Hustler is a monthly pornographic magazine published in the United States. It was first published in 1974 by Larry Flynt. It was a step forward from the Hustler Newsletter, which was cheap advertising for his strip club businesses at the time. The magazine grew from a shaky start to a peak circulation of around 3 million; it has since dropped to approximately 500,000. It shows explicit views of the female genitalia, becoming one of the first major US-based magazines to do so, in contrast with relatively modest publications like Playboy.