ALL THE NUDES THAT'S FIT TO PRINT:I passed the periodical rack at my friendly Barnes & Noble superstore last night when I saw something that made me stop and think for a moment. Well, actually, I didn’t stop and think; I was on my way to the bathroom, but I thought while I was in there. This explains why I missed the urinal all together and hit my crummy sneakers instead. The reason for this prolonged rumination was a publication entitled Playboy’s Nude Playmates.

Now I have not had much contact with Playboy since my subscription ran out in 1984. I refused to renew my subscription; I was protesting Roberta Vasquez’s not being named Playmate of the Year (she was robbed; Ms. Vasquez, who if I remember right was Miss November that year, blew the doors off the competition, but Hefner gave the crown to someone else, the cad). In any case, it appears that Playboy’s Nude Playmates is one of several Playboy special publications designed for the reading impaired, in that it provides a maximum of photographs of attractive nude young women and a minimum of the articles that three generations of American men have bought the magazine for.

But this is neither here nor there. I think my cognitive dissonance was a result of the title of the publication. Isn’t this title a statement of the obvious? Aren’t all Playboy Playmates, almost by definition, nudes, nudity being one, if not the most important one, of the major requirements of the job? After all, who would buy Playboy’s Dressed Playmates? Would someone buy Playboy’s Dressed Playmates for the articles or would they have to admit they were spending their money on soft-core pictures of clothed women? The world wonders...well, maybe not.