Playboy
American lifestyle and entertainment magazine
Playboy (stylized in all caps) is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, available both online and in print. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, funded in part by a US$1,000 loan (equivalent to $12,000 in 2025) from Hefner's mother.
Known for its centerfolds of nude and semi-nude female models (Playmates), Playboy played an important role in the sexual revolution and remains one of the world's best-known brands, with a presence in nearly every medium. In addition to the flagship magazine in the United States, special nation-specific versions of Playboy are published worldwide, including those by licensees, such as Dirk Steenekamp's DHS Media Group.
The magazine regularly published interviews with prominent celebrities, authors, and politicians, as well as short stories by novelists such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Chuck Palahniuk, P. G. Wodehouse, Roald Dahl, Haruki Murakami, and Margaret Atwood. With a regular display of full-page color cartoons, it became a showcase for cartoonists such as Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, Jules Feiffer, Harvey Kurtzman, Shel Silverstein, Doug Sneyd, Erich Sokol, Roy Raymonde, Gahan Wilson, and Rowland B. Wilson. Art Paul designed the bunny logo. LeRoy Neiman drew the Femlin characters for Playboy jokes. Patrick Nagel painted the headers for Playboy Forum and other sections.
After a year-long removal of most nude photos in Playboy magazine, the March–April 2017 issue brought back nudity.
“Playboy” enters the record as american lifestyle and entertainment magazine. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Playboy, American and lifestyle can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q150820. VIAF identifies the subject as 186198938. The Library of Congress control number is no2010171254. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2025 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Playboy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.