Playboy Drops The Nudes: Is Porn Dying?

Are we watching porn burn out or just the death of print pornography and its male pioneers?

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Playboy has decided to drop the nudes. I haven’t looked at a Playboy for decades, but the news is still a shock. The iconic mag is really going to be about the articles now.

It’s like an all-you-can-eat irony buffet.

At 89, Hugh Hefner is practically dead. Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse, died in 2010. Al Goldstein, founder of Screw Magazine, died in 2013. Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler, is the baby at only 72.

They were leaders during the Sexual Revolution. There’s opinion everywhere between romanticism and demonization concerning their roles and women’s “choice” to participate. What can’t be argued is that the proliferation of pornography has had an incredible influence on our culture.

We want our visionaries and rule breakers to be clean of contradiction. It’s not going to happen. Life is messy and no one’s sheets are clean. These are controversial men—both rebellious pioneers and scoundrels drunk on exploitative empire.

Those who aren’t dead already will be dead shortly. Part of me smiles in glee that they are returning to stardust.

Sex, especially in America, is a BIG DEAL. Which is dumb. We still mostly handle it two ways: shameful denial or hyper-distorted exploitation. Both suck. Humans are sexual beings. The dogmas of religion and capitalistic freedom have warped human sexuality to the point where reality has little room.

Go to hell abstinence or Photoshop, 12 inch penises and double D silicone breasts. Choose.

I was 11 years old when I stole my first Playboy from a drugstore. Dolly Parton was on the cover. Gleeful anticipation turned to angry disappointment when I found no nudes of her inside. I hid the mag under the shed in the backyard and pursued its pages in secret for weeks.

Through my teenage years, I collected and purged many a porno mag. After one of those purges, I found my younger sisters flipping through them on the side of the house. They’d dug them out of the trash. I was horrified and ripped them out of their hands.

Then the porn video revolution came. Tapes and cable channels challenged print’s foothold. But you still had to pay, so the threat wasn’t great.

Then came the Internet. Pandora’s box of porn opened and OMGWTFBBQ IT’S ALL THE PORNS ALL THE TIME. Now we are dealing with consequences like adolescent erectile dysfunction and porn addiction. I worry that one day my 11 year old son will sit in front of a computer, Google “boobs,” and have his face melt off just like the Nazis who stared into the Ark of the Covenant in the movie Raider’s of the Lost Ark.

Good times.

So, porn isn’t dying. The honky paperporn warlords are dead. Porn has gone über turbo electric. With just a connection and a couple of clicks, a porn wonderland awaits. Admission is free.

Internet killed the porno mag and sexual reality has dimmed to a flicker.

Enjoy the consequences.

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Photo credit: r2hox

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