Okay, so I debated if I wanted to weigh in on Playgirl magazine closing its print edition but in the end all the discussion its generated on the web made it an impossible-to-avoid topic for me.

Now, of course, part of a news story like this is the failure analysis and in my mind that one is pretty simple — when it started out Playgirl aimed to be like its sibling (by name if not by ownership) magazine, Playboy with dense thought-provoking articles as well as the occasional bit of male nudity. In the 80s, however, that changed and the magazine stopped trying to be someone one could legitimately claim to “read for the articles” (as I still hear some people say about Playboy) instead becoming a Cosmo clone in a brown paper wrapper. The slow slide into obscurity began when Playgirl made its only distinct quality the male nudity since, flash forward a couple decades and, well, to paraphrase Steven Moffat, the internet boomed and became a giant database of porn. Someone who wants to look at guys doesn’t really have to look far… in which case why bother with the embarrassment of buying a porn mag?

However, Radar Online published a post-mortem with former Playgirl editor Collen Kane that brings out another problem with the magazine:

the office was shared with the staffs of numerous hardcore pornographic titles put out by Playgirl’s publisher, Blue Horizon Media: Cheri, High Society, Celebrity Skin…A disembodied penis is not necessarily going to do it for a woman, and she might even find it the furthest thing from sexy. But try selling hardcore pornographers on this concept: The other Blue Horizon magazines could be used for anatomy lessons.

Or, in other words, the magazine had become another case where, while a woman’s name was listed as being in charge, straight men were dictating what women should find erotic.

Unfortunately, it seems you can’t have a discussion about Playgirl without a good share of gay baiting. Just check out the initial thread at the Gawker-owned blog Jezebel where the comments turn to the usual cry of “Only gays want to see that!” as well as the cliched claim that “Women just aren’t visually oriented.” which is stupid for a variety of reasons.

Kane’s piece for Radar, however, tackles that perception, at least a little:

Which brings us to a period I like to call “The Gay ’90s.” Of course, photography of a nude male does not automatically equal gay. That’s absurd. However, there’s a multitude of ways that it can look gay, especially if some of the photographers are gay and some of the models are gay. Add to this the unfortunate ’90s trends of Day-Glo spandex, long hair, manscaping, and inverted-triangle-shaped musclebound bodies, and you have a very different look than the classic 1970s regular guy with chest hair in the woods, who is wearing an open flannel shirt but forgot to bring his pants.

Also, as time went on, the coyness about the models’ genitalia disappeared, until they were routinely shown at full mast and close up. I think this alienated some percentage of the female readership.

Uhm, the language gets a little more NSFW after the break:

Now, since (it seems) a Gawker blog can’t resist the urge to gay-bait (remember Consumerist’s obsession with gay, gay, gay pron at WalMart? Where they always made sure to mention teh gay?) Jezebel feels the need to make shit up to make it far gayer:

After the “notorious experimental year without willies” in the eighties and a few rounds of using gay models and gay photographers whose sensual sensibilities were slightly different than the female readership that Playgirl was supposed to be attracting (think: spread ass-cheek pictures), the magazine began to be thought of as a periodical closet case…

In Kane’s analysis, the magazine succeeded when it successfully projected the image of catering to women and what at least some of us want to look at (hot naked dudes) and read about, rather than a magazine in which a woman is wondering why she’s staring at some naked guy’s asshole

Nowhere in her article does Kane mention “spread ass-cheek pictures” or models’ assholes. (And I don’t think such pictures have ever been published in Playgirl though I’m no expert on that.) But hey, who cares about what the article you’re actually writing about really says?

That said, Kane probably hits on another turning point for the magazine with her “gay 90s” comment since the magazine did have a distinct look (even if the articles were crap — which, yes, included a “Dear Playgirl, I never thought this would happen to me but one day…” section) that disappeared in that decade. By the 80s, the magazine’s pictorals had a soft-focus style of eroticsm that looked like racier versions of soap operas and romance novel covers. Now those are stereotypes of what women like to see, but it was a visual style that made it unique. In the 90s that faded away until it was hard to tell a Playgirl photo from a Men Magazine one.

Though I wouldn’t say those differences are a matter of “what women like” and “what gay men like” because those kinds of generalities are just stupid. And, actually, I’d say that the Playgirl visual style of the 80s and early 90s can actually be found in a few magazines and websites officially targeted at gay men.