October 20, 2017

"For the first time in its 64-year history, Playboy magazine will feature a transgender Playmate..."

"... a decision that Cooper Hefner, a top executive at the magazine, said on Thursday was in keeping with its founding mission of embracing changing attitudes about sex," the NYT reports.
Selecting [Ines] Rau “very much speaks to the brand’s philosophy,” said Mr. Hefner, 26, Playboy’s chief creative officer. “It’s the right thing to do. We’re at a moment where gender roles are evolving.”

Mr. Hefner said he selected Ms. Rau to be a Playmate two months ago because she’s “lovely” and has “a remarkable personality,” but also to resolidify the magazine’s voice. “This is really a moment for us to take a step back and say that so much of what the brand stood for in the early years is very much still alive in culture.”
Resolidify. I didn't know what to do, so I looked up "resolidify" in the Oxford English Dictionary, where I go to resolidify. It means "To make (something, esp. a melted substance) solid again; to solidify (something) again."

In other words — to speak more Playboyesquely — to get hard again.

Speaking of stiff... Hugh's dead.

50 comments:

rehajm said...

When the internet destroys your business model strange things develop in the empty space that's left.

CNN is another example.

Known Unknown said...

Playboy featured Caroline Cossey, a transgendered model, in the early 1980s (not Playmate of the Month)

Lost My Cookies said...

If he wasn't, this would've killed him

pdug said...

Some of the first porn I saw was trans porn some kid brought to school 30 years ago, and NOW playboy is saying its being current? Scarred me for life.

Gahrie said...

Speaking of stiff... Hugh's dead.

..and Playboy soon will be.

Bay Area Guy said...

Transgenderism isn't some quaint modern phenomenon to be romanticized or celebrated. It's mostly mental disease or social alienation or just plain weirdness.

Bill R said...

All six of their readers are going to cancel their subscription.

traditionalguy said...

In 1960 the Playboys were selling because boys were curious about what naked ladies looked like. Today Playboy expects boys want to see what a naked man playing a lady looks like. Good luck with that.

Craig Howard said...

And I thought the NFL didn't know its customers.

Darrell said...

How transgressive!

Anthony said...

Prediction: This issue will sell well, as progs who don't normally buy Playboy buy this issue.Then their sales will tank (even faster) as their core subscribers (all six of them) don't renew subscriptions to the magazine, and more importantly, the website.

If they're smart they won't promote Rau much on the website, but they're probably not that smart, and will chase away their online customers, too.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"When the internet destroys your business model strange things develop in the empty space that's left."

Word. Just ask the Democrat Party...

Regarding Playboy (and the NFL, Time magazine, and any number of other 20th century standards), it is 2017. It's not surprising, significant, or particularly sad, that businesses that are 50-100 years are rotting and dying. The cause of those business deaths may be different from what would be typical in the 1920's, but it's still just the same old capitalism grinding on.

Anthony said...

Playboy's decline really started with pushing models who'd had boob jobs. Some boob jobs look really natural, and the only giveaway is that girls with tits that big aren't naturally that skinny. But most look a little off. And Playboy hasn't been selective enough about that. Having a transsexual Playmate is a big step in that direction, since most have less than optimal boob jobs, and look a little off on other ways as well.

There's probably a market opportunity for a magazine/website that features the prettiest and sexiest all-natural girls. This is the appeal of Playboy's "college girl" issues.

Darrell said...

The cause of those business deaths may be different from what would be typical in the 1920's, but it's still just the same old capitalism grinding on.

Yeah different. Now we have CEOs that don't believe in Capitalism, who came out of top universities that preach against Capitalism daily.

dbp said...

Playboy is like the NFL: They do not understand who their customers are. Or maybe they do and they want to attract a new fan base. I suspect they will lose more customers than they gain. Do the owners care? I think they care more about the approval of their peers than the success of their business.

LilyBart said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
LilyBart said...

Do you think the readers are interested in looking at a retrofitted man, other than as a curiosity, I mean? I though the point of looking at the magazine was to get 'excited'. Does this type of thing turn men on?

Maybe Cooper agrees with the thinking that, if men are not attracted to a transgendered woman, they're bigots.

LilyBart said...

Anthony said...Prediction: This issue will sell well

I think the issue will sell well as a curiosity.

Bob Boyd said...

“It’s the right thing to do."

I remember when Playboy's readers were the ones doing the wanking. Now it's the publishers.

gspencer said...

It's of course just conjecture on my part, but this issue and perhaps a couple more were already in the pipeline at the time of HH's passing. Because these issues probably have a lot of sunk costs, management probably reasoned they might as well let them go to print and newsstands.

But I expect the magazine to close up shop soon enough.

tcrosse said...

I think the issue will sell well as a curiosity.

Maybe it will sell well as a coffee-table virtue-signal.

robother said...

A pendant would approve, noting that Playmate is gender neutral.

Stephen Taylor said...

So a question or two. Are we going to be looking at this guy's dick? Is he going to due an entire six pges or so with a centerspread? And his dick? Because I don't want to look at his dick. How, exactly, is this going to work? I spent many happy hours with my Playboy Books of Lingerie and other Newsstand Specials back in the 80's and early 90's, which were the golden years for boobs, pubic hair and makeup. I'm all about boobs, pubic hair and makeup. I don't care so much for seeing a dick.

I just don't see how this works.

rhhardin said...

Playboy's decline really started with pushing models who'd had boob jobs

It's a hot-babe meme, not an actual hot babe. A magazine genre.

Just as big boobs are a cartoon meme for hot babe, that is hotness is part of the idea of the cartoon.

It has nothing to do with real life.

rhhardin said...

I didn't realize that there wtill was a Playboy, by the way.

The only skin I see out there is Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which for some reason buys display space in Kroger aisles.

There was some controversy about children, last year (?) showing the foothills of the mons veneris, as Derbyshire put it.

Bob Boyd said...

Dude! The girl next door is a dude!

No way, dude.

Yeah, way! Check this out.

Holy shit, dude! She is a fuckin' dude.

I told ya, dude.

Whoa.

gerry said...

Thank heaven post-modernist reality confusers have created another sexual preference for Playboy to exploit.

MadisonMan said...

FTM or MTF?

I never know what a transgender female means. It's probably a microaggression to state that.

tcrosse said...

Amputees can have phantom itching or discomfort in their amputated member. I wonder if that occurs in the M->F transgendered ?

William said...

There's a poem by Philip Larkin where he visits an abandoned church and wonders when the last believer said a prayer there.........I wonder when the last person bought a Playboy for wanking purposes. It seems to be an obsolete way of looking at naked women. Maybe wanking off to Playboy has become an artisanal activity like watchmaking.......This seems more like a participation trophy than a triumph. Maybe in the coming months they can feature the morbidly obese, psoriasis sufferers, and the ancient with their walkers. There are so many worthy people who are excluded from the tyranny of the male gaze. Playboy can bravely work to rectify this injustice.

Static Ping said...

This is really not out of character for the magazine. Playboy is all about fantasy and, furthermore, not the fantasy they claim they were selling. While perhaps Hugh really did believe his nonsense about being the intellectual who discusses philosophy and literature over a fine wine before taking a willing beauty to bed - the alpha-beta male if you will - what the magazine was really selling was the fantasy that young, beautiful women will have sex with you on demand with no strings attached and no consequences. You, the 16-year-old with pimples and no girlfriend; you, the construction worker living paycheck to paycheck with the fat wife who does nothing but complain; you, the middle-aged man with a wife and 2.5 kids and a nice home out in the suburbs who is bored, bored, bored; yes, you, this month we provide you with the latest batch of sexy beauties who are desiring, nay, begging you to ravish them. And if you ever get bored with them, no worries! There's another batch for you next month!

As with many fantasies, there's nothing healthy or, for that matter, realistic about this. A person who lived this life would almost certainly get jaded, something that happened to Hugh himself if you believe the reports. A society based around this would collapse fairly quickly. A life with no consequences is also a life without responsibilities. It is an empty, if temporarily pleasurable, nothing. "God, Family, Country" may be clichéd and, these days, frowned upon by the "elites," but that philosophy has real meaning. The Playboy lifestyle is pointless, leaving a man with a disease riddled body and no future who for all his intellectualism cannot fathom where it all went wrong and, perhaps at this point, cannot be bothered to care.

In that light, a transwoman Playmate makes perfect sense. The Playmate cannot have children. Children were never part of the fantasy. For that matter, a wife was never part of the fantasy. The woman herself is besides the point! A Playmate is merely a pretty object to have sex or, in most cases, to masturbate to "classily done" photos, and then to be discarded when suited. When base pleasures dressed up in high-class clothes are the goal, then does it really matter if the "woman" is actually a man, or a doll, or a robot, or a hologram? And, who knows? Maybe this novelty will jar the ennui that has become your Playboy life.

Meh, probably not. We'll have a new batch for you next month. That will make it all better.

Sam L. said...

Cooper done shot and killed PLAYBOY. Put it out of its misery.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

n.n said...

Homosexual, bisexual, transvestite, or crossover (i.e. neo-female)?

Don't they already feature female transgender/homosexuals?

Or perhaps a tomboy with strong masculine predilections?

The Godfather said...

Bob Boyd, 9:18 am, for the win!

walter said...

Tcrosse,
It's called Ghost Dick.

tcrosse said...

It's called Ghost Dick.

What a great Hollowe'en costume idea !

walter said...

Ghost Dick

walter said...

Blogger roadgeek said...
I just don't see how this works.
--
I'm assuming this is post-op.
They're getting pretty good at this shit.
But "she" definitely can't be accused of having small hands.
That's a tough thing, surgically.
I remember being on a video shoot with a teacher who looked a bit like Marilyn Manson in more standard drag.
Kinda put it out of my mind until we took a break for snacks and this huge hand pawed into a container of..mixed nuts.

walter said...

Cooper:
"Every woman's beauty deserves to be celebrated," the 26-year old said.

"No-one deserves to be a woman more than those (trans women) who routinely suffer abuse and are treated like they're less than nothing."
--
Weird. Either full of shit or paving the way for the uglyfold.

Clyde said...

Shark, jumped.

Clyde said...

I mean, seriously! There are hundreds of millions of women that guys would like to see naked, and they pick someone who isn't a woman at all. That XY chromosome is still there.

Bilwick said...

Yum, yum--gimme some!

But seriously . . . I'm old enough to remember PLAYBOY in the Sixties and Seventies, when, to me, the Playmates were the best. They really were like The Girl Next Door, if the girl next door happened to be hot. About the time Hefner moved his operations from Chicago to Hollywood, it went from the Girl Next Door to the Starlet Next Door, and then the Hef Girl Friend Next Door and the Hooker/Stripper Next Door. It was about the time of these last two phases that I got bored and stopped looking.

Todd said...

One has to wonder (though I will NOT look when the pictures come out as I don't care THAT much), will they use the most absolutely HOTTEST guy they can find for the shoot? I mean I expect at a minimum, a full shave (can't have 5 o'clock shadow poking through the makeup) but will it be a super duper hot GUY or just a run of the mill, tranny-show tranny guy?

Or will they maybe wait until the NEXT issue and then let everyone know that the girl in last month's issue was actually a tranny? You know, jokes on you, you wacked off to a tranny! That is SO gay! The possibilities are endless.

Lighten up already! If you are going to kill a major brand, might as well have fun, amiright?

tcrosse said...

It won't matter to those who read it for the articles.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Poor taste -- that quip about his dad.

Anyway, the only thing that matters is, does this playmate have a dick?

Is it pictured?

A femme enough chick with a dick might be intriguing. But you're probably just better off with a biological female with a nicely sculpted (when aroused) clit.

I'm always weirded out by how many women have clits that are barely the size of the wrong end of a thumb tack. They seem to be the majority, in my experience, but I wonder if I should wish they weren't.

My thoughts on this matter go slightly deeper and broader than the female perspective on male nipples, apparently...

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

A clit shouldn't look like a mini-dick, mind you. It should just be longish but narrow. But not free-floating like on those freaky interwebs pictures.

todd galle said...

The last such magazine I purchased was one with Katarina Witt, the professional skater in it. Can't remember how long ago that was. My wife is a hardcore professional / olympic figure skating watcher, and I openly ogled Witt because she actually had a figure. When the issue came out, my better half insisted I buy it, for research purposes.

untravelledworld said...

Playboy is apparently planning on following the same path as the NFL, only it is taking the fast track. I predict their subscribership will drop precipitously. Over under on months to bankruptcy?

walter said...

The models have been taking knees for a long time.