Charli xcx, the multihyphenate singer behind “Brat Summer” with a loyal and devoted Gen Z following, nabbed a cover story last week. Not Vogue — British or American — Elle or the other major fashion publications. Rather, she posed for Playboy, surprising her fans.
“I’m about to buy a Playboy for the first time in my life. … I feel like a 13 [year-old] boy,” one person commented on the magazine’s Instagram post showing off the pop star’s cover. “Thought I was straight before this,” read another comment. Someone else joked that they “never thought I’d buy a Playboy magazine like some 60 yr old dad.”
The jokes rely on the idea that we know who a Playboy reader is supposed to be: the teenage boy hiding a copy under his mattress or gawking at a centerfold with friends; the dad with a secret stash. So what happens when the people suddenly wanting a copy include women and queer fans following one of pop culture’s buzziest stars?
Playboy relaunched its print magazine in spring 2026 after a years-long hiatus and ownership turnovers. Charli is the third cover star under Phillip Picardi, the publication’s new editor in chief and chief brand officer. His debut issue featured Colombian pop star Karol G and followed up with Cara Delevingne.
Delevingne’s appearance made the tension of who the reader is especially hard to miss. What does it mean to put an out lesbian on the cover of a magazine historically built around heterosexual male desire? While some celebrated the milestone, others questioned whether that alone could fundamentally change how Playboy’s visuals come across.
Playboy’s target audience remains men ages 21 to 35, Picardi tells Yahoo. But “women have always been the center of the Playboy universe. … So, we make a concerted effort to ensure that what we create attracts — and doesn’t turn off — women too.”
This is what Playboy looks like now?
Charli’s cover sent me into uncharted territory: Playboy’s Instagram feed.
There was plenty of what I expected to find — bikini- and lingerie-clad women showing a lot of skin (but not enough to violate the platform’s community guidelines), archival photographs of former Playmates and other reminders that the magazine hasn’t abandoned the raunchy visuals that made it famous.
But I also found something I didn’t expect: The photos sit alongside frank, smart and sometimes playful conversations about dating, intimacy and desire — including women’s expectations of all three.
Picardi says Playboy approaches nudity “as an art form,” while treating sexuality as something to explore rather than simply look at.
“Playboy has always done a really nice job of existing outside of the prudish and the pornographic, and elevating desire as a lifestyle,” says Picardi. “I think that makes us a safe place to explore … and fun to look at.”
Vanessa Cushing, a licensed counselor and sex therapist, says the context surrounding sexual imagery can affect how audiences experience it.
“Sexual imagery does not have one fixed meaning,” Cushing tells Yahoo. “Who is looking, who is being looked at, who created the image and whose pleasure the image is designed to serve all influence how we experience it.”
She points to “sexual scripts,” the cultural messages that teach us who is supposed to desire who and whose pleasure matters. Surrounding sexual imagery with conversations about women’s pleasure, relationships and sexual health can therefore change its context without necessarily transforming the visuals themselves.
“That does not mean the photograph itself suddenly becomes politically progressive,” says Cushing. “But the frame around it can expand the role of the woman from simply being the desired object to also being a person who desires.”
For Playboy, that frame has always included the articles — or at least that was the joke. For decades, “I read it for the articles” was a wink from Playboy readers. But it worked because the magazine really did publish acclaimed writers, including James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.
Playboy isn’t relying on provocative photos alone to reestablish its cultural relevance. Charli’s accompanying interview was conducted by Kylie Jenner, a former Playboy cover star and the singer’s costar in The Moment. Their conversation touches on marriage, confidence, sexuality and what makes someone sexy — including Charli’s unexpected answer about who has sex appeal: Jack Black.
The other recent issues have used similarly deliberate pairings: Journalist Paola Ramos interviewed Karol G about fame and responsibility as a Colombian artist, while novelist Ottessa Moshfegh spoke with Delevingne about sobriety, sexuality and finally feeling in control of her life and public image. The cover stars aren’t simply being photographed; they are being placed in conversations about how they understand and construct their own identities.
The broader editorial mix moves between sex, politics, health and the internet culture shaping all three. “Wanna Get Laid? Read a Damn Book,” reads one recent headline. Others tackle incels and looksmaxxing, male birth control, sexual health and whether Gen Z is “ruining sex for everyone.” Recent print issues have also explored male loneliness and the effect of AI on sex and intimacy.
The nudity remains, but it now sits alongside conversations about consent, women’s pleasure, queer identity and the sexual anxieties of a generation shaped by dating apps and online subcultures. It is still smart and smutty — if somewhat scattershot — as the magazine tests how far it can broaden who gets to speak, whose desires are considered and who might see themselves as the reader.
A sex magazine for the ‘sex recession’ generation
All of this is happening at an interesting moment for a magazine built around desire. Gen Z has become associated with a so-called sex recession, with previous Yahoo reporting documenting young adults opting out of sex and dating or becoming more selective about both. Meanwhile, younger audiences have enthusiastically revived the aesthetics of the late ’90s and early 2000s, when Playboy bunny logos and highly sexualized celebrity imagery were fixtures of pop culture.
Cushing doesn’t see a contradiction. “A person can be fascinated by sexuality while simultaneously being highly selective about actually having sex,” she says. She describes the current relationship with Y2K sexuality as “nostalgia and revision at the same time,” in which younger audiences can inherit the aesthetics of an earlier era while bringing a very different understanding of consent, queer identity and women’s pleasure to them.
Bernadette Barton, a professor of sociology and gender studies and author of The Pornification of America, is more skeptical of the revision part.
Barton argues that “raunch culture” — the migration of sex industry aesthetics into mainstream culture — never really went away. Women consuming Playboy imagery doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying gaze has changed. She sees echoes of “androsexism,” where women are welcomed into traditionally male spaces or behaviors without necessarily changing their rules.
Some of the reactions to Charli’s spread practically illustrate the concept: Women jokingly cast themselves as men to express their attraction. “I’m no better than a man,” one commenter wrote.
That doesn’t represent an escape from Playboy’s traditionally male point of view. It might just mean that some women are newly comfortable occupying it.
Barton argues that Playboy may also seem different because the sexual culture surrounding it has changed. Against an internet filled with far more explicit material, Playboy can appear “modest and moderate in comparison.” And a mainstream star like Charli can further legitimize it, making the magazine “seem less pornographic,” says Barton.
In Barton’s view, what Picardi describes as a deliberate space between the prudish and the pornographic is partly a result of everything aroundPlayboy becoming more explicit.
What does being a Playboy woman mean now?
There’s another way the equation has changed: Playboy no longer has the same power to anoint a woman as a sex symbol.
During Hugh Hefner’s era, the magazine sold a fairly rigid fantasy of the “Playboy woman” — conventionally glamorous, sexually available and presented primarily for heterosexual men. For celebrities, posing could establish or radically recast a public image. Pamela Anderson’s 1989 Playboy debut helped cement the bombshell persona that would follow her into acting, 19-year-old Drew Barrymore’s nude spread reinforced her rebellious reinvention and Lindsay Lohan’s Marilyn Monroe-inspired pictorial marked a conspicuous break from her Disney past. Playboy didn’t just photograph sex symbols. It helped create them.
That fantasy has since undergone a darker reckoning. In the 2022 docuseries Secrets of Playboy, former Playmates, girlfriends and employees alleged coercion, sexual abuse and exploitation within Hefner’s Playboy world. The company responded by supporting the women who came forward and declaring that “today’s Playboy is not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy.“
Now, celebrities can project that provocative image directly to millions of followers on platforms ranging from Instagram to OnlyFans, without Playboy acting as the intermediary. The new Playboy hasn’t abandoned nudity, though its celebrity subjects now determine their own level of undress, Picardi told the Press Gazette. Karol G and Charli pose topless in their spreads, while Delevingne appears bottomless but strategically covered.
What has changed, at least for the celebrity cover stars, is less the amount of skin on display than the role Playboy plays in shaping the image. These women arrive with established sexual identities and enormous audiences, giving them more power to use Playboy’s familiar iconography rather than simply be defined by it. That doesn’t necessarily determine who the resulting images serve, but it does alter the exchange.
“The celebrity brings meaning to Playboy just as much as Playboy gives meaning to the celebrity,” says Cushing.
That exchange has particular value in a pop-culture era that’s seen something of a hedonistic backslide — cigarettes and push-up bras are back, baby. Nabbing a Playboy cover is emerging as a retro-coded celebrity flex. At the same time, buzzy stars like Karol G, Delevingne and Charli bring their own cultural currency and audiences to Playboy today.
“Playboy is not simply choosing Charli,” says Cushing. “Charli choosing Playboy helps tell audiences what the new Playboy wants to mean.”
Maybe that’s why this particular cover feels like more than another stop on the Y2K nostalgia tour. Charli doesn’t need Playboyto introduce audiences to her sexuality, and her fans don’t need Playboy to see her as sexy. What the magazine can offer is the chance to play with one of pop culture’s biggest sexual institutions and decide what participating in it means now.
