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Playboy has finally come to its sense. And, in response, millions of men around the world will soon be able to pick up a copy of this magazine and come to completio… never mind.  Over a year since the publication made the shocking and confusing decision to go nudity-free , Chief Creative Officer Cooper Hefner has confessed this was a really dumb decision. And he’s officially reversed it. In October of 2015, Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders told The New York Times that it simply seemed silly for the magazine to keep focusing on boobs, butts and vaginas. Hence the significant “redesign” the publication chose to move forward with. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,” Flanders said at the time. “And so it’s just passe at this juncture.” We mean… sure. This is clearly true. You’re literally one click away from Kim Kardashian nude photos. But you’re Playboy! If you’re going to get rid of naked centerfolds, why even exist? That’s the conclusion Hefner, the 25-year old son of founder Hugh Hefner, finally acknowledged on Monday. He released the cover photo for the March/April issue and said it will, indeed, feature Playmate Elizabeth Elam in her birthday suit. “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,” the younger Hefner wrote on Twitter in announcing this move. He added: “Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem. Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are.” The upcoming issue will depict Elam in all her nude glory, along with an interview with Scarlett Johansson… a profile of CNN political commentator Van Jones … and a piece on the hip-hop outfit Run the Jewels. (So that’s what you can tell people as confirmation when you claim you read Playboy “for the articles.”) In December of 2015, Pamela Anderson covered what was believed at the time to be the final issue of Playboy with nudity. “I got a call from [Hugh Hefner’s] attorney who said, ‘We don’t want anybody else,” Anderson told Entertainment Tonight of the honor. “There’s nobody else, could you do the last cover of Playboy?'” Playboy’s first issue without naked actresses or models came out in February 2016, concliding a more than six-decade run of glossy centerfolds featuring young women baring EVERYthing. The publication still featured “sexy, seductive pictorials of the world’s most beautiful women, including its iconic Playmates,” as Playboy put it at the time. But it was ridiculed pretty hard for the change of focus. “Old Playboy was a lifestyle bible,” BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen jabbed. “Current Playboy is a caricature of itself. Pretty much, right? But give Hefner credit for coming to this conclusion and admitting that he was mistaken. In a post on the Playboy website, Hefner outlined a “new Playboy philosophy,” in which he said  the decision to embrace the naked form again was partly rooted in the country’s political and cultural climate. He ticked off a list of “collective accomplishments” from the past few years, such as: The election of the first “mixed-race” President (his term). A Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Marijuana legalization in some places. The nomination of a woman by a major political party. “One thing is clear that both my dad and I understand at its simplest form, and that is what Playboy and the United States strive to represent in their greatest forms: freedom,” Hefner wrote. Yeah. You may be overthinking this one, Cooper. Men purchased Playboy because they love boobs. Take away the boobs and they will stop buying it. Bring back the boobs and you’ll be successful again. It doesn’t exactly matter who’s President or what the Supreme Court has or has not said.

Original post:
Playboy Confirms Return to Nudity, Men Everywhere Rejoice