Naked Again

Playboy was going to stop publishing nudes, which would have been cowardly, so they pivoted back to #NakedIsNormal. This is how we get Nina Daniele, 29, from the Bronx, as the 2018 International Playmate of the Year.

Some people I know think the magazine is over—something grotesque and outdated. Fair criticism, maybe. But they’re misreading what Playboy ever was. It was about choice. A woman looks at the magazine, thinks I could do that, and a few months later she’s on a global stage with her body celebrated and a substantial paycheck. That’s not oppression. That’s pretty radical, actually.

There’s something almost defiant about it. Desire without apology. A body displayed, admired, compensated. The whole transaction probably only feels clean if you don’t interrogate it too thoroughly. But there’s something healthy in that too—in not making everything about complicated feelings and power dynamics. Sometimes it’s just a woman and her body and a magazine and a lot of people looking. That’s not nothing.