Playboy Panel at Los Angeles Comic-Con 2019

“I read it for the writing.” This is the common, and usually entirely facetious, refrain that makes an appearance in most conversations about Playboy. It’s not untrue; literary gurus like Ray Bradbury, Chuck Palahniuk, and Margaret Atwood have all debuted fiction folded between the pages of the magazine. But writing isn’t the only high art form with which the magazine engages.

Playboy hosted a panel and Q+A at Los Angeles Comic-Con this year. “What is Playboy doing at a Comic Convention?” you ask. Obviously, as cons have exploded in popularity over the past decade or so, panels, guests, and exhibits cast a wider net than comics alone. LACC, perhaps, is the perfect place for a conversation about women’s bodies and the male gaze it is subjected to, especially at one of the major comic conventions, which are at the vertex of the cosplay and consent conversation.

At the panel, moderator Bruna Nessif, Playboy features editor Anita Little, and Playmate Megan Moore explored creating art with nudity in contemporary culture. In recent years, the men’s magazine has undergone a substantial shift in tone. “The rebrand,” one panelist said, “was about reconceptualizing not just about how we shoot our playgirls but how we write about women’s bodies.”

“As women,” Nessif said, “we tend to get criticized even just for having too much cleavage in a selfie. It can be difficult to play between two words: I am intelligent and smart and a stand up woman but I am also sexual and sexy and I can show that side of me without dismissing the other end.”

Unlike Victoria’s Secret, whose chief marketing officer Ed Razek rejected trans women as a part of their annual fashion show because they wanted to maintain it as “a fantasy” (as if trans women are not worth being fantasized about), Playboy has openly trans models. As a magazine that is popularly known as one to inspire sexual stimulation via photographs, the fact that they champion trans bodies as desirable marks them as progressive in a still trans-phobic era.

Playboy seems to be on a path that suggests that empowerment is sexier than objectification. Let’s call it like it is: Playboy is worth reading for far more than just the writing.

“The ultimate goal,” Little said, “is to normalize attraction. I think we all just need to get naked more.”