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Playgirl is a monthly erotic lifestyle magazine published in the United States that features seminude or fully nude men. The magazine was founded in 1973 during the height of the feminist movement as a response to erotic men's magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse that featured similar photos of women.
The magazine is well known for two publicity stunts when they offered Charles, Prince of Wales $45,000 to appear nude in a centerfold in 1990 and when they published a nude pictorial called "The Men of Enron" in September 2002 in which the former Enron employees "lost their shirts".
Though the magazine is marketed to heterosexual women, Playgirl editors have acknowledged at least 50 percent of their readers are gay men.
Playgirl is published by New York-based company Crescent Publishing, which also publishes High Society, Celebrity Skin, Hawk, Cheri and a number of other hardcore pornographic magazines. Crescent was charged in 2000 by the FCC with over 180 million dollars of online credit card fraud, much of which was conducted on the Playgirl Magazine site. All Crescent titles, including Playgirl were prevented from conducting any business on the web for five years. Then President Bruce Chew was subsequently indicted along with several prominent members of the Gambino crime family. Crescent is owned by the reclusive millionaire pornographer Carl Ruderman, who prefers to be known as a leader of international tourism rather than as a publisher of pornographic titles.
Throughout the history of the magazine, Playgirl featured male frontal nudity except for the early issues in 1973 and then the infamous non-nude year 1987. In 1986, Carl Ruderman's Drake Publishers (later renamed Crescent) bought Playgirl and relocated it to New York. John Paul become the first full frontal centerfold in November 1987 after a disastrous non-nude year. Throughout the years the magazine has matured as erections, foreskin and non-Caucasian models have been shown in the magazine. The magazine generally featured models who have been circumcised but of late, layouts with uncircumcised models are featured.
Playgirl is available in English and in other languages such as German and Russian.
Apart from professional models, Playgirl features amateur models in a section called Real Men (formerly known as Snapshots). A Real Men of the Year contest is held annually where readers can vote the for the best layout of the year.
Every year Playgirl dedicates an issue to nude college men. A nude centerfold calendar featuring the men of the previous year is usually included in the January issue of the magazine. Readers are asked to vote for the Man of the Year from the pictures of the calendar.
Celebrity Centerfolds
Unlike Playboy, Playgirl has not been successful in persuading many celebrities to disrobe, nor have any of its nude models risen to major stardom in films; the most famous is likely Sam J. Jones who went on to play Flash Gordon in a 1980 film several years after his nude layout. The magazine was somewhat more successful in getting name Hollywood actors to disrobe for layouts in its first years. Those who posed nude or semi-nude included:
The magazine occasionally runs layouts of soap opera stars or singers which usually are no more than beefcake shots that could run in any mainstream magazine.
The magazine has featured photographs of various celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio from movie scenes or in Brad Pitt's case, published candid shots of him that he did not approve. The magazine has often used photographs of movie stars and celebrities on the cover but these stars are usually just interviewed or profiled and do not appear in a nude layout.
Trivia
- Each year, the magazine publishes a list of celebrity Ten Sexiest Men and selects one of the centerfolds from the past year also Man of the Year. One of these men, Dirk Shafer, later produced a comic mockumentary titled Man of the Year in which he discusses balancing being gay with working as a sex symbol.
- Shafer was not the only gay model of the magazine. Scott Merritt, Playgirl's 30th-anniversary centerfold, revealed in the August 19, 2000 issue of The Advocate that he is gay; Brian Dawson, April 1978's Man of the Month would go on to win the title of International Mr. Drummer, a gay leather title, in 1989, as well as winning a bronze medal in the physique competition at the 2002 Gay Games in Australia.
- In June 2004, Playgirl magazine featured its oldest cover model/centerfold in the magazine's 30-year history: Rick Dinihanian, a 54-year-old gay man.
- Kevin Micheals (also known as Kevin Talley), the April 2005 issue centerfold, was the first centerfold to reject the title of Man of the Year because of his Southeast Christian Church faith.
- Leit, Harrison and Gray (2001) examined 115 male centerfold models in Playgirl magazine from 1973 to 1997 and they noted that the Playgirl centerfold models became increasingly dense and more muscular over time.
- When Russian Playgirl hit newsstands in June 2004, its Russian audience were confronted with an unfamiliar sight, photographs of nude, circumcised American men, as most Russian girls have never seen a circumcised man. Although common in the United States, circumcision is less common in Europe, being practiced mainly by the Muslim and Jewish communities.
- Geoff Minger sported Playgirl's first erection in the historic January 1980 issue.
Man of the Month (centerfold)
Two preview issues of Playgirl were published with race car driver Mike Hiss in the January 1973 issue & the Hager Twins, Jim & John, from TV's Hee Haw in the February 1973. Then Volume 1, Number 1, appeared in June of 1973
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References
- Leit RA, Pope HG Jr, Gray JJ., Cultural expectations of muscularity in men: the evolution of playgirl centerfolds, Published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2001 Jan;29(1):90-3.
- Playgirl no-show, The Courier-Journal, February 5, 2006
- Playgirl's men are a cut above, The St Petersburg Times, Friday, June 18, 2004