Is Paper the new Playboy?
Mag honchos Mickey Boardman and Elizabeth Thompson talk Kardashian, Cyrus nude shoots
NEW YORK – Last year, Paper Magazine tried to break the Internet with their nude Kim Kardashian cover, and they’re making web waves once again with their new naked Miley Cyrus edition. The “Wrecking Ball" singer's cover has received over 1 million unique viewers since its debut on Paper's website on June 9.
Paper’s editorial director Mickey Boardman said with Miley, almost any shoot turns into a nude shoot.
“Miley will be nude unless you tell her she has to put clothes on,” Boardman told FOX411.
And Paper's senior editor Elizabeth Thompson said Kim in her birthday suit wasn't even their idea.
“It wasn’t our intention to do a nude shoot," Thompson told FOX411. "She kind of showed up and said ‘I’m willing to do this.’”
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Playboy magazine, which made its name photographing nude female celebrities from Marilyn Monroe to Lindsay Lohan, isn’t impressed with Paper’s success in the genre.
“Like a dying whale in search of food, every six months, they beach themselves on the shores of cultural relevance only to be whisked away by the news cycle and disappear,” Playboy Magazine’s editorial director, Jimmy Jellinek, told FOX411. "We’ve been doing this for more than 60 years, month after month. The only 'new Playboy' is Playboy.”
Boardman says the iconic men’s magazine doesn’t get it.
“We’re not trying to beat Playboy. We’re not trying to steal anything away from Playboy,” he said. “We’re trying to do new things that are modern and use celebrities that speak to the digital world, which Playboy doesn’t.”
Paper’s Kardashian pics garnered a staggering 53 million unique viewers and became a lightning rod for criticism of the star.
“Kim got a lot of flak from even other celebrities that she’s a mother,” Thompson said. “Like if you have a child it’s the end of your life as a sexual or attractive woman, to me there was something radical about what she did.”
Paper’s next radical move?
“It would be radical for men to be nude in an equality way,” Boardman said. “It’s something that people haven’t really seen.”
“We would like to level the playing field,” Thompson added.
Paper goes on newsstands June 22.
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