Who Reads Playboy?
Provocative and informative, Playboy is America’s best-selling men’s magazine. Playboy is read by more than 10.3 million people in the U.S. – of which two million are women. The magazine is primarily aimed at men in their twenties and thirties, but is read by men and women of all ages.
What You Can Expect in Each Issue:
Whatever goes on between a man’s ears is a convenient way to sum up the content of Playboy. Prominent among its features are the pictorials, which showcase women ranging from the girl next door to world-famous celebrities, but also includes sports, entertainment, politics, social trends, developments in the areas of sex and romance, short fiction and compelling articles on behalf of a wide variety of subjects.
- Pictorials: Featuring the world’s most beautiful women, as captured by some of the world’s most talented photographers.
- ManTrack: New cars, sporting equipment, technology, furniture, travel destinations and other consumer goods.
- After Hours: A bemused tour d’horizon of current culture.
- Forum: Opinion and argument about political and social developments, often focusing on issues of personal freedom and expression.
- The Playboy Advisor: A column in which readers’ questions about modern living, including love, sex, fashion, technology, etiquette and other topics are answered.
Each month, Playboy magazine offers the most engaging and eclectic mix of material in the general interest and men’s categories. The Playboy Interview, a monthly in-depth conversation with an important figure—recent subjects include Richard Branson, Alec Baldwin, Chuck Palahniuk, Tina Fey, Kanye West, Seth Rogen, Jay Z, Gov. Bill Richardson, Arianna Huffington, Kenny Chesney, Bill O’Reilly, Farheed Zakaria and Thomas L. Friedman—is the most authoritative body of interview-format work in the history of American journalism. A shorter, lighter interview called 20Q (recent subjects include Danica Patrick, Judd Apatow, Charles Barkley, Jack Black, Fergie, Scott Boras and Amy Smart) allows readers another chance to hear about a celebrity in the person’s own words.
Playboy delivers news-making and substantive journalism like "Death and Dishonor," the story of the brutal home-front murder of an Iraq War veteran that was the basis for the movie "In the Valley of Elah," “Our Battles Joined,” a search for the true circumstances behind the execution of an Afghani translator, which was turned into the HBO documentary “Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi,” and “The Strange Redemption of James Keene,” about a convicted drug dealer turned federal informant who infiltrates a prison for the criminally insane to befriend a serial killer—and which is also being made into a feature film. Reporting for Playboy also served as the basis for the fictionalized account of an U.S. bomb unit in Iraq for the film, “The Hurt Locker.” Other recent articles include a joint profile of comedians Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman, an series of provocative letters written by Norman Mailer during the course of his illustrious career, a multi-part memoir of the romantic escapades of brilliant noir novelist James Ellroy, photo-driven profiles of actors such as Justin Long, Ray Stevenson and the cast of “Mad Men,” a feature about Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lange, a profile of LAPD chief Bill Bratton, an expose of sexual repression in fundamentalist Iran, several essays about maintaining privacy in an era of dizzying technological and legal change, and a series of definitive articles on male sexual health.
Each issue also includes a piece of fiction, spotlighting the best of established and emerging talents. In 2008, for instance, Denis Johnson wrote a novel exclusively for serialization in the magazine called “Nobody Move,” the follow-up to his National Book Award winning “Tree of Smoke”; it was published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Playboy has also secured rights to an excerpt of a unpublished novel by Vladimir Nabokov which will appear in its December 2009 issue.
Past Issues:
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Contributors:
Playboy’s roster of contributors over the course of its history is second to none. It includes Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hunter S. Thompson, William F. Buckley Jr., Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Cheever, Arthur C. Clarke, George Plimpton, Ray Bradbury and Shel Silverstein. Active contributors include Gore Vidal, Stephen King, John Updike, T.C. Boyle, Jonathan Safran Foer, Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Dawkins, Jeff Greenfield, Denis Johnson, Jimmy Breslin, Christopher Buckley, Jane Smiley, Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Jim Harrison and Nadine Gordimer.
Magazine Layout
The magazine offers a pleasing balance of attractive photography, lively illustration, and well-designed text.
Comparisons to Similar Magazines:
Playboy informs its entire editorial product (articles, photographs, and illustrations) with intelligence, wit, and sophistication. They provide readers with a unique editorial mix, including lifestyle service information, entertainment, interviews, politics, advice, women, sports, news features, and short fiction.
Playboy is an American icon. Smart, edgy and a bit provocative, Playboy has been the leading men’s magazine for nearly the entirety of its 55 year existence, surpassing and outlasting all competitors and imitators.
Awards
Playboy has long been recognized for its design, art and writing, receiving more than 1,600 awards. Most recently, Playboy won eight design awards from Creativity, encompassing illustration, design and editorial photography. In 2007, Playboy was also nominated for a National Magazine Award for Fiction.
