June 10, 2009
Playboy magazine said today that its most recent issue, “Girls of Virginia Commonwealth University,” will go down as one of its poorest sellers ever for the men’s entertainment giant and marks a surefire return to photographs of the publication’s more traditional playmates.
Company Chairwoman and CEO Christie Hefner said external market research suggested that more readers were looking for “a multi-pierced, heavily-tattooed, artsy type of hipster chick” in the 56-year-old men’s magazine – a far cry from the publication’s more well-known curvy, leggy, and rather buxom-enhanced women.
“In hindsight, ‘Girls of VCU’ probably wasn’t the best move for us after such disappointing returns from ‘Girls of Regal Cinemas,’ ‘Girls of the DMV,’ and our ‘Babes of Waffle House’ New Year’s cover,” Hefner said, noting the publication incorrectly believed that the “shy, quiet, art-school student who is actually really pretty but is just not the Southern California-looking-Playboy-kind-of-girl” would go over well with readers. “And what better school than VCU in order to find that?”
The photographs in the VCU issue included a centerfold of four thin, attractive vegans, each of whom had maybe not washed her hair in three weeks and had GPAs of 3.0 or higher; a 22-year-old with a silver chain from nose to ear reading a book on advanced sculpture; and at least two pages of women wearing overly-torn tight black jeans and ripped vintage T-shirts that featured logos of obscure pop culture references, such as Crystal Pepsi or fictional band Jesse and the Rippers.
With the most recent issue leaving many readers disappointed, many fans claim that Playboy’s move to less-traditional playmates is starting to hurt the brand’s reputation.
”When I tore open the plastic on ‘Food Network’s Sauciest Stars’ last September I was kind of excited,” said 28-year-old Richmond software salesman Mike Dusett. “That Giada Di Laurentiis chick is pretty hot, and Sandra Lee has that soccer mom thing going. But when I found the Barefoot Contessa soaping down Paula Dean in the shower, I knew Playboy had officially jumped the shark.”
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