[throwaway4311]

For National Geographic, I wonder if there is another dimension that isn’t talked about: Nudity

For a significant portion of time, National Geographic was the only culturally acceptable and accessible place in the United States one could see photographs of nude women (and men).

I would guess there were millions of boys across multiple generations in the United States who saw their fist photo of a nude woman in National Geographic.

Even in the otherwise prudish Bible Belt of the United States, where Playboy would be completely verboten, even the church pastor would have an entire bookshelf devoted to National Geographic.

Then with evolving social mores, Nation Geographic had to cut down on the nudity. In addition, nudity became very, very accessible because of the Internet. These two trends cut down on one of the hidden reasons people purchased National Geographic.

[bregma]

The nudity was tolerated as long as the subjects were natives. No naked "regular people" appeared in the pages of National Geographic. Which does point to one of the causes for people complaining that it's gone down hill and isn't what it used to be, and other code language.

[JoeAltmaier]

One exception I recall, a family of anthropologists were dancing with natives in a village and one photo showed their teen daughter with the others, topless as well. I remember it well.

[earthboundkid]

Oh man, I remember my cousin telling me that his dad had nude NatGeos in his basement. :-)

Kids today would see more graphic stuff just by googling for their favorite cartoon character. :-O