Item: 2018. The Miss America Pageant puts Gretchen Carlson, former Fox blonde turned #MeToo icon, in charge. She says it is no longer a beauty pageant. Result: the end of Miss America.
Item: 2021. Victoria’s Secret brings in Megan Rapinoe, vocal butch lesbian athlete and LGBTQ activist to rebrand the female sex fantasy company. Result: Uh, no. It quickly returned to its core values after a period of confusion, sales and turnovers…which included Megan.
Item: 2023. Budweiser brings on feminist marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid who decided America’s top-selling beer needed to be pitched to a younger market, so she made male cross-dressing self-identified female Dylan Mulvaney the symbol of Bud Light in an ad campaign, because there’s nothing that appeals to middle-aged, bear-drinking football fans like “chicks with dicks.”
I just learned that “Playboy’s” new editor is gay in “I’ll make Playboy playful again, says its new gay editor/Phillip Picardi,” Quote:
“He wants to “destigmatise male sexuality”, he says, and “help men to build a healthier relationship” with the women in their lives. “I’m hoping we can be a space for men who feel caught between needing to be manosphere-adjacent and needing to be the performative liberal male,” he says…. “We should promote the idea that we can be excited about sex and we can be excited about each other and excited about touching each other,” he says with a cheeky grin.”
To me, that model on the current Playboy cover is androgynous, scuzzy, and reminiscent of what Hustler thought was sexy. But I am not a marketing target for Playboy, (or Hustler) and never was.
“Playboy” is already the walking dead, but still, the Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is germane here, as is the principle that when an institution, tradition or product no longer has a place in the culture, you can’t save it by destroying its identity and integrity by pretending that it’s something else. Let these things die with dignity, or at least go down fighting.
Ethics Alarms 
You know of course, that Cara Delevingne (once a favorite and famous model for Karl Lagerfeld) came out a while back as lesbian? Sent from my iPhoneOn Aug 16, 2026,
My guess: the new editor wants to turn Playboy into a gay and lesbian magazine.
Wow!
Yeah …. I’ve got nothin’.
First, I am surprised that Playboy still exists. Many magazines that targeted a male clientele with nude pictures of women have not survived the internet era.
I see the (re)branding effort of Playboy as a marketing issue and not as an ethics issue. The only criteria against which this (re)branding needs to measured is how the market reacts. My gut feeling is that it will fail; but at least they kept trying to keep the company alive. In this it is similar to the failed Jaguar rebranding; another company that was already basically dead during the time of the rebranding.
I do not see Playboy ever land an interview with a Presidential nominee again, as with Jimmy Carter in 1976. Playboy had good interviews and articles, providing a good excuse to buy a Playboy magazine. Playboy was also morally relevant in promoting different attitudes regarding sexuality, abortion, and women’s rights to work and equal pay. Playboy’s relation with feminism was complicated, as the “objectification of women’s bodies” was seen as problematic.
But maybe it is still to early to write an obituary for Playboy.
If Playboy isn’t Playboy, then it’s not Playboy. I don’t miss it, but appointing a gay editor is cynical and disrespectful of the brand.
Yes, I was thinking of Jaguar as I wrote the piece.
If Playboy isn’t Playboy, then it’s not Playboy.
Maybe that is precisely the point. Sometimes a brand needs a new identity as the old one has gone stale. Jaguar is a case in point. The old brand was as good as dead. It reeked of old money, steeple chases and fox hunts, tweed jackets, centuries old manors, and Tories. Not an attractive and survivable brand. Jaguar had quality problems too, and was not British owned anymore. So I see the failed Jaguar campaign as a way to ditch the old brand, fire the old customers, and save the company. Jaguar wanted to attract a new customer base, namely hip urban professionals with liberal values and money to spend on luxury products, and their advertising campaign was a Hail Mary pass. It did not work as the factories were already closed.
Cadillac in 2002 is an example of a successful rebranding. Before that year Cadillac was America’s luxury brand. There was a big problem though as the average buyer was past 65, and climbing. The brand had gone stale, stodgy, and very conservative. The flagship model was the Cadillac Fleetwood, a car with an image that reeks of oak-paneled boardrooms and cigars. That was quite a long and slow shift since the ninety fifties, when the Cadillac had an image of youthful exuberance, and young men wanted to cruise and pick up their dates with an pink Cadillac with the rooftop down.
So Cadillac decided to target a much younger clientele, that came to age in the seventies and listened to music like Led Zeppelin. They ditched the old models and brand image, fired the old customers. and introduced the CTS and Escalade. It worked like a charm, sales went up, and the brand was saved.
Playboy cannot stay the old Playboy either if it wants to survive. In 1960 and 1970 Playboy was cool and liberal. Many (most?) men wanted to be Hugh Hefner, who was the coolest kid in town. But Playboy today is associated with Hug Hefner in the last decade of his life, a lecherous old geezer in dressed in silk pajamas who needed bottles of Viagra. He was made fun of by the Playboy models, and no man wants to be Hugh Hefner in his old age. There were allegations of sexual abuse by Hefner. He became a liability to the brand. In other words, Playboy has a brand problem, associated with lecherous old men, sexual abuse, and outdated attitudes towards sexuality and gender issues. Playboy was not cool anymore. Playboy also has gotten too tame; it was not pushing the envelope any more as in the sixties and the seventies.
“….appointing a gay editor is cynical and disrespectful of the brand.”
I am not so sure if this matters a lot. Gay men tend to gravitate to professions focused on beauty, such as the art world and fashion world which includes the (female) modeling world. Being gay does not mean that you cannot recognize female beauty. As an added advantage, a gay man is less likely to harass and sexual assault a model, saving the company/brand of a PR headache. All that matters is that he displays good taste in picking models; if he chooses plus size models, alt girls, transgenders etc. then the brand as we know it is dead.
After gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter (D-CA) stormed out of a CBS interview in 2025 Megyn Kelly opined on her dowdy appearance to one of her gay cast members that she should have more gay friends helping her with her style.
Playboy will only survive by a miracle. The sexual orientation of the editor is not going to matter much.
I have not seen an edition of PLAYBOY in any magazine section of any store that sells magazines, in decades. It died awhile ago!
I do miss GQ with its sartorial tips. Just recently i taught a young man that the last button on multibuttoned jackets must remain unbuttond, and that his socks needed to match his tie. These i learned from GQ, he was grateful for the instruction.
Ironically of course in my doderage I no long wear socks, ties or jackets.
In all honesty, Playboy does need to go the way of the Dodo. The only thing they ever did right was give Ray Bradbury a platform which eventually led us to the book Fahrenheit 451.