(continued)

By the time I joined the operation in 2005, Playgirl issues ran about 96 pages with hardly any ads. Those it did have were mainly house ads for other Playgirl enterprises, like Playgirl TV, or a few for DVDs and phone sex services that looked suspiciously gay, probably because of the pictured gay men fellating each other. (I'm exaggerating, but only a little.) The staff was made up of just four people (two art, two editorial) and 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, and what are known as the "young girl mags": Live Young Girls, Purely 18, and Finally Legal (mind you, not to be confused with Larry Flynt's Barely Legal—totally different).

So what happened to Playgirl? Shouldn't it be a no-brainer to have a major nudie magazine featuring photography of men, with sex and lifestyle content aimed at women?

In 1986, Playgirl's original publisher sold the title, and Drake Media (later to become Crescent, which became Blue Horizon) moved it to New York. I'm speculating, but this might have marked the official beginning of the struggles. One year later came the notorious experimental year without willies. (Well, that beef ban lasted less than a year, as the reader outcry was so strong.) At first, Playgirl had some known names pose nude or seminude. In the premiere issue, Lyle Waggoner (from Wonder Wo-maaaan!) posed, as later did Sam Jones (star of 10 and Flash Gordon!), Peter Lupus, Tommy Chong, and Bubba Smith. But as the magazine aged, celebrities willing to drop trou became less and less common. The perception that dogged Playgirl to the end began to take form: Male nudity? Isn't that, like, gay?

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.