Playboy Says It Will No Longer Publish Nude Photos

Damian Dovarganes / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Playboy will no longer publish photos of nude women in its magazine as part of a redesign that aims to rebuild an audience that has been shrinking for decades, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The magazine will continue to feature a Playmate of the Month in a provocative, but "PG-13" pose, The Times reported. The redesign is part of an effort to make Playboy more modern: Safer for work content, including a sex column, investigative journalism, and art for young professional men who have grown up getting their porn online for free, the company's leaders told The Times.

Last year, Playboy relaunched its website without nudity — a move the company said led to a 250% spiked in traffic.

"It’s not provocative to see nudity. In fact, it can actually limit our audience,” Playboy Enterprises CEO Scott Flanders told NBC earlier this year.

Alastair Grant / Associated Press

Cory Jones, the executive who oversaw the changes to the website, was put in charge of Playboy's content across its digital platforms, as well as the magazine in July. Founder Hugh Hefner remains the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Hefner founded Playboy in 1953, publishing nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in its first issue. Since then, the magazine has touted itself as a "tastemaker, an arbiter of style, and a vanguard for political, sexual and economic freedom."

In 1972, the magazine saw its highest circulation at more than 7 million. Those numbers dropped with the spread of the internet as well as other magazine competitors, many of which are now out of business.

At the end of 2014, Playboy's circulation was just over 1 million, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

SOURCE: BuzzFeed