The nudity that gave Playboy its claim to fame more than 60 years ago is on its way out.

Starting with the March 2016 issue, Playboy magazine will no longer feature full nudity.

One of the main reasons cited for the change was that the magazine no longer offers a shock value for its target audience because of the intense competition with free pornographic images and videos on the Internet.

“When the Internet came around, it basically became a huge porn site,” said Joel Geske, associate director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. “It used to be that you had a couple of magazine choices, but now there are literally thousands and thousands of websites out there. It’s easier, faster, more private access.”

However, Playboy may not be concerned about moving away from featuring nudity.

“Playboy is saying that they are the ones that started it all, and the nudity is kind of old news,” said Deb Gibson, a magazine expert assigned to the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication from the Meredith Corporation.

Playboy’s popularity has decreased steadily for years, starting with competition from other men’s magazines like Maxim in the 1980s.

“Playboy hasn’t made money from the magazine in several decades,” Gibson said.

The magazine’s popularity surged through the first few decades and then peaked in the 1970s.

“The idea of Playboy was that men worked hard and should be entertained and that they deserve the good life,” Gibson said. “This carried the magazine through the changing times in the country and formed a brand of pursuing your passion even if it doesn’t align with society.”

The Playboy brand holds a sense of tradition to several generations of young men. The question is whether the idea of the brand changes when the full nudity disappears.

“The whole Playboy brand is built on the idea that women are men’s playthings,” Geske said. “Will that philosophy change? I don’t know.”

Consequently, what does that mean for the current generation of readers, and for future generations?

“I just recently got into the Playboy tradition and now I feel like it’s being taken away,” said an ISU senior.

However, the removal of completely nude photos does not mean that overall content will change.

“The jury is still out on that,” Geske said. “We haven’t seen what they are going to have in their content. Just because the photos that they do have won’t have nudity, it does not mean that the images will not be sexualized.”

Playboy could also return to writing long, high-profile feature stories. In the past, it’s included Q&A sections and profiles of famous people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter and John Lennon.

“Playboy actually did have a time when they had very high-quality editorial content,” Gibson said. “Men used to pick up the magazine for more than just the nudes.”

A running joke has existed for several generations that the nudity is not what attracts the magazine’s audience.

“Men have always said that they have bought it for the articles. Well, we’ll see,” Geske said.