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Playboy's Bad Bunny cover is a welcome sign that masculinity is transforming

<span>Photograph: John Parra/Getty Images for Spotify</span>
Photograph: John Parra/Getty Images for Spotify

Playboy has relaunched as a digital magazine and done so with a bang. The cover features the Puerto Rican singer and rapper Bad Bunny. Excluding the Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner, Bad Bunny is the first man to appear on the cover in the magazine’s history.

In the cover shoot photos, Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is channeling Aphrodite’s Erotes with a crown of golden laurels, bare-chested and draped in a Versace toga. In other photos he’s posing with massive chains, showing off luxurious golden nail art and some embedded lip art (tiny Playboy bunnies).

Over the last five years, Playboy – formerly a byword for outdated sexual mores and extremely rigid notions of maleness – has undergone a fascinating evolution. It has embraced more artistic, soft-focused erotic imagery and at one point even experimented with banning nudes. In 2017 the magazine featured its first transgender playmate, French model Ines Rau, on its pages. Hefner personally chose Rau shortly before he died.

Playboy’s decision to put Bad Bunny on the cover aligns itself with American GQ’s decision in December to feature Jennifer Lopez on the cover of their Men of The Year issue, and American GQ’s October 2019 new masculinity issue, which delved into changing norms of masculinity. Both magazines are working hard to tap into an era in which gender is more open-ended.

Bad Bunny was a good person for Playboy to highlight. From the start of his career, Martínez has pushed against the expected masculine tropes for a male pop star, combining in-your-face showmanship with an embrace of generational-shifting views on gender. The journey has been sometimes jarring and occasionally clumsy – meshing, as it has, attention-grabbing visuals and nuanced messaging – but ultimately important. Whether appearing on the red carpet in a canary-colored floral tuxedo or dying his hair a shocking bubblegum pink, Martínez has used his public appearances and music videos to express his evolving views on gender.

In the music video Caro, we see him getting his nails painted before he transforms into a woman with cropped hair. At the end of the promo Martínez reappears and makes out with his female alter ego. In Yo Perreo Sola, he’s in a leather dress, thigh-high six-inch heels and later in a blonde wig and beret twerking against a version of himself. It ends with the message: “Si no quiere bailar contigo respeta ella perrea sola” – “if she does not want to dance with you, respect her, she’ll dance alone.” This pro-woman, anti-harassment message is one he underlined in his Playboy interview: “Women are human beings and deserve respect and the same treatment as anybody else.” Earlier this year, when he performed on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, he unbuttoned his suit jacket to reveal a T-shirt that read: “They killed Alexa. Not a man in a skirt,” in reference to the death of Alexa Negrón Luciano, a homeless transgender woman who was shot dead in Puerto Rico.

Martínez’s fashion style is as multi-threaded as his music. He combines the high end streetwear associated with the trap music scene with the design-heavy shirts of the salsa scene and the gold chains of old school rap. And he’s a devoted advocate of the “menicure” (the male manicure), shifting the dial on conversations around male beauty. In 2018, when he was denied a manicure from a nail salon, he wrote on Instagram, “What year is this? Fucking 1960?” Indeed, during this year’s Superbowl, he did a guest verse during Shakira’s performance showing off his cracked glass, silver nail art.

Related: Bad Bunny: does a straight man deserve to be called a 'queer icon'?

But the preconceived ideas of how men in the public eye should present their masculinity persists – not too flamboyant, not too disruptive. And for Latino men, there are further layers of prejudice and expectation. When he posted on Instagram in March about his iridescent manicure, one comment in Spanish read: “(you’re) helping the youth distort their minds and go against what God has created.”

The visuals of his Playboy cover feel decadent, even otherworldly, but on social media Martínez – who is dating the model Gabriela Berlingeri – has sometimes been accused of exploiting “queer aesthetics” for profit. Yet this feels like a simplification: some of the best pop stars, from Little Richard to David Bowie, have always challenged conventional masculinity. And for his fans, there’s something much deeper at play. “He resonates with a generation that is, at the moment, discovering who they really are,” fellow singer Ricky Martin told Rolling Stone. “It is very refreshing to witness in an industry known for its machismo.” It’s about time.

  • Priya Elan is the Guardian’s deputy fashion editor