Playboy puts its clothes on

Has Playboy gone prudish?

Not quite.

But its readers can expect more text and less flesh on display now that the glossy men’s magazine has announced it is to stop publishing pictures of fully naked women.

It is certainly a gamble and opinion on the big ‘cover up’ was mixed on the streets of New York.

“We are not real Playboy fans but basically I think they are going in the right direction,” said Gary Miller from Phoenix, Arizona.

“Quite honestly, to be blunt, I think they are going to lose a lot of people,” said local woman Carissa Woolf.

“As great as it is that they are trying to stay current and stay up to date, I think that people look at that magazine to see naked women.”

The Bunny Girl brand will still feature beautiful women in provocative poses – though wearing something rather than nothing.

“As any reader of serious fiction will tell you, a picture of a woman will some clothes on can be sexier than a picture of a woman in the nude,” said Victor Navasky, Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review.

The magazine that launched in the 1950s is adapting to an age when the Internet has now made nudity more easily accessible than ever.

Its circulation may not be what it once was but founder Hugh Hefner is still going strong at 89 and he wants Playboy to be equally well preserved.