Tasteful Nudity

Playboy mag hits Philippines with tasteful nudity

Tasteful nudity. As opposed to? Hmm.. lets read on…

MANILA, Philippines—American adult magazine Playboy launched Wednesday its first Philippine edition, triggering protests from the country's conservative Roman Catholic Church, but promising to avoid full-frontal nudity.
The local issue promises to be tamer than other editions sold across the world and will seek to avoid offending local sensibilities, editor-in-chief Beting Laygo Dolor told AFP.
"The Philippine edition has been adjusted to our culture, including the fact that we are a predominantly Catholic country and a little more conservative," Dolor said.

Adjusted to the culture of conservative Catholics. How considerate. I suppose they will be inserting religious readings somewhere…

While flesh will be featured, "there will not be full frontal nudity," Dolor said, stressing that they were not out to compete with the local editions of "lad magazines" FHM and Maxim, which are more explicit.

I see: instead of “full frontal nudity”, Playboy Philippine edition will just feature partial frontal nudity, or perhaps just full side-view nudity, in keeping with their promise. How tasteful.

"We are targeting a different demographic -- the slightly mature, more upscale men," Dolor said.

Only for “slightly mature, more upscale men”. For the rest of you hot-blooded men out there who are immature and downscale, sorry - this magazine is not for you.

"The main reasons for them buying this magazine is for the artwork, articles and photography," he said.

The way it’s described here, I guess National Geographic got a new competitor.

Four of the Philippines' top literary writers are among those on the roster of contributors to Playboy, the 25th international edition of the US-based magazine which was launched more than 50 years ago, he said.
While some ultra-conservative segments of the society "won't be very happy" Dolor said he does not expect the magazine to trigger social unrest like in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.

Ultra-conservatives “won’t be very happy” . At least they won’t be sad? Anyway, conservatives will only be slightly happy, while non-conservatives will be very happy. I see everybody’s happy to a certain extent. Fair enough? But wait - the clergy protests...

Playboy launched its Indonesian edition in 2006, triggering protests there and forcing advertisers to back out.
But Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, spokesman for the influential Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said the Philippines already had a host of problems from poverty to scandals that it can't afford to "have one more moral problem."

Ok, so what if we have many moral problems already. Maybe just one more wouldn’t hurt?

"That (Playboy) would destroy our moral stature," Quitorio said, adding that government should investigate the franchise.
Senior CBCP member Bishop Pedro Arigo, meanwhile, noted that Filipinos "are already a lost generation" with sales of adult magazines widespread in the country.

Now what could the predominantly Catholic, more conservative sector do? For one thing, check out how Indonesia was able to kick them out, and follow suit. Barring that, I think this is a good opportunity to “Buy Filipino” and uplift our sorry economy. Our non-conservative, more mature, more upscale men should patronize only locally-produced adult mags. Calling on FHM and Maxim: Improve the quality of your mags, adjust to the predominantly conservative Catholic culture by inserting religious articles, come up with more “tasteful nudity”, reduce your prices, and lets bring ‘em on.