Playboy For The Blind Sounds Pretty Sexy

Sure, Playboy may be a dated publication with restrictive ideas about pubic hair. But Playboy for the blind is kind of awesome.

According to the AP, the magazine has long been available in Braille (competing, perhaps, with this blind-friendly book featuring a “male love robot?”), but Houston company Taping for the Blind also produces an all-audio version. And three years ago, newsreader Suzi Hanks took up the job of reading Playboy aloud — and describing all the pictures. Here she is on this year’s Miss August:

She has a very large grin on her face, pink lipstick. She has a small tattoo right over the small of her back over the dimple area that appears to be maybe some sort of tribal design. It is red. … Her legs are kind of crossed. She is sitting in the water.

Behind her shoulder, down past her arm, you can see her breast peeking out. … There are no tan lines at all. She is not wearing any nail polish or jewelry or bathing suit or anything.

Playboy photos can sometimes be kind of joyless and predictable, but this description actually sounds kind of charming. Of her job, Hanks says, “I don’t have to try to read it sexy. I just read it, and I’m a woman, and that’s pretty much sexy.” And of the models:

Each one is different. Each one is like a little snowflake. There are different poses or scenarios or features or attributes. Whatever is there. I try to describe what I see, so they get a picture in their head.

Straightforward descriptions of naked people, delivered by someone who clearly loves her job, sound appealingly quirky — and potentially pretty hot. Rather than offering a conveyor belt of ladies who conform to the same pretty strict visual standards, Playboy for the blind appears dedicated to finding the individuality in each one — and delivering titillation in a format many of us aren’t used to (though blind customers have been able to access the recordings for years). Maybe Playboy should just shutter its print operation entirely and focus on Hanks’s taped version. Bonus: no airbrushing required.