And what’s even more surprising is that I’m talking about looking at the men’s fashions.

OK, it’s taken me a couple of months to admit this, but I’ve been secretly thumbing through Playboy once a month at my desk ever since one of the marketing directors put me on the mailing list this spring (Thanks, Jessica).

When I first got the call, I had to stifle a laugh and a lot of sarcasm. The pitch started something like this, “Hi, I’d like to talk to you about Playboy’s new international fashion section…” I checked the caller I.D. on my phone and my eyes immediately rolled skyward.

“Excuse me.”

“Um, yes, we’re putting a focus on international fashion and I was wondering if you’d be interested in reviewing our current spread of Playboy fashions.”

My brows furrowed as I realized that she was indeed serious. There is apparently a Playboy fashion director by the name of Joseph DeAcetis. Go figure. It still sounded like a joke.

When I think of Playboy, clothes are not the first, second, third, fourth, fifth or 50th thing to come to mind. Isn’t it all about naked girls and those riveting profiles of contemporary innovators that guys always pretend to be reading.

I had to quickly composed myself and by then I realized that I was totally curious. I haven’t peeked at a Playboy since I was a kid and some icky boy that I would later beat up showed me naughty girl parts. By the time the copy arrived at the office in a plain envelope, I had all but forgotten about the previous conversation. I tore open the seal and literally jumped, quickly covered the publication with some papers from my desk and glanced over my shoulders with a little embarrassment.

It took me a full half-day to work up the courage to flip through it and then I was a little disappointed. I had to flip through half the magazine to find the naughty pictures and even those were not really that naughty. And then, oh, I remembered that I was really supposed to be looking at the fashions.

I located the spread and thought it was actually pretty tasteful and sexy in a cool, hip sexy sort of way, not the unsavory East side strip club sort of way that I’d imagined. This particular Playboy fashion shoot ran in more than 20 international additions. The focus was on the boy in Playboy with designers like Etro, Versace, Burberry, Giorgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferré, Valentino, Varvatos, Canali, Issey Miyake, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Roberto Cavalli, Calvin Klein Collection, Yohji Yamamoto, Ermenegildo Zegna, and Hugo Boss. A woman appears as eye candy, but her style fits with the upscale males. She was not objectified, she was merely present and appropriately so.

In later Playboy fashion spreads, there were occasions when women didn’t appear at all. Let me just say that again. A Playboy fashion spread featuring only full-clothed men. Now, if that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

The latest Playboy fashion feature features a Chicago Band called the White Ties (shown at right, click the photo to enlarge).

The whole notion of manly men feelings secure looking at pictures of well-dressed men certainly raises interesting questions about today’s masculinity. I, for one, am thrilled that unabashedly heterosexual men feel comfortable flaunting their fashion prowess. Not just as metrosexuals but as men. And I know it’s true because Playboy tells me so.