Everything That Amuses Men
January 13, 2003
German Playboy has just gone upscale, joining the ranks of lifestyle magazines like GQ or FHM. Munich’s Hubert Burda Media recently acquired the German license and relaunched the magazine with a party in a fashionable Berlin club on Jan. 9.
The publisher and editor-in-chief Stefan Schmortte believe that men’s magazines have great potential. Burda hopes the makeover will bring new life to Playboy, whose sales were in a slump when the previous German license holder, Bauer Publishing, announced that the December 2002 issue would be its last.
For men or women?
How does the new Playboy differ from the old? To start with, February’s cover-girl, actor Cosma Shiva Hagen, isn’t topless -- at least not until page 32. The cover reveals a sultry-lipped close-up of German singer Nina Hagen’s daughter and story titles in sober silver and white tones. The new Playboy could easily be mistaken for a women’s magazine.
The plethora of advertisements recalls a fashion magazine too. Still there is no dearth of bare breasts, the first ones show up in the table of contents on page six; two pages before the first car -- assuming you ignore the BMW ad on pages four and five.
The magazine goes back and forth between the expected (bare-breasted blondes with orange-tanned skin) and the unexpected (Sir Terence Conran’s design museum). Interviews with German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl and American star George Clooney and an expose on Germany’s school for secret agents break up the ads. In a three-page spread, the magazine suggests that German students looking for female companionship should go to Erfurt University, “an academic harem,” where male students are outnumbered by 17 to one.
The real playboy
Maybe this Playboy is getting back to the roots, shaking off the image of a dirty old -- or young -- man’s magazine in favor of the authentic playboy, the Playboy founder Hugh Hefner type (right). According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, it’s “a man, especially a man of means, who is given to pleasure-seeking, sexual promiscuity, etc.” Only a man of means is likely to take advantage of the magazine’s pricey tips for hotels in the Alps, cars, stereos and watches.
As in the past, the German edition purports to cover “everything that amuses men.” According to Playboy that is cars, fashion, sports, computers and breasts. In fact, cars have an edge over breasts, appearing in one-third more pictures than women’s bare torsos. A car hasn’t yet subsumed a woman as centerfold though.
No need to worry, the online version offers more of the traditional Playboy fare of naked ladies. The regular clientele need not be disappointed.