I always thought my lifetime subscription to Playboy magazine meant my lifetime, not the magazine's. The current management has announced that there will be no more issues this year and many folks are assuming that's the end of it. If so, it would mean the publication outlived its founder by three years and its relevance by about forty.
It will continue as a somewhat valuable brand name and it doesn't seem unlikely that some day in the future, in the midst of exploiting that name and bunny logo for wearing apparel, games, home video and general nostalgia, someone will say, "Hey, how about trying it as a magazine again?" And I'll have to call them up, as I have at least three times in the last twenty years, and remind them what the term "lifetime subscription" means.
The primal philosophy and world of Playboy now seem deeply antiquated and silly and in many ways, sexist and shallow but a few things could be said in its defense. One was that, nekkid photos aside, it was an excellent magazine because Hugh Hefner spared no expense to make it so. Almost every major American author turned up in its pages as did many important artists and cartoonists. Its pages were often filled with very fine journalism and crusades for civil rights and, of course, advocacy for the premise that adults should be able to buy and read whatever they like.
Playboy was important to me in two ways. It wasn't the first place I ever saw a beautiful naked woman but for many of my teen years, it was the best and most reliable source of them. Later, in ways I don't feel right discussing on this blog, outgrowing Playboy and understanding the puerile parts of it got me to a much better place vis-a-vis associating with the opposite gender. We sometimes learn plenty by seeing examples of where we don't want to go.
I have a complete collection and every year or so, I get in the mood to browse older issues — rarely anything much after 1980. It's a great personal WABAC Machine and not just because it momentarily reprises old crushes on a couple of Miss Augusts. The interviews…the cartoons…the sense of what was "cool" when I was fourteen…it's all fun to revisit and to remind me who I was back then.
Apart from keeping a complete set complete, I haven't cared much about the magazine for 30+ years and, given its circulation problems, it's obvious that no one else has, either. Still, it's sad to see an old friend go.