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