Playboy Magazine has announced it will once again feature naked women.
The move follows a surprising and controversial announcement in 2015, that pledged to remove nudes from its pages from March 2016.
Now, exactly a year after the publication of its first issue sans nudes, Playboy has done a 180 and the naked ladies are back.
The Playboy Twitter account tweeted out the March 2017 cover, which features topless model Elizabeth Elamith with strategically-placed tagline “naked is normal”.
Cooper Hefner, the 25-year-old son of founder Hugh Hefner and Playboy’s chief creative officer, made the announcement on Monday.
“I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake,” Hefner, who took over as chief creative officer in October last year, tweeted.
“Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem. Today, we’re taking back and reclaiming who we are.”
Naked women have been a mainstay of the publication since it was first published in 1953.
But in October 2015, the publication made a song and dance about how nudes were “passé” because of the readily-available pornography online.
Many believed the move was an attempt to attract readers. Playboy’s circulation dropped from its peak 5.6 million in the 1970s to around 800,000 in 2015. Following the move last year figures dropped to below 700,000.
Next month’s issue will include some old franchises, including The Playboy Philosophy and Party Jokes, but will remove the tagline ‘Entertainment for Men’ from the cover.
“Playboy will always be a lifestyle brand focused on men’s interests, but as gender roles continue to evolve in society, so will we,” Hefner said in a statement.
Martin Daubney, journalist and former editor of Loaded Magazine, told The Huffington Post UK: “Playboy removing nudity a year ago was the most wrong-headed decision in all of publishing history. It was like Top Gear removing the cars. What’s the point? When brands are dying – which, make no mistake, is what is happening to Playboy here – they like to retreat to the comfort blanket of history. This is Playboy doing what it did before the internet...
“But with yet another relaunch, all I hear is the sound of deckchairs being rearranged on the Titanic, as the oblivious captain parties on the bridge. Like all great magazines, Playboy was a product of its time. And that time is surely over.”
He added: “By pandering to their critics and dropping nudity, Playboy made a magazine for people who’d never buy it anyway.”