging from 4 million monthly to about 16 million. Plus the average age as well from 47 years old to just over 30. Hugh Hefner who is owner and creator of Playboy Magazine served his time in WWII sitting behind a desk state side because he had writing ability. Hefner’s favorite magazine was Esquire and he became fond of Alberto Vargas who was the creator of pin-ups for Esquire and later worked at Playboy. He called his creations the “Vargas Girls” who were paintings of nude women and Hefner loved his creations but wanted to see real women in the magazines who looked identical to the Vargas Girls.

Personally, I’m not going to lie, I’ve seen pictures from Playboy magazines that my friends had but it happened when I was younger. I grew out of that now and never subscribed to Playboy because my mom would’ve probably never had let me but at the same time, it feels dirty and wrong to me to speculate a women as an object and staring at their body parts rather than appreciating them for the kind of person they are. Especially in a magazine where all there are nothing but naked women, a guy is not picking up that magazine to read an article about how nice or charming that women is, they are looking for the sexy lingerie to satisfy themselves. I am glad that they have decided to cover up their women because modeling can be done with clothes on and should. I know some people want to see certain things explicitly but there are other networks out there that you can do that but I even think that those should be monitored as well.

Physical: Playboy was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and some of his associates. Women are modeling with little to no clothes on whatsoever and it’s just for men’s and others own entertainment and sexual satisfaction.

Psychological: The publishers and buyers of these magazines aren’t really considering the feelings of how the women feel and their view on it. I mean I know it is their job but they are posing their body for the public and why does it have to be nude? It doesn’t, women are beautiful in all kinds of way and posing them naked literally adds to the phrase: “Sex sells.”

Cultural: Playboy isn’t the only place that girls are naked and it’s not only in magazines either. We have something called the Internet where this can easily be expanded. I hate to use this word publicly but “porn” is a form of sexual entertainment that has more detail with two people who will have sex publicly and cast it online. It’s really sad actually because in that way, both men and women are being viewed as objects.

Social: Playboy is something that has been constantly talked about for years but now that they have decided to cover up, that might stir a whole different conversation with some people supporting that idea and others that would reject it. Either way, this sort of thing is something that is always being brought up whether it’s in a serious manner or not.

Temporal: Hugh Hefner liked the “Vargas Girls” but wanted to see the real thing by having real women being depicted as them instead. Playboy is seen as a trendsetter and a “sophisticated” magazine that have made other magazines want to follow it as well.


Has Hugh Hefner lost his mind?

2 comments:

  1. Hello Shi-Quan, I found reading your post quite interesting and the whole story to beg a question that we as a class had started to get into last time we met on the topic of sex. Does this new playboy help draw the line of what is acceptable in our society? And does this raise the bar for Americans?
    Not to be an advocate for this sort of stuff, just being the devils advocate here, or looking at this from another angle but does censorship of the female form oppress women? How do we as a society achieve better equality when we already see whats socially acceptable for both men and women being totally different things. For an example, it seems perfectly okay for a man to walk around in public without a shirt on but its very indecent for a woman to do the same thing. And on the other side of that its perfectly okay for a woman to wear blue jeans but its a crime for a man to wear a dress. This is just some food for thought, not trying to single you out here.
    Great post man.

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  2. I am not sure if this move of Playboy is to raise the bar or if it an attempt to save a dying industry. The internet has taken all of the shock out of the girlie magazines.

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