Playboy

Playboy, American magazine aimed at men, the first to present female nudity and sexually oriented material in a relatively sophisticated format. For the magazine’s first issue in 1953, its founder, Hugh Hefner, used a previously unpublished nude calendar photograph of Marilyn Monroe, who also appeared (in clothing) on the cover. The logo of Playboy’s parent company, Playboy Enterprises, Inc., depicting the head of a rabbit in a tuxedo bow tie, eventually became one of the most-recognized trademarks in the world.

Although most famous for its photo spreads, Playboy also published general articles and fiction, both of which were frequently of high quality. Its interviews with celebrities and other newsworthy persons won wide attention. The periodical emphasized what it considered progressive sexual views. The “Playboy Philosophy,” articulated by Hefner himself in the pages of the magazine, advocated complete personal freedom (for both men and women) in all things, including sex. Through its support of that belief and its popularization of the notion that viewing sexually suggestive photography of women was not only acceptable but healthy, it contributed to the so-called sexual revolution in the United States in the 1960s, marked by greatly more permissive attitudes toward sexual interest and activity than had been prevalent in earlier generations. The magazine’s format and approach were widely imitated.

From the 1950s to the early ’70s Playboy’s circulation (including subscription and newsstand sales) and advertising revenues steadily increased, reaching a high point of 7.2 million copies sold in November 1972 and average sales of 5.6 million copies per issue in 1975. In the 1980s, however, the magazine’s readership declined steeply, partly because the sexual revolution it continued to advocate had largely been won, rendering its image less daring and less provocative and partly because it faced new competition from racier publications such as Penthouse, which featured cruder and more-explicit nude photography. Under the leadership of Hefner’s daughter, Christie Hefner, who was appointed president of the parent company in 1982 and served as chief executive officer from 1988 to 2009 (her father remained editor-in-chief), the magazine was recast as an advocate of First Amendment freedoms and a defender of progressive positions on a variety of social issues. By the end of the decade, Playboy’s circulation had stabilized at about 3.4 million. The company established a Web site, Playboy.com, in 1994, which was an immediate success. In the 2000s, however, circulation of the print magazine dropped again, falling to less than one million by 2015. Also that year, citing the wide availability of pornography on the Internet, the company announced that Playboy would no longer feature photos of nude women, but it reversed that decision in 2017.