Few media manufacturers scream “straight” fairly like Playboy. For the reason that Fifties, the lads’s way of life journal has been finest recognized for its pictures of nude and scantily clad ladies (aka Playmates)—and, after all, for its iconic bunny mascot.
However those that’ve been paying consideration, Playboy has quietly undergone an editorial transformation. Since November, the journal has relaunched its print version (beforehand halted in 2020), began a Substack publication mixing archival materials with authentic writing, and launched new Playmates to the world. It’s all been below the recommendation of Phillip Picardi, who was introduced on March 11 as Playboy’s new chief model officer and editor-in-chief, making him the primary overtly homosexual man to steer the model.
Picardi is a media veteran with greater than a decade of expertise shaping the journal business. Because the digital editorial director of Teen Vogue, Picardi greater than doubled the location’s on-line viewership and gave the model a brand new politically progressive path (a transfer that landed him on Quick Firm‘s list of the 100 most creative people in business in 2017). From there, he based Condé Nast’s queer-focused outlet them and served as editor-in-chief of Out Journal.
What does it imply for a queer man to take the helm of a stereotypically straight establishment? It’s not as antithetical because it first sounds, contemplating how far Playboy has come from its primarily pornographic roots. Per its website, the model’s mission is “to create a tradition the place all folks can pursue pleasure” by way of “core values of equality, freedom of expression and the concept pleasure is a basic human proper.”
In an interview with ADWEEK, Picardi shared how his personal queer identification matches into that inclusive Playboy ethos. “Queer rights don’t exist with out ladies’s rights,” Picardi stated. “These items are related, and Playboy has all the time been very engaged with that.”
Picardi’s appointment comes shortly after that of David Miller, who left a job at Nationwide Geographic to turn into Playboy’s president of media and model. The shake-up in management displays a brand new period for Playboy, one that also facilities intercourse, however not with out acknowledging the tradition surrounding it. Meaning publishing deep dives on the hypocrisy surrounding trans pornography, platforming Playmates eager to reclaim their sexuality, and honoring the legacy of Playboy’s past.
Picardi additionally shared his imaginative and prescient for Playboy’s future, notably given the rising conservatism of American tradition.
“Our second proper now’s each extraordinarily prudish and intensely pornographic,” he stated. “The concept that we’d like a publication that is ready to clarify sexuality as a cultural power, particularly as our youthful of us are going through a intercourse recession and loneliness epidemic—it felt like the precise problem.”
