(continued)

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. Women often need a little more context to fantasize—a story, a person, a mood. Without the right factors in place, seeing a picture of a giant dong can feel like getting flashed. 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, with wide-open beavers on every page (sans the whole "beaver" part).

That said, I disagree that only gay men would ever want to look at pictures of naked men. This was a half-baked conjecture I heard over and over when I met new people and the subject of my job came up. To me it came off as a careless denial of women's sexuality; it was equivalent to saying that women don't fantasize.

There's a rumor that pops up (as it were) every few months: [Fill-in-the-blank famous guy] was offered [fill in some crazy five-, six-, or seven-digit amount of money] to pose for Playgirl. This rumor is never true. In the '90s, among the "celebs" to pose nude were the semi-known, fully erect, and appropriately named Peter Steele of Type-O Negative and the weirdo guy from that band Jackyl. By the aught years, one of the only celebs to pose seminude was Keith Urban. It was a best-selling issue, indicating how well the magazine could sell if it were able to convince more celebs to strip down, but Urbs later said he regretted posing.

Another challenge for the staff was trying to cater to all tastes: to read their letters, to recognize that some want smiling hunks only, some like manscaping, some hate it, some loved tattooed models while others hated them, and one woman's cougar-bait is another woman's jailbait.

I've also wondered if there weren't some parallels between Playgirl's struggle to find its identity and readership and the developing lack of cohesiveness among feminists, as the ranks divided into second and third waves, and the waves subdivided with different opinions about sex, porn, and, well, fun, and perhaps a greater proportion of women don't identify as feminist.