Special Favors: Playboy Rights the 2-D Woman

Back in early October, we shared our thoughts on Marge Simpson's appearance on the cover of this month's Playboy Magazine.

The November issue hit newsstands October 16th, and it may very well become a collector's item: after all, Playboy's featured Jerry Seinfeld on its October cover back in 1993, but never before a cartoon character or illustrated woman. We doubt too many of Playboy's readers will be playing with 'their little guy' as Marge likes to say. But we do think it's likely November will long be remembered as the month when yet another glass ceiling was broken.

Marge's Playboy spread will certainly be doing no favors for the magazine's subscribers, who are on average 35-year-old males, although subscription copies of Playboy will be more cautious and feature a traditional 3-D woman instead of Homer's wife on their cover.

Playboy hopes not to loose their standing readers by featuring Marge in all her implied nude beauty, but to attract new readers, primarily Gen Y males in their twenties. Frankly, they need it: Playboy's readership has fell from 3.15 to 2.6 million in 2006, and has been declining since. With Marge on the cover, Playboy's clever concoction of pop culture marketing has insured a broader reach for their struggling magazine -- even convincing 7-11 to stock the Marge issue in all of their 1,200 corporate owned convenience stores nationwide.

As previously blogged, magazines are only looking at the short-term where their survival is concerned, and Playboy's new marketplace is itself only a temporary fix. In the broader scope of Popular Culture, Marge's centerfold may not do much for Playboy's continued circulation, but her time astride the staples has done much for the future of the women's movement. Make that, the animated women's movement.

Illustrated or 2-D females have rights, the same as their flesh-and-blood sisters in the three-dimensional world, and like 'real' women, face similar restrictions, stereotypes, and even fewer opportunities than their male counterparts. Given our comic boom sensibilities, abbracadabbling's very aware of these issues, but to a political 3-D public, the struggles of animated women are mostly invisible.

The rights of illustrated women are, in fact, hot topics of ongoing discussion about a very sore subject within the comics industry. Comics is a male-dominated business, and I'm not complaining that it is. But I can certainly see - and even agree with - Gail Simone and political comics groups like Women in Refrigerators: more often than not, it's not healthy being a female character in comics.

Marge Simpson has made significant strides to change all that for the better this month. November's issue stands to become a collector's item, joining the ranks of other Playboy milestones like their Marilyn Monroe edition and their 1971 issue which featured Playboy's first black female cover girl, whose front-cover pose and hairdo is identical to Marge's own.

That comparison alone indicated that a big step has been taken this month. Marge has clearly opened doors with her presence in America's most popular gentlemen's magazine, and should Playboy's strategy prove successful, the days of their needing models like Tiffany Fallon to dress as Wonder Woman are over. Now, they'll get the real Wonder Woman.

The number of animated persons on the covers of adult and mainstream magazines is sure to rise like never before. And we'll all be the richer for it.

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The November issue of Playboy must be selling flying off shelves like their model's panties, dabblers. And if the sales figures are speaking, it's clear to us the magazine's been listening. An anonymous abbracadabbler grabbed these photos for us while attending last night's Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion.

Still, we're a little concerned - in more ways than one. Are you? Will Marge's success just be the tip of Playboy's iceberg, or do you think they've gone off track with a once-good idea? Take a quick trip to our Back Issues department and let us know!!

Special thanks to our informant, Holy Taco!

No Favors: Marge Does Playboy Magazine

If I wasn't on sabbatical in Springfield, I might've overlooked this completely. Playboy Magazine continues to chart unexplored territory next month, when their November 2009 newsstand issue will feature none other than Springfield's third-most famous citizen, Marge Simpson.

According to one Playboy spokeswoman I heard, Marge's three-page inside spread is, "sexy with implied nudity."

Of course, implied nudity isn't anything new for any member of The Simpsons. Poor Bart became a sex object when he had his junk exposed in 2007's The Simpsons Movie, and any teenage boy with internet access could download enough Simpsons porn to fill a portable hard drive.

In truth, Marge's Playboy debut was inevitable. The Simpsons have enjoyed phenomenal popularity and terrifically wide audience appeal since they burst onto the screen in 1989, and they've pitched almost every product imaginable ever since. I won't say that I saw sex as being next on their list, but I'm not shocked to learn it is.

Magazines, like the monthly comic books I so love, have been hurting for a long time, with annual sales declining at at an average rate of twenty-percent. Whether victims of the internet's timely gratification or of the current recession's effect on discretionary spending, periodicals, as evidenced by last month's cancellation of Gourmet Magazine, grow ever closer to becoming consumerables of a bygone age.

Yet while comics have gone to great lengths to improve the quality of their monthly products, many magazines - from Newsweek to now Playboy -- have seemingly abandoned quality (and dare I say, respectability) for sensationalism.

Granted, sensationalism and short term gain may be reasonable for magazines like Playboy where the long haul may be questionable at best. Still, one would least think that Hugh Hefner and company, by forgoing the long term, might take a better look at the market they do have.

Sales are declining for monthly magazines as well as comics for many reasons, yet chief among them is that both share the same consumer demographic -- namely, white 35-year old males. By forgoing flesh-and-blood females for ladies of the illustrated kind, Playboy's sent Marge Simpson to compete in an arena where she's hopelessly outclassed. No matter how shrewd a decision her centerfold may seem, Springfield's matriarch can't hold a candle to DC Comic's Power Girl or Aspen Entertainment's Executive Assistant Iris. In a tight economy, both comics offer twenty-two pages of glossy monkey-punching material, and for far less money.

Of course, Playboy's betting on Marge to attract new readers -- particularly teenage and twenty-something males -- a vast demographic with with largely disposable income. Marge may deliver Playboy the sales figures its seeking, but only at the cost of what traditionally has kept the magazine afloat.

And frankly, that's sex. Her implied November nudity not-withstanding, Marge has never been a sexy lady, at least not the kind of sexy lady that guys generally drop ten bucks on Playboy to see. For a magazine that once defined what sexy is, the message Playboy's sending the new, younger readers it hopes to attract is a very skewed one indeed.

Sex obviously still sells. But Hugh Hefner and his magazine seem to have lost sight of what's sexy in America today. If anything signals an end to Playboy, it's exactly this.

Is November's Playboy on your shopping list? Or are you going to spend Saturday night at home with a beer and the latest issue of Power Girl? Stop by our Back Issues and let us know!