--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, L B Shriver
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Playboy Makes Move in India, but Without the Centerfold
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
Published: January 2, 2006
MUMBAI, India - In a little-noticed milestone for the world of sex-
related entertainment,
Playboy said last month that it would seek to do in India what it
had never done before:
publish a magazine with its usual fare, except for its name and
its nudes.
This is quite a departure for us, Christie Hefner, the chief
executive of Playboy
Enterprises, told reporters in December.
One reason for the plan, still in its initial stages, is the usual
emerging-market strategy:
when profits flatten in the West, companies pivot to India and
China. Whereas Playboy's
United States magazine sales shrank by 1 percent in 2004, its
foreign revenue grew by 13
percent from 20 overseas editions published in countries from
Brazil to Serbia.
Foreign magazines' interest in India is understandable. As media
growth flattens in the
West, India's is booming. It has nearly 200 million magazine
readers and is the second-
largest newspaper market in the world, behind China, with 79
million copies sold daily.
The print advertising market is $1.5 billion a year and growing.
But there is another story behind Playboy's discovery of India.
The magazine once saw
itself as America's gateway to a sexual revolution. Now, with that
revolution won and its
societal impact fading, Playboy has a chance to renew itself as a
magazine of high living in
a country that celebrated sex in antiquity, then grew prudish, and
is now loosening up
again.
Ms. Hefner has said that an Indian version of the magazine would
be an extension of
Playboy that would be focused around the lifestyle, pop culture,
celebrity, fashion, sports
and interview elements of Playboy. But the magazine would not
be classic Playboy, she
warned. It would not have nudity, she said, and I don't think
it would be called Playboy.
Some see India in the 2000's as similar to America in the 1950's:
on the cusp of a sexual
revolution, with stirrings of changes in private that have yet to
gain public acceptability.
In an attitudinal sea change, one-quarter of urban, unmarried
women have sex, one-third
read erotic literature and half go on dates, according to a survey
by ACNielsen and India
Today magazine. Bollywood, a mirror of the Indian spirit, now does
what it refused to do
five years ago: show a kiss on-screen.
India is not only on the brink of a sexual revolution, it is also
overflowing with ambition, as
a small but growing class of young, urban, world-traveling men
with disposable income
find their way to a new upper class. The democratization of
affluence is creating would-be
male connoisseurs, keen for tutelage in ways of the high life.
Upwardly mobile. Reasonably affluent. He would be a sort of
midlevel executive upwards,
a man who probably already drives a car, said N. Radhakrishnan,
editor of Man's World,
an Indian publication that would be a competitor to a watered-down
Playboy.
The December issue of Man's World is a window into the
demographic: light on the
lascivious, heavy on wisdom for the arriviste, like the latest
iPod accessory and an
admonition that Champagne be chilled but never iced. A few
photos of scantily clad
beauties appear in the back, almost as an afterthought.
India has yet to have its own 1960's, in which sexual change
accompanied broader
upheaval. In the city of Madras, the police recently shut down a
nightspot after local news
media published photographs of clubgoers kissing. Then came a
judgment by Mumbai's
highest court that films not rated U, for universal, could not be
shown on television;
among the disqualified films are the Harry Potter movies. More
generally, Indian
conservatives, including conservative Hindu political leaders, say
the country should resist
Western sexualization.
Indian law prohibits the sale or possession of material that
is lascivious or appeals to the
prurient interest and that is without redeeming artistic,
literary or religious merit. Soft-
core pornographic magazines are available in India, but are taboo.
They lurk behind other
publications at newsstands, available only by whispered request.
They also attract few
lucrative advertisers.
There would only be a few brands that would look at these
magazines, said Paulomi
Dhawan, who runs advertising for Raymond, a leading Indian apparel
maker. We would
probably be more in the business or news magazines or the male-
oriented serious
magazines.
There is another problem: if you are 26, living with prying
parents, where do you hide your
stash?
In urban India, the concept of single men living alone is quite
new, Mr. Radhakrishnan
said. Here, most men, until they're married, live at home. Once
you're married, your wife
wonders what you're reading.
As Playboy wrestles
