Playboy bares its soul to attract millennials in latest relaunch

Playboy magazine is making some big changes. Photo / Getty Images

For decades, Playboy tried to set itself apart from other "men's publications".

At its peak, the magazine had seven million readers. But circulation has plummeted and is now somewhere below 400,000.

Changing fashions made Playboy an anachronism and after a series of relaunches, it is now trying to appeal to the millennial, MeToo generation.

Founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, it offered not only titillation but also serious writing, publishing short stories by writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood and Roald Dahl.

Hefner died in 2017 and for the first time, no members of the Hefner family are involved in the magazine, which is run by financier Ben Kohn.

Nudes are back, having been banished from its pages by Hugh's son Cooper in late 2015.

On recanting, Cooper, tweeted: "I'll be the first to admit the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake."

Its approach today has changed. The latest magazine does feature an underwater nude shot, but the participants are not professional models.

One is an underwater dancer who uses the medium to promote ocean conservation.

Another, a Belgian artist, has filmed herself walking naked through Brooklyn.

Many of the pictures in the magazine are taken by female photographers, as it sought to convince readers of the new approach: "Today, we strive to be more inclusive, stretching and redefining tired and frankly sexist definitions of beauty, arousal and eroticism."

Not everybody is convinced, though - including Joanna Coles, a former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan.

"Through today's lens, Hugh Hefner is grotesque and his women victims," she told The New York Times.

"They should lay it to rest with Hugh's smoking jacket."

The Sunday Telegraph