Playboy takes a new centrefold path

The snowflake generation, trigger-happy to take the slightest offence at the slightest of things, has struck again. With their ‘wokeness’ quotient fully turned on, those #tagwala enemies of all things heteronormative have now remoulded another grand (read: anachronistic) cultural institution: Playboy.

The centrefold of the ‘gentleman’s magazine’ had all but folded up. But now, it has re-emerged Playboy Bunny- out-of-the-hat style to be the pin-up for the Gen Z sexual wellness movement. Unlike the last time when Playboy was buoyed by the Swinging ’60s, setting feminism as-we-know-it (do-we-know-it?) back by decades, this latest do-over involves arousal sprays, intimacy gels and steamy bath bombs.

Away from its ‘one man’s erotica is another man’s pornography’ beginnings, Playboy is filling the (generation) gap by mastering millennial-speak, with ingredients that include ‘CBD’ (cannabidiol, not central business district), ‘ashwagandha’, ‘kava kava’ and ‘horny goat weed’ (the Chinese herb ‘yin yang huo’, not as some old-timers still call the magazine’s late founder Hugh Hefner).


It’s also aiming to close the ‘female orgasm gap’ through education courses. Too straight and narrow for the ‘youths’ to buy it? Or is it really for the older lot whose mojo has entered yoga pants but is yet to hit the gym?