Playboy seemed radical to adolescent boys raised in a more puritanical time, what Time magazine in 1967 called "a Midwestern Methodist's vision of sin." The airbrushed nudes have been upstaged by real live nudity on film, television and on the Internet. Pornography with all of its heavy breathing and obscene sexuality is so readily accessible that a Playboy centerfold today seems but a paper doll, literally child's play.
The readers of laddie magazines like "Maxim" and "FHM," guys between 18 and 34 - the market every advertiser lusts to cultivate - seek a more robust woman whose scanty lingerie joins mystery with lust. By comparison, Playboy seems muddled and middle-aged. Hip requires hips with boobs, as at a Hooter's restaurant.
Thirty years ago, Playboy sold 7 million copies a month. Today it sells less than half that. The magazine has suffered the consequences of the de-moralization of the culture that it set in motion. It has lots of competition.
Coinciding with that competition, however, is a revival of cultural conservatism that demands something better for the next generation. Playboy made male fantasies public and the public culture embraced those fantasies in real life. It vulgarized what most men and women in their deepest sentiments hold dear - an appreciation of intimacy through trust, the basis for every good relationship and every good marriage.
The sexual revolution delivered a sexual interaction on an arc that alternated at its extremes between heated abrasiveness and an impersonal remoteness, a rush of passion that quickly dissipates and disappoints. It turned courtship away from the patient pleasures of a gourmet meal with many courses and replaced it with a cheesy burger.
We've come a long way from the days when a glimpse of stocking was shocking (and delicious), but if Hugh Hefner wants to create a contemporary version of Playboy of the '60s and '70s, that's not a bad place to begin. Every generation needs a starting place for suggestive temptation and a way to enjoy the chase with dignity and excitement. Passion excites what the intelligence must direct. Can a magazine do that?