The new, nude-less Playboy wants to attract millennials

"If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you," Hugh Hefner wrote in the first issue in 1953. Sixty-two years later, Playboy is ditching the nudes and aiming younger - the new target is 30-year-olds, the median age of Playboy's Web readers. Which prompts the question: Who is the 30-year-old Playboy reader?

I'm not privy to internal Playboy data on its readers, but let's think about millennials for a minute. First off, they probably don't go to magazines to see naked women. There's porn for that - and it's everywhere. They're also likely to be seeing nude pictures of the real-live women in their lives. According to a study presented at the American Psychological Association this summer, eight out of 10 respondents in an online survey said they'd sexted in the past year.

Second, today's millennial reader might not identify with or idolize Hugh Hefner; he might not lust after a Playboy bunny or after women at all. A third of millennials say they're less than 100 percent straight. Hefner, on the other hand, has a very traditional, masculine persona.

Playboy created an image of the man who was available for casual sex and women who were available for anything - and everyone is beautiful, white, thin and heterosexual, says Deborah C. Stearns, a professor of psychology and human sexuality at Montgomery College. "In terms of our culture, would that be a message that would be appealing (today)?" Stearns asks.

Images of women who are up for anything, no questions asked, might not turn on the sex-positive 30-year-old who's used to affirmatively getting consent before getting physical. Despite the media's portrayals of millennials sleeping with anyone and everyone, they're projected to have fewer sexual partners than Gen X'ers or Baby Boomers.

When I spoke with Stearns about her students' views about pornography (they're a little younger than our imaginary 30-year-old), she noted that she sees a more open view of what masculinity is, plus more awareness of different gender and sexual identities. "But we're still dragging some of the old baggage of sexual ambivalence and discomfort," she added.

"The students I'm teaching now certainly can understand that porn can have some downsides, but they're more comfortable with the idea that porn will exist," Stearns said. "I notice a change in the tone of the classroom; I think they're more blasé about pornography."

Naked images might be less shocking to today's ideal thirty-something Playboy reader. The magazine's website has been experimenting with the clothed Bunnies for a while now, and Web traffic has quadrupled.

Now if readers were to see photos of beautiful, scantily clad women in the magazine, without the aid of airbrushing, that would be provocative.