Picture taken on July 10, 2010 in Lisbon, shows a man holding the Portuguese Playboy Magazine issue number 16. (AFP File Photo)
Washington: Playboy will stop publishing the photographs of the fully nude women so closely associated with it, declaring such pictures have become "passe" in the Internet age where free pornography is readily available.
The decision came after a top editor of the adult magazine met with its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion last month, according to chief executive Scott Flanders.
Starting in March, Playboy's revamped print edition will still include photographs of women in provocative poses.
They just won't be nude anymore, Flanders told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday.
"You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture," he said.
It's a remarkable move for a magazine that launched in 1953 with a sultry Marilyn Monroe on its cover, breaking the taboo of showing women au naturel.
But with pornographic images now so readily available online, and accessible via a variety of connected devices, Playboy is selling less and less copies.
The magazine's circulation decreased from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 now, the Times said, citing Alliance for Audited Media figures. And at its peak, it sold more than seven million copies, in November 1972.
In order to be allowed on now-ubiquitous social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that drive Internet traffic, Playboy has already made some content safer, according to Flanders.
After its website went nude-free in August 2014, the average reader age fell from 47 to just above 30, and Internet traffic soared from four million to 16 million unique visitors per month, executives told the Times.
For its latest redesign, the magazine sought to answer the question: "if you take nudity out, what's left?" he explained.
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