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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Playboy (magazine) 

Playboy (magazine)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from Playboy)
Classic Playboy logo.
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Classic Playboy logo.

Playboy is an adult entertainment magazine, founded in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, which has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc. NYSE: PLA, reaching into every form of media. Playboy is one of the world's best known brands. In addition to the flagship magazine in the United States, special country-specific versions of Playboy are published worldwide.

The magazine is published monthly and features photographs of nude women, along with various articles on fashion, sports, and consumer goods, and often short fiction by top literary writers as well. The magazine has been known to express liberal opinions on most major political issues.

Playboy's use of "tasteful" nude photos is often classified as “soft core” adult reading material. More “hard core” pornographic magazines started to appear in the 1970s in response to the success of Playboy's more explicit rival, Penthouse.


Contents

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History

The first issue of Playboy.
The first issue of Playboy.

The first centerfold was Marilyn Monroe, although the picture used had originally been taken for a calendar rather than Playboy. Hefner purchased the rights to the photos of Monroe along with others.

The first issue, published in December, 1953, did not carry a date, as Hefner was unsure whether there would be a second issue. That first issue was an immediate sensation and sold out within a matter of weeks. Known circulation was 53,991 (Source: Playboy Collector's Association Playboy Magazine Price Guide). The cover price was 50¢. Copies of the first issue in Mint to Near Mint condition fetched over $5000 in 2002.

The famous Playboy logo, depicting the stylized profile of a rabbit wearing a tuxedo bow tie, was designed by art designer Art Paul for the magazine's second issue and has appeared on every issue since; a running joke in the magazine involves hiding the logo somewhere in the cover art or photograph. Hefner said that he chose the rabbit as a mascot for its “humorous sexual connotation”, and because the image was “frisky and playful”.

Since reaching its peak in the 1970s, Playboy has seen a slow decline in circulation and success, in part due to a series of bad investments in men's clubs and casinos, and partly from increased competition in the field it founded—first from Penthouse in the '70s and more recently from the related area of more irreverent and socially acceptable “lad's mags” such as Maxim and FHM.

In response Playboy has attempted to re-assert its hold on the 18–35 male demographic it once controlled through slight changes to its content and focussing on issues and personalities more appropriate to its audience—such as hip-hop artists being featured in the Playboy Interview.

Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, became CEO of Playboy in 1988 and is now also Chairman of the Board.

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Playboy Interview

The “Playboy Interview”, a monthly interview of someone prominent, has become famous for its confrontational style and in-depth process — a typical interview would range from 7 to 10 hours long. The interviewers employed have included Alex Haley and Alvin Toffler.

The "Playboy Interview" started with Miles Davis in September of 1962 (Volume 9 Number 9). Over the years they have conducted interviews with Jimmy Carter, John Lennon, Fidel Castro, Ayn Rand, Malcolm X, Kurt Vonnegut, Bertrand Russell, Salvador Dali, Martin Luther King Jr., Jean-Paul Sartre, George Wallace, Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali), Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Orson Welles, Ralph Nader, Arthur C. Clarke, Yasir Arafat, Stephen Hawking, Shintaro Ishihara, and Carl Sagan.

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Bans on the sale of Playboy

In most parts of Asia (including China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei), Playboy is banned. In 2003, the Censorship Review Committee in Singapore concluded that the ban should be continued because the Singaporean community is not ready for Playboy's liberal use of sexually explicit photographs. In the 1980s, a well-publicized ban occurred when the American convenience store chain 7-Eleven decided to remove the magazine from its stores.

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Litigation

On the 14th of January 2004 the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s (PEI) trademark terms "playboy" and "playmate" should be protected even in Internet searches that prompt pop-up advertisements. The suit originally started on April 15th 1999, Playboy sued Excite Inc. and Netscape for trademark infringement.

In the original ruling the Honorable Alicemarie Stotler, of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, stated: "Defendants use of the words 'playboy' and 'playmate' in their search engine does not equate to commercial exploitation of plaintiff's ("PEI") trademarks."

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Record

The November 1972 Playboy issue
Enlarge
The November 1972 Playboy issue
"Lenna"
Enlarge
"Lenna"

The best-selling Playboy edition was the November 1972 edition, which sold 7,161,561 copies. Artist Jack Niland designed the cover to embody the principles of Dharma Art as taught by meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Perhaps coincidentally, a cropped image of the issue's centerfold (which featured Lena Soderberg) became an industry-standard for testing image processing algorithms. It is known simply as the "Lenna" image in that field.[1]

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Controversy

There is some controversy over the airbrushing (or, in recent times, Photoshopping) that is done on the images featured in the magazine. While Playboy images have traditionally been retouched to various degrees, this practice has become quite pronounced in the late 1990s. Some readers say that this kind of photo-editing takes away from authenticity and makes photographs look unnatural.

One example was the case of Pamela Anderson and the "disappearing labia". In Pamela's original Playboy appearance in the issue of February, 1990, there was a rear-view photo with her legs slightly apart and her labia majora plainly visible. In reprints in later "Newstand Specials" as well as a poster-sized print, Pamela had been "defeminized", this area having been painted over, in the color of the object in front of which she was standing.

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Firsts

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International editions

(starting at the accompanying date, or during the accompanying date range)

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Other Editions

The success of Playboy magazine has led PEI to market other versions of the magazine, the Special Editions[2] (also called the News Stand Specials), such as Playboy's College Girls[3] and Playboy's Book of Lingerie, as well as the Playboy video collection. The growth of the internet also prompted the magazine to develop a web site called the Playboy Cyber Club in 1994. In August 2005, Playboy announced the launch of the online edition of magazine Playboy Digital in October 2005.

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See also

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Books

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General compilations

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Anniversary collections

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Interview compilations

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External links

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Official

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Other

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy_%28magazine%29"
Categories: Companies traded on NYSE | Men's magazines | Playboy | United

# posted by JimmyO : 6:58 PM
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