R.I.P Playgirl

The recent news of Playgirl ditching its print product and going all web has had the sex/media interwebs in a frenzy since last week — with most cheeky bloggers making jokes about how the gay community has kept the magazine afloat.

I had become bored of the speculation and news even before I had a chance to blog about it. But, my trusty tipsters — The House of LeMay — emailed me this link from Queerty.com yesterday. Queerty's news of the print magazine folding actually took an interesting approach and asked former editor Colleen Kane to respond to the claim that "Only gay men like Playgirl."  She says:

"I disagree that only gay men would ever want to look at pictures of naked men. This was a half-baked conjecture I heard over and over when I met new people and the subject of my job came up. To me it came off as a careless denial of women’s sexuality; it was equivalent to saying that women don’t fantasize.

I’ve also wondered if there weren’t some parallels between Playgirl’s struggle to find its identity and readership and the developing lack of cohesiveness among feminists, as the ranks divided into second and third waves, and the waves subdivided with different opinions about sex, porn, and, well, fun, and perhaps a greater proportion of women don’t identify as feminist."

Indeed. Although I never picked up a copy of Playgirl, I'm sad to see it go — after reading Kane's argument, I would have bought it just to prove her point (then given it to my gay friends).

xoxo,
MM

Comments

[amesdawg]

I heard that Playgirl folded because they were going to get Spencer Pratt to pose. :) Also, I'm not really getting what feminism and its various waves have to do with the folding. It seems that this might be another case of something being blamed on evil feminism, but maybe I'm being too sensitive. I have a feeling that the main reason is that men and women (even feminists) can get their naked men fix on the internet much easier and don't have to settle for just lame pictures. I know that the only time I looked at a playgirl was when I was a giggling adolescent just shocked to see a penis, but I'm way beyond that now.

[Inishi]

I agree with Amesdawg. Now a days, even ebooks are outselling books (in certain areas only). A printed magazine could hardly catch up to the amount of free things you can get in the internet. heck, anything that is in the internet has a way of being hacked, so in the end it all is free for those who know how. I don't think playgirl had a long enough life to catch up to playboy, that is why with both losing buyers to the internet playgirl fell first.