Playgirl

Burt Reynods disguised as beefcake.

Playgirl is a monthly pornographic magazine for heterosexual women and homosexual men who pretend to be heterosexual women (it's complicated) — basically a reversed version of Playboy. Mostly full of tips on makeup and healthy relationships, the content (except, pehaps, occasionally, the sex advice) is boring, and not really arousing at all.

Features

Originally, Playgirl's editors thought that heterosexual, or straight, women would be interested in ogling nude men in the way that heterosexual men enjoy ogling naked women. Unfortunately for their plans, straight women are more interested in fashion, shopping, gossip, sappy romantic comedies, men, celebrities, and movies like Bareback Mountain that feature homosexual men or themes (see also yaoi).

Although the magazine's editors missed their targeted audience's interests, they managed, inadvertently (i. e., despite their incompetence) to appeal to another segment of the population, male homosexuals. Assuming that straight women would want to see men in the buff, the editors featured, as their magazine's centerpiece, a Nude Man of the Month similar to, but different from, the Playboy Playmate of the Month. Their first centerfold model was the aging, no-longer-sexy (if-ever-he-was-sexy) grandfatherly has-been actor Burt Reynolds, in whom no one, including his former paramour Sally ("The Flying Nun") was interested. Sales were not good. In fact, they were abysmal. Had it not been for gay males, sales would have been non-existent and the magazine would have gone bankrupt, as it so richly deserved to do.

The editors found themselves in the embarrassing position of publishing a magazine for homosexual men who pretend to be heterosexual women. However, their predicament suggested the solution to their humiliating problem as well: they would simply pretend, like the readers, the distributors, the advertisers, the writers, the lawyers, and everyone else that Playgirl really and truly was intended for heterosexual women who liked to read boring articles and lust after men's naked bodies.

Prince Charles

Before the editors found their way out of the embarrassing predicament of finding their periodical a magazine for homosexual men who pretend to be heterosexual women, they looked to Prince Charles as a possible means of interesting women in their publication. After all, he was heir to the thrones of England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, and, possible Wales, and he'd managed to capture the hand, if not the heart, of Princess Diana, whom even straight women loved and wanted to have sex with, just "to see what it's like." The prince was also known to like tampons, an item favored by many women, having expressed his desire to be reincarnated as a tampon that could reside forever inside the vagina of his mistress. However, the closet his highass would come to baring it for Playgirl's gay readers was to appear without his shirt while pretending to exercise in Buckingham Palace's gymnasium. It was enough. The issue's sales rocketed in such geographic areas as San Francisco's Castro District and New York City's Greenwich Village.

Men of Enron

The editors of Playgirl also thought it might be fun to humiliate corporate America, the vast majority of the executive leaders of which still are male. To this end, they very, very, very cleverly ran a pictorial under the title "Losing Their Shirts" (pun intended). Sales sank by 50 percent and the Infernal Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began a still-ongoing investigation of the magazine's editors, advertisers, writers, photographers, distributors, readers, models, and mailroom clerks. The message seems clear: don't mess with corporate America.

Alternative version: As if the Enron men couldn't get enough money already, a bunch of the really senseless ones thought it would be a great idea to pose naked for Playgirl. Voluntary doing so, there is no possibility that there would be any investigations, and many people commended the guys for doing it. The message seems clear: corporate America is hot, and they're not afraid to show it.

Maturity

According to Wikipedia, the magazine "matured" when it began showing full-frontal nudity, penile erections, foreskins, and nude ethnic gropes groups.

Celebrity Centerfolds

Playgirl has featured these celebrity centerfolds, most of whom are famous only among gay men:

• Dirk Shafer
• Scott Merritt
• Brian Dawson
• Rick Dinihanian
• Richard Simmons
• Tom Cruise