Reply With QuoteNot sure why you put this in P&R. OMG PLAYBOY PHOTOSHOPS THE MODELS isn't exactly news.
An auction at Christie's (NWS OBVIOUSLY) has the marked-up centerfold critiques by Playboy editors, with the specific Photoshop recommendations they make with respect to excessively pert nipples and stretch marks.
Not sure why you put this in P&R. OMG PLAYBOY PHOTOSHOPS THE MODELS isn't exactly news.
EE is leaking
Well I only read P&R for the articles so it makes sense to me.
Are there really men out there who would fail to experience arousal because they noticed a woman's stretchmarks?
Do any of the comments complain about the model having sharp knees?
No, I'm sure Playboy does it purely on a whim without an ounce of market research to back it up.Originally Posted by lesslucid
A less snarky response would be that Playboy represents a fantasy, not the average woman. Stretch marks might be a specialized fetish but they won't be a part of the average guys mental picture.
A response to that response would be that while superior to excessive airbrushing, the Playboy ideal + shopping approach could be seen as an aggressively de-eroticized view of the female form. These are undeniably beautiful women, but the magazine has somehow managed to reach the goal of being something people really only would read for the articles. While stretch marks on their own might not be particularly appealing, Playboy's decline into irrelevance speaks for itself. Pornography is something best addressed and catered to individually with something like the internet, and the role of Playboy as a taste-maker for men with respect to women has become practically nonexistent. Maybe that would have been inevitable, and they are right to go after near-celebrities as a more-nude/less-stupid version of Maxim. But it's not a very interesting direction.
Also, Sarkus, if you want an EE or Tools and Hardware or whatever version of this thread, knock yourself out. P&R is my default option and I've never seen a reason to change that. Forgive me if I'm not interested in twenty-five morons arguing about which woman is most hawt or the mechanics of photoshopping nipples. I wouldn't dream of interfering with that if that's what the thread ends up being, but I'd prefer it not to be the default setting. If it's simply that it's not newsworthy enough for you, then I'm sure there are other threads worthy of your attention.
Last edited by Lizard_King; 11-20-2010 at 06:51 AM.
LK
Sure, and I agree. I was talking more to Playboy's role in the 80s/90s. These days, yes, it's irrelevant. Porn is everywhere and men don't need Playboy to see nipples anymore.
It's interesting that the machine and the brand still keep moving forward, adopting technology "lite" approaches like having a bare minimum subscriber web presence or showing up in an A- game like Mafia 2. I actually expected them to focus more on publicizing an increased focus on quality content, which is the kind of thing that gave other men's magazines (Esquire, GQ) a shot in the arm, but I'm not sure that would be enough to get me to want to have much to do with a brand that is so...smarmy.
I'd have put it in BCTM. Just sayin'.
That second woman is the most hawt. Who wants to argue?
Interestingly enough, due to the Internet, the only reason to read Playboy today actually IS to read the articles.
Do they have anything of note there? I occasionally come across a relevant interview secondhand, but nothing suggests that their Vanity-Fair-but-less-effete-we-swear angle on politics and current events has evolved much.
I don't know. I think the last article I read in a Playboy was the John Lennon interviews. A long time ago.
But with the Internet, I don't understand why anyone would actually buy a Playboy. I seriously don't understand how it stays in business.
I subscribe. I like it. Sometimes they have some interesting articles. I don't really like the fiction they publish, though to be fair I stopped reading it after a couple of times. The news and political commentary are decided liberal, of course, but they do publish letters and responses from the other side. I usually look at the pictures, but they very rarely do much for me. They are way too processed and the women all look basically the same.
Plus, it's cheap, like a dollar an issue.
You would be amazed to hear how many people do not have the skills, access or knowledge to get to the free internet porn. At best, even if they know how to operate a computer and have internet they get stuck in one of those thumbnail carousels.
Seven years ago I worked at a logistics center for magazines for a while. And from the stuff I saw I can assure you that the market for nude magazines is still huge although it is becoming increasingly skewed towards "insert particular fetish that can't see the light of mainstream day here".
Basically, there is still a large audience for nude mags (though that audience is probably shrinking at an ever increasing rate).
A somewhat related article in the NYT on retouching for class photos for grade schoolers. I'm not that shocked. I know this was available when I was in grade school, about 15 years ago. Somebody I know got it and ended up with light colored splotches all over her face. She was not happy. Presumably the quality is better now.
The prices given are surprisingly cheap to me. $20 to remove sleeves? Are massive edits like that just easy to do if you are experienced with Photoshop? I found myself wondering if they outsourced labor. On the one hand, it would be the perfect thing, just requiring a little upload, on the other hand, it requires some basic awareness of cultural beauty norms that may be difficult to carry over.
I didn't realize you considered people who post outside of P&R to be morons. Plenty of EE discussions stay on topic, and if this thread did turn out be be about how "hawt" the women were, Tom would shut it down anyway as he has made it very clear in the past that those kinds of threads are not welcome. And I say that from personal experience.
I just don't see what makes this a P&R topic. Certainly nothing in your original post suggests what P&R worthy issue you thought the link was supposed to spur people to discuss.
Oh, the irony.
It's the photos that are being critiqued, not the models.
Meanwhile, criticizing Playboy is to feminism as Playboy is to porn.
Hey, there you go. A sample size of 1 can still be useful. This is pretty much the impression I have generally, which is that Playboy is barely taken into consideration as porn, it's more like an occasionally embarrassing thing that you can't quite justify but don't want to get rid of.
I think you're probably on to something, as it might be analogous to how people like me reject e-books despite constantly rotating books in and out of storag and having only limited space at home. There might even be a fixed, significant population that explicitly prefers traditionally formatted porn. What I would argue is (as you note with your reference to niche mags taking over) that this still makes Playboy's strange "look" an endangered species.
The pictures are being criticized where they are accurate representations of "defects" of what is by many definitions an already flattering portrait of a physically exceptional woman. I think it's fair to say they represent an aesthetic statement about women moreso than about photography per se.
I didn't say that, as apart from being tangential to my point, it's impossible to filter morons on that basis alone and it would be unfair to people who prefer other areas for good reasons.
I don't care. I don't care if people want to have that conversation, and I'm not interested in how boundaries are set for it. I'm just not interested in having it, which is why I didn't start it where I felt it would be most likely to occur. You can, of course, have it here or there or anywhere, but it's not my beef.Plenty of EE discussions stay on topic, and if this thread did turn out be be about how "hawt" the women were, Tom would shut it down anyway as he has made it very clear in the past that those kinds of threads are not welcome. And I say that from personal experience.
So don't say shit, then. I'm confident something will crop up along the way regardless of what the OP puts into it so long as the topic itself has something to it. Then you can borrow an opinion from them, translate it into your milquetoast-speak and waffle to your heart's content. Or not, and nothing is broken and no big deal. Rest assured I will not lose sleep over the success or failure of any of those outcomes.I just don't see what makes this a P&R topic. Certainly nothing in your original post suggests what P&R worthy issue you thought the link was supposed to spur people to discuss.
This belongs here, because your body is a temple!
My temple could use some cleaning.
Posting Permissions