Playboy’s new cover: Hef may turn in his grave

If it was possible to have a nightmare in the spirit dimension, late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner would have woken up in a cold sweat this month.

While October cover star and influencer Bretman Rock is not the first man to feature on the cover of the iconic men’s magazine, he’s the first to appear in drag and topless in a traditional bunny suit.

Previously, Hugh himself and rapper Bad Bunny appeared on the Playboy front page, but in decidedly more traditional men’s roles and garb.

The move set Twitter alight as many fans of the magazine capped out comments in annoyance.

“How to kill a brand in nine seconds,” said one miserable tweeter. Rock camps out on the cover of Playboy’s digital edition in a pair of swanky heels, a bunny outfit and is framed by the brand that made Pamela Anderson famous and became a bucket-list item for many actresses and supermodels, including Elle McPherson, Cindy Crawford and more recently Kim Kardashian, among others.

Playboy has become known over the years to challenge convention, legitimise controversy and, of course, being blatantly sexual in a “gentlemanly manner”.

This is not the first time that the publication made the headlines though. Six years ago, it announced that it was ditching north and south nudity, effectively relegating the title to laddish titles like FHM and Loaded.

A year later, the publishers admitted their mistake and returned to glorious nakedness in all directions of the compass. But one of the magazine’s mainstays has been its ability to attract exceptional writers.

Legendary penmen Hunter S Thompson, PJ O’Rourke. Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming all count among its contributors. Playboy’s magic formula of boob and brains, of pushing moral and literary boundaries, is what birthed and nurtured its iconic status.

But times have changed, a bit. After selling around 5.6 million copies of its printed edition in the 1970s, circulation dropped to 700,000 in 2020, reports said.

At the time of erasing nudity from its pages in 2016, Playboy’s publishers believed it didn’t matter given the instant access to naughty stuff that the internet presented.

Looking at any Hollywood red carpet or Kardashian these days, or Jenner or Gigi Hadid’s timeline on Instagram, nearly everyone’s showing more skin online than any magazine could keep up with. What the suits at Playboy Mansion should have realised is that people bought into the publication not just for the curves, but the content.

By placing an openly gay man in bunny drag on the cover, Playboy again makes a strong statement about society and how we have shape-shifted in a relatively short time, into a world of acceptance, tolerance and inclusion.

It’s an important social landmark, where a large brand takes a position on today’s issues and  makes it real in a space where the touchpoint is our basic instinct. Sexuality. It was brave, bold and counterintuitive commercially.

It was also a very clever and calculated publicity stunt. Glancing at online reactions to the move, Playboy got its publicity but it seems many global citizens didn’t get its point.