High-brow soft porn... {updated} (Playboy)

Member Name: ronniec

Product:	Playboy
Date:	04/12/00 (1232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb and tasteful photography; celebrity features; decent editorial content.

Disadvantages: American bias; low proportion of photographs.

I imagine I'm going to struggle in this opinion - already I can feel you skimming through the review, looking for the first instance of the word "naked". Please, bear with me, because I'm trying to give at least a semi-serious opinion of this fine magazine.

First things first, so let's get the big question cleared - is it pornography? The answer to that really depends on your own view of what constitutes an overtly-erotic scene, but in the most widely-known sense of the word, it is best described as soft porn.

Breaking soft porn down into it's constituent levels, Playboy ranks somewhere towards the bottom of the top-shelf scale. Although everything you will find in your average newsagents is very tame, Playboy is conservative even by these standards. Magazines like Hustler, Penthouse and Asian Babes are a lot more graphic and if that's the kind of thing you're looking for as you furtively make your way to the counter, give Playboy a miss.

I strongly suspect the content of Playboy has been very carefully chosen. It is marketed as a more high-brow men's magazine, whilst still offering the mild titillation of female nudity. An average issue will contain, say, fifteen to twenty pages of nude photographs, with the rest of the magazine being devoted to editorial content and advertising.

I imagine the photographs will be what you're most interested in, so I'll elaborate upon them first. Generally speaking, the glamour content of Playboy is way above anything else on the market. It is aimed at successful males from a wide age range - research showed the average reader age was 34, compared to 22 for the rest of the market - and as such, fills it's pages with "quality" material. It is famous for it's Playmate of the Year competitions, and you're likely to find one or two candidates littering the pages of every issue.

The unknowns aside, Playboy also has a deserved
reputation for publishing legal shots of celebrities who have agreed to bare all for the magazine (usually for an appropriately high sum of money). For many, this is the main attraction of the magazine - the simple, straight-forward desire to see your favourite female celebrity, naked. Highlights over the past few years have included Sharon Stone, Pamela Anderson and Drew Barrymore, while going further back, Marilyn Monroe used the publicity from her shots to help launch her career.

The quality of photography is superb and it is clear an effort has been made to produce "tasteful" shots - that means, no open-leg shots or other "strong" content. Most shots are full-frontal although the magazine has a curious fondness for girls laid out across silk-draped beds or with their legs in the air in a bath.

Photography aside, the magazine has earnt a following on the strength of it's editorial content, which I must say is usually of a good standard. Although it is heavily biased towards it's American readership, most articles are relevant, informative and witty. Columns by minor celebrities are a popular feature and the buyer's guides, technology news and special offers are all nice touches. At times, you get the feeling they are aiming solely at the forty-five year-old American businessman who reads Playboy on his trans-Atlantic flight, but if you can get past this, most will find it an enjoyable read.

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I will elaborate upon the editorial content a little further. Each issue features a number of articles written by American semi-celebs, people few of us in Britain will be familiar with but are supposedly rare comic talents. Mostly they adopt the satirical approach, although a lot of the references in the articles are bemusing and as a result you are often only left with a general idea of the message the article conveyed. I find these articles interesting, on the whole, although at tim
es they can degenerate into confusion as the Americansisms take over.

The technology news is again American biased, featuring news and reviews of the latest gadgets to appear on the other side of the pond. Given the magazine's readership, it's perhaps to be expected that the featured gadgets will be at the higher end of the scale, and indeed, most seem to fall in the multi-thousand dollar brackets. Nonetheless, it's an entertaining read, if a little too much like window shopping.

Occassionally a special feature will look in depth at a subject relevant to the successful male, most often something to do with business or a humanitarian issue from somewhere across the globe. These are an example of the more "serious" side of the magazine, and although they are never as informative as content of a journal devoted to the subject, they are an easy introduction to that particular topic. The tone adopted presumes you have some, but little knowledge of the subject and takes a welcome unbiased view, considering most viewpoints.

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I am not ashamed, like many men still are, to say I am a regualar reader of Playboy. The main attraction is the quality photography and celebrity features, yet there is also a case to be heard from the "I read it for the articles" brigade. In summary, Playboy is not the road to go down if you are purely looking for a porn magazine. However, those interested in men's issues and who don't mind the odd glimpse of naked female flesh, will find Playboy the pick of the bunch.

Comes highly recommended... if it's your thing.

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