{"id":20461,"date":"2015-10-14T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=20461"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:37:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T12:37:50","slug":"playboy-goes-normcore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2015\/10\/14\/playboy-goes-normcore\/","title":{"rendered":"Playboy Goes Normcore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I'm<\/a>
I’m not kidding, this is a VHS that you can buy right now from www.Tower.com, which I’m pretty sure is the current iteration of Tower Records.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1953, Hugh Hefner invited men between the ages of \u201c18 and 80\u201d to enjoy their journalism with a side of sex. It was Playboy\u2019s<\/em> inaugural issue<\/a>, featuring Marylyn Monroe as the centerfold, and it launched an institution that reached behind drugstore counters, onto reality TV<\/a>, and under dad\u2019s mattresses. \u00a0It was racy and cutting edge and ultimately, iconic. Posing for Playboy<\/em> was a daring declaration of success among American actresses and the cause of suspension<\/a> for a Baylor University student [i]<\/a>. But edges move, and today, Playboy<\/em>\u00a0vestiges can \u00a0be found on the Food Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0August, Playboy<\/em> stopped showing nude images on their website. The New York Times<\/a> reports that viewership subsequently increased from 4 million to 16 million. That\u2019s fourfold growth!!\u00a0 \u00a0In what can only be described as good business sense, the company announced that in March, they will stop including nude women in their magazine as well. Putting clothes on appears surprisingly profitable.<\/p>\n

In the NYT piece, \u00a0Playboy<\/em>\u00a0CEO\u00a0<\/em>Scott Flanders explains the decision: You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just pass\u00e9 at this juncture\u2026 That battle has been fought and won.<\/em><\/p>\n

Flanders is right. The Internet has changed the sex industry. Pornography has never been more accessible, nor has its consumption been more acceptable. Porn websites draw more visitors<\/a> than Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon combined. My colleague who studies pornography consumption tells me that among college men, he and his team find about a 90% consumption rate. \u00a0Today, people take their porn interactive, amateur, queer, multi-partied, penetrational, and however else they come to imagine. What \u00a0this means for the evolution of sexuality is a complicated can of worms, but what\u2019s clear is that set shots of airbrushed \u00a0women, arms\u00a0 grasping\u00a0 bedposts, mouths partially open and eyes partially closed, are as outdated as Playboy\u2019s <\/em>most identifiable medium (the magazine).<\/p>\n

So Playboy <\/em>is going normcore.\u00a0 <\/a>While normcore first referred to exceptionally unexceptional and gender neutral clothing, it has broadened to mean a pushback against the fast-paced attention demands of an identity-saturated moment, largely facilitated by digital technologies that afford 24 hour news cycles, widespread content creators, and self-started brand initiatives. Normcore is resistance through normalcy\u2014hardcore normalcy.<\/p>\n

Playboy <\/em>will replace the nude images with scantily clad ones. They\u2019ll also return more attention to the journalistic portion of the publication (maybe people really will <\/em>get it for the stories). A XXX market renders R rated content definitively vanilla, and a move to PG-13 comparatively bold.\u00a0 As evidenced by the brand\u2019s enormous website growth following their decision to put clothes on the models, subtle is the new edgy and “tasteful”\u00a0is a market niche.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> The incident resulted in a fraternity having to \u201cwrite essays\u201d as punishment for posing in the same issue fully clothed alongside women in bikinis. The female student who posed nude, however, was indeed suspended. Because, gender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1953, Hugh Hefner invited men between the ages of \u201c18 and 80\u201d to enjoy their journalism with a side of sex. It was Playboy\u2019s inaugural issue, featuring Marylyn Monroe as the centerfold, and it launched an institution that reached behind drugstore counters, onto reality TV, and under dad\u2019s mattresses. \u00a0It was racy and cutting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[55,129,10101,1047,120,176],"class_list":["post-20461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-gender","tag-media","tag-playboy","tag-pornography","tag-sex","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20461"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20482,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461\/revisions\/20482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}