Naked Is Normal

Playboy announced it was going clean—no more nude photography, covered models only, a magazine for the think-pieces crowd. Then, almost immediately, reversed course under the hashtag #NakedIsNormal and went back to doing what it always did. Hard to argue with that logic. Some decisions shouldn’t be overthought.

For 2018, the international Playmate of the Year is Nina Daniele, 29, from the Bronx. She’s striking in the way that makes you stop whatever you were doing and just look for a minute. Her own take on the honor was characteristically direct: I never thought something like this would happen to me. This is bigger than me, and that makes me proud to be part of the Playboy family. I want to use this attention to speak for women—so we can free ourselves, work together, break our chains.

Some people I know consider Playboy an outdated institution, borderline antifeminist. I’ve never quite bought that. The counterargument—that it reduces women to objects—assumes the women involved have no agency in the matter, which is a strange kind of condescension dressed up as progressivism. What Playboy actually built, across decades, was a platform where women could present themselves exactly as they chose: their bodies, their voices, their terms. If that choice includes nudity, that’s not exploitation—it’s precisely the point. The feature on Nina Daniele makes that case better than I can.