The Return of the Nipple

1

The 9th issue of the No Nudity Playboy just came out. And it featured The Return of the Nipple. I had to smile. Because I have to admit that I have missed the nipples. (And it's obvious that I'm not the only one, since I don't have any influence on the world outside of my head.) I would have to go back through the last eight issues to see if this has been a gradual building process, as I suspect, but I do remember that when the November issue came out that the boob presence seemed a lot more obvious than in previous issues. (But no nipples.) And I thought then, "It's a sign; it's just a matter of time now." Because seriously . . . what is Playboy without bare breasts?
And now in the December issue, the nipple has returned. In three variations. There was the Nipple Seen Through Blouse in Paige Elkington's pictorial. There was the Just a Bit of Areola in Eniko Mihalik's centerfold. And there were several I'm Wearing Glitter But I'm Naked From the Ankles Up shots of Maya Singer which showed her perkies. 

I know that in this I-Don't-Know-What-To-Call-It Age I'm not supposed to even want to look at pictures of naked women in magazines, much less admit to enjoying it. It's Anti-Feminist and a part of Rape Culture and Radical Patriarchy and . . . and all of that. Or so we've been told.

But is it?

Here's the thing. Playboy has always been different from the other Naked Women magazines. And I'm not just talking about the articles--which I do actually read, by the way. For one thing, it has never been a Legs Spread magazine, much less a Pictures of People Having Sex magazine. It's shown its fair share of asses, pubic hair, and  labia majora . . . and even the occasional glimpse of clitoris . . . but the primary focus has always been breasts, and, more specifically, nipples. 

Another big difference between Playboy and the other N.W.M.s is that the Playboy women were pretty much all extraordinarily beautiful. If you've seen some of those other N.W.M.s, you know that that is not always the case there.

And there's the rub of it. No pun intended. Playboy has always been a paen to beautiful women. And nipples are a primary element of that song. The Aria of the Areola. It is the modern day plebeian equivalent of the female Grecian statues . . . which, by the way, were also primarily breast-oriented--and if you doubt me, check out Syreeta McFadden's very intelligent and entertaining article, "The lack of female genitals on statues seems thoughtless until you see it repeated." It's about glorifying and appreciating the female body. And hey, I don't see how you can claim it's sexist or anti-feminist for guys to look at those pictures if women are willingly posing for them, you know? 

When I was a young lad in the army, there was a Warrant Officer in our unit who was nuts about Suzanne Somers. And that was right around the time that some topless photos of Ms. Somers appeared. (I think it was in Playboy, but Wikipedia tells me that that spread didn't come out until the February 1980 issue, and that couldn't have been my source since I ETSed from the army in October of 1979.) Anyway, I bought a copy of the magazine and carefully removed the pictures of Suzanne. I trimmed the edges to make them nice, and then very very carefully cut out the nipples from every picture, then put the pictures into a pile and put the pile onto the W.O.'s desk. Venisoon after he came into the office, went to his desk, saw the pictures, and first exclaimed gleefully . . . then saw how the pictures had been mistreated and said, "Why would anyone DO this?" He was so stricken that I actually felt bad about the joke, and hard pranking was something we rarely felt bad about in those Too Many Boys Spoil the Soup days. Point being . . . it's all about the nipple. You know it, I know it, and Playboy knows it.

So thanks for bringing it back this month, Playboy. Keep up the good work.





1 BTW, lest you get too excited, the above picture is a Stunt Nipple, for illustrative purposes only, not an Actual Nipple. I know this for sure because it's actually My Nipple. See--here's the rest of it:

 +   =  

You can't sue a man for his own nipples, I'd hope. Not even for using them mathematically.