Rant #1,771: Nudie In Disguise

Well, maybe it isn't the end of the world as we know it after all.

Reports are that ailing Hugh Hefner, 90, the scion of the Playboy empire, has stepped down as the magazine's chief creative officer and has been succeeded by his 25 year old son Cooper.

Months back, when Playboy decided that it would rid its pages of nudity, Cooper was seemingly the lone voice of reason, chiming that the charm of the magazine was just that--nudity--and he vowed to fight it tooth and nail.

And with Cooper rising in the ranks of the publication, is it only time before nudes return to the magazine?

When nudes were pulled from the magazine, it allowed the floundering publication to pursue advertising options it never could from companies that would never allow its advertising to grace any publication with nude photos of women.

It became more of what they used to call a "laddie magazine," more leering than anything else, and that turned off a lot of people. It kind of made Playboy innocuous, and just another magazine on the shelf for readers used to seeing beautiful women in the altogether.

But even with the nudes, it had kind of fallen into that chasm, what with rampant nudity and pornography easily obtainable on the Internet.

Unlike previous generations, the millennial's first experience with sexuality probably didn't involve Playboy, but the Internet, stumbling onto something that they could giggle at much like previous generations would get a gander at a nude woman in Playboy and be introduced to the world of the opposite sex for the first time.

With Cooper's pending ascent up the ladder, several executives have resigned, seeing the writing on the wall that the magazine they tried to change is eventually going to go back to its old ways.

Even the web page--which with its redesign to a more PG-centric content, boosted traffic more than 200 percent--is also set for a change once Cooper gets to the point where he can move the magazine back to being R rated.

Although spokesmen for the publication say that there is no truth to the rumors, Cooper appears to have his father's chutzpah, and the writing is on the wall: Playboy will probably return to nudes during the next two years or so.

Ironically, Playboy is not non-nude around the world. Certain Playboy publications in specific countries, including Mexico, never went non-nude, and its Playboy TV pay television channel not only hasn't gone non-nude, it is even more virulently sexual than the magazine ever was, showing everything but 24 hours a day.

So nudity is still part of Playboy, and not only doesn't appear to be going away, but it never really left, depending on what part of the empire you are talking about.

But now, the mainstay, the U.S. publication of the magazine, might just be swaying back to what it once was. Whether that will help keep it afloat in the ever chaotic world of magazines is anyone's guess, but the period that Playboy didn't show nudes might end up being merely a footnote in the publication's incredible history.

And with dad ailing, Cooper might just be the guy to do it. Let's see what happens.