All I knew was the things that we would see on TV that was not anything of quality or important. “I didn’t know it was a feminist magazine. It turned out to be the early issues that interested him in closing the deal, of which financial terms have not been disclosed. Lindley Kuhns went to boarding school with Ruderman’s son and he and his father approached the-then 26-year-old in 2016 to see if he would be interested in acquiring the publishing rights to the title. Now the title is back in another incarnation, but it’s closer to its beginnings than when Playgirl ceased print operations in 2015, according to publisher Jack Lindley Kuhns, great-grandson of Eugene Meyer, who purchased the The Washington Post in 1933. It also built up an army of gay readers.Īfter a period in the Eighties when its covers largely consisted of celebrities wearing clothes, Playgirl was acquired by New York publisher Carl Ruderman and as Esquire wrote in a 2017 essay on the magazine, transformed into “unapologetic soft-core porn.” Above her is the caption “we’ll take it from here.”īeginning as a feminist response to Playboy in 1973, in between the male centerfold and other naked men, Playgirl tackled important issues such as abortion and equal rights, while contributors included Gloria Steinem, Maya Angelou and Joyce Carol Oates, making it a dominant voice in the women’s movement and the sexual revolution. This time, the cover star is not a man, but a pregnant Chloë Sevigny, expertly shot by Mario Sorrenti against a backdrop of lush mint green hues and not a plastic tree in sight.