"If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you," Hugh Hefner wrote in the first issue in 1953. Sixty-two years later, Playboy is ditching the nudes and aiming younger - the new target is 30-year-olds, the median age of Playboy's web readers. Which prompts the question: Who is the 30-year-old Playboy reader?
I'm not privy to internal Playboy data on its readers, but let's think about Millennials for a minute. First off, they probably don't go to magazines to see naked women. There's porn for that - and it's everywhere. They're also likely to be seeing nude pictures of the real-live women in their lives. According to a study presented recently at the American Psychological Association, eight out of 10 respondents in an online survey said they'd sexted in the past year.
Second, today's Millennial reader might not identify with or idolise Hugh Hefner; he might not lust after a Playboy bunny or after women at all. A third of Millennials say they're less than 100 per cent straight. Hefner, on the other hand, has a very traditional, masculine persona.
Playboy created an image of the man who was available for casual sex and women who were available for anything - and everyone is beautiful, white, thin and heterosexual, says Deborah Stearns, a professor of psychology and human sexuality at Montgomery College. "In terms of our culture, would that be a message that would be appealing [today]?"
Images of women who are up for anything, no questions asked, might not turn on the 30-year-old who's used to getting consent for sex. Despite the media's portrayals of Millennials sleeping with anyone and everyone, they're projected to have fewer sexual partners than Gen Xers or Baby Boomers.
