For generations, few American brands screamed heterosexual male fantasy quite as loudly as Playboy.

Now the Bunny is being run by a gay man.

And not just any gay man.

Phillip Picardi built his career helping transform Teen Vogue, launched Condé Nast’s LGBTQ+ publication Them and later became editor-in-chief of Out.

In March, he added a rather unexpected publication to that résumé (Instinct).

Playboy.

Picardi became the iconic magazine’s editor-in-chief and chief brand officer as part of an attempt to reinvent Playboy for an era when nobody exactly needs to buy a magazine to see naked people anymore.

His stated goal is wonderfully simple.

Make Playboy “playful again.”

What Does Playboy Even Mean In 2026?

That is actually a surprisingly interesting question.

Playboy launched in 1953 and eventually became one of the defining symbols of heterosexual male sexuality in American culture.

There were famous interviews, serious journalism and fiction alongside the centerfolds, of course.

But let’s not pretend generations of teenage boys were hiding copies under their mattresses for the articles.

The internet rather dramatically changed that business model.

Playboy stopped regularly publishing its U.S. print magazine in 2020 before returning to print in 2025.

Picardi understands that trying to compete with unlimited online pornography would be rather pointless.

“You no longer need a print magazine for that,” he recently told The Times.

Instead, his Playboy is trying to become something closer to a provocative cultural magazine about sexuality itself.

That means relationships.

Dating.

Loneliness.

Modern masculinity.

And what Picardi describes as a strange cultural moment that manages to be simultaneously prudish and pornographic.

From Them To The Bunny

There is something wonderfully unexpected about Picardi being the person given this assignment.

He came out at 14 after growing up gay and Catholic in Massachusetts.

Years later, at Condé Nast, he became the founding editor of Them, creating a publication specifically designed around LGBTQ+ voices.

Now he is trying to broaden the worldview of a publication historically built largely around straight men looking at women.

Picardi has been clear that this does not mean turning Playboy into a queer magazine.

Women remain central to the brand.

The nudity remains.

The Bunny isn’t going anywhere.

But who Playboy imagines might be interested in sex, pleasure and culture is getting considerably wider.

“Queer rights don’t exist without women’s rights,” Picardi has said.

“These things are connected.”

The Change Is Already Visible

Playboy’s Spring 2026 issue, featuring Colombian superstar Karol G, was the first under Picardi’s leadership.

Its features went beyond traditional Playboy territory to examine subjects including male loneliness, the so-called sex recession and how artificial intelligence is changing intimacy.

Then came Cara Delevingne.

The openly lesbian model and actor became Playboy’s Summer 2026 cover star, photographed by Zoey Grossman.

She was the first openly lesbian woman to appear on the magazine’s print cover and the first supermodel to wear Playboy’s famous Bunny Costume for the magazine since Kate Moss in 2014.

For Picardi, that mixture of old Playboy iconography and a very different cultural perspective appears to be precisely the point.

A Gay Man Reinventing Straight Male Fantasy

The easiest joke here is that Playboy hired a gay man to save Playboy.

And admittedly, we’re not above making it. 😂

But Picardi’s appointment also says something interesting about how dramatically ideas about men and sexuality have changed since Hugh Hefner created the magazine more than 70 years ago.

Modern masculinity is not simply heterosexual men looking at beautiful women.

Men are navigating dating apps, loneliness, pornography, changing gender expectations and entirely new conversations about sexuality and relationships.

A gay editor may actually have a particularly useful perspective on what happens when the old rules about masculinity stop working.

Picardi isn’t throwing away Playboy’s past.

He seems to be asking whether the Bunny can loosen its bow tie a little and become curious about considerably more people.

And after spending much of his career making queer media more visible, Phillip Picardi now has an altogether stranger assignment.

Making one of America’s straightest magazines interesting again.

📷 @pfpicardi / @playboy

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