title: “On The Prowl” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Cory May”
Domestic pressures, however, are pushing Playboy to try again with a revived Mexico edition due out this fall. Returning to the biggest Spanish-speaking market in the world is part of the struggling company’s strategy to expand its global reach, at a time when its iconic status in the United States is waning. U.S. circulation of Playboy has fallen from 8 million in the 1970s to 3.2 million today. The U.S. edition rarely turns a profit and faces increasing competition from two places: pornography on the Internet and magazines such as Maxim, whose lascivious articles attract younger readers without scaring off advertisers, since the models wear just enough fabric to be considered clothed. In recent years, Hefner has faced a stark choice: either take the magazine in a new direction, or to new markets where the word “playboy” still conjures up a smooth gent, not a lecherous buffoon.
Playboy is still one of the most recognized brand names in the world. Founded in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, Playboy created the first socially acceptable form of pornography by placing naked women between articles about politics, technology and the good things in life. The Hefner ideal of the Playboy patron as gentleman connoisseur enjoyed a brief, revolutionary life in the American cultural mainstream. But that image has been fading for years. The last of the Playboy clubs closed in 1986, and Hefner began looking for new sources of profit. Hard-core pay-TV channels now account for more than a third of Playboy revenues. But so concerned is Hefner about the old image that Playboy never links its name to these explicit-porn networks.
The foreign editions are becoming increasingly important to the Hefner empire, if only for their potential. They represent low-cost, high-profit businesses for Playboy; local publishers assume the risk in exchange for the right to use material from the U.S. edition, for which Playboy gets a cut. The first editions opened in the mid-1970s in the large and sexually liberated markets of Brazil and Germany, and have since spread to a total of 18 nations. “The [Playboy] image probably has more cachet overseas than it does in the United States,” says Dennis McAlpine, an entertainment-industry analyst. “You could probably even open Playboy clubs in some places.”
Over the years Playboy has learned the limits of its international appeal. With a total foreign circulation of 1.85 million, overseas editions account for less than 2 percent of Playboy revenues, because local publishers take the bulk of the proceeds. The company’s fastest growth is in the small markets of Eastern Europe, where during the cold war Playboy served as a symbol of American-style freedom. Half of the foreign editions are now published in the region, and Playboy has its highest sales per capita in Slovenia and Bulgaria (graphic).
For its part, Mexico illustrates the variety of hang-ups that Playboy confronts in Latin America. It might seem the perfect country for a magazine targeted to the husband with a bachelor fantasy, the cologne-wearing, sports-car-driving man of respect. But Playboy may be both too risque and too mild for a land of machismo and RomanCatholicism: too risque to leave around the house, but too mild to be worth the trouble of hiding.
In the 1960s, as free love reigned in the United States, Mexican authorities placed a bronze fig leaf below the waist of “La Diana,” a nude statue of the arrow-shooting goddess, in downtown Mexico City. When Playboy was first published in Mexico, in 1976, the government decided the name was too racy and forced the editors to call it Caballero, or Gentleman. In the last decade sentiments have changed. Almost-naked underwear models now loom from billboards. Yet nudity and sexuality are still sensitive subjects. Some afternoon newspapers feature nude pinups, but they are mostly foreign women, as are many of the table dancers in the downtown Mexico City strip clubs.
Playboy hopes to give pornography a better image. “What we are looking for is a very glamorous, high-class audience,” says Luis Sayrols, the 35-year-old publisher. The question is, are those men looking for Playboy? The old edition never attracted more than 5,000 subscribers, which its former top executive Andres Sanchez attributes to two fears: that postal workers would steal the magazine and that wives would find it. Total sales peaked in 1993 at 80,000 copies a month, but dwindled to 20,000 after the devastating economic crash of 1995. The magazine never recovered, partly because of the increasing availability of cheaper hard-core pornography, says Sanchez. “People here weren’t reading the articles,” he says. Already worried that the Mexican publishers were cutting corners and targeting a lower-class audience, Playboy officials finally canceled the license when the Mexican publisher attempted to sell the magazine in Spanish-speaking markets in the southwestern United States.
The new Mexican bosses argue that the magazine failed the first time simply because it did not live up to Playboy’s standards. They promise a more sophisticated magazine and have lined up top-name writers and cartoonists for the inaugural issue. Sayrols the publisher seems unworried that Mexican women–or at least the wholesome and famous ones he wants–will refuse to shed their clothes. Posing “is a way of opening your way of thinking,” he says. “I see it as a way of expressing yourself.” He hopes to encourage that view with $5,000 payments to women selected as centerfolds.
But money was never the trouble before in getting Mexican women to pose. The problem is that Mexico still has never undergone an American-style sexual revolution, one in which shedding your clothes could be seen as empowering. Though sexual mores have changed dramatically, they are still heavily tempered by Catholic guilt and upper-class Puritanism, which leave little room for the idea of classy nudity. Even a 1950s vision of the libertine Playboy may be too much for Mexico. And that’s bad news for the company’s global ambitions. For an operator like Hefner, it’s not enough to be a hot read in Slovenia.
