Whatever Happened to Playboy Indonesia?

Early this evening I was checking out my blog statistics. I sometimes do this to see who is looking for what, what pages people are viewing, what people are downloading off of my blog, and what sorts of search terms they are using to find certain posts. There is lots of handy software for this sort of thing.

Anyways, this little stroll into blog statistics alerted me to the fact that lots of people are using search terms to find images of Indonesian and Japanese women that have been in the news. However, a recent trend has seen people searching for "Playboy Indonesia". So, with that in mind, I thought perhaps a Playboy related post was in order (and some happy snappies that are freely available on the internet).

Indonesian Playboy Magazine had a short run. I can only recall three issues being published. Although, I have to admit I was not a regular purchaser of the magazine. In fact, my guesstimates on the number of issues is based on the number of different covers that were thrust up against the window of the taxi I was in when I was stopped at traffic lights throughout the city. To be honest, if one is looking for pornography in the printed form in Indonesia then my guess is that the toll gates over Kebon Jeruk way might be a good starting point. I recall a couple of taxi rides back from the Universitas Pelita Harapan campus, which takes you past these particular toll gates, and some interesting picture material thrust up against the window of the taxi and accompanied with, "Hey Mister, picture good, cheap, only 20 thousand!"

Oh well, enough of the reminiscing and back to the post. Playboy, at least the Indonesian version, seems to have faded into extinction. It might make a comeback one day. Who knows?

Nevertheless, the furore that it generated was interesting because it is the only Playboy magazine that I can recall that really was not a skin magazine. The pictures, and some are attached here, were really tame. Tame in the PG sense of tame. It is also the only version of Playboy magazine that when you said, "the only reason I bought a copy was to read the articles" was in fact the truth. The articles were generally OK. The pictorials left way too much to the imagination. There simply was no titillation whatsoever.

It was funny to watch people come out and claim that the magazine was all about pornography, and that even if the pictures were not pornographic that it was still porn anyway by reason of the name of the magazine. In any event, a couple of the models were pursued for a while and the editor was tried for being a purveyor of porn and other indecent material. As I recall, nothing much came of the pursuit of the models and the editor was eventually acquitted. In the trial of the editor the judges took time out in their decision to provide a bit of a rebuke of the prosecution case and how it was poorly thought out and constructed.

The anti-porn law should put paid to an eventual comeback, but one never knows. It would be an interesting test case for the law.

For those of you searching for "Indonesian Playboy" I am almost certain that this post will not satisfy your curiosity...keep searching! However, here are some happy snappies of Andhara Early and Joanne Alexandra from Playboy and other places. Enjoy!