SuicideGirls

During the summer of 2004, the Suicide Girls toured Canada and the United States to deliver a live burlesque show. This was their second time touring, the first time was during November 2003 to January 2004. This time, seven lasses who go by the names of Nixon, Stormy, Ravenisis, Sicily, Pearl, Reagan, and Shera took to the roads and skies in order to show North Americans a little flesh and a lot of attitude. Multiply-pierced, their bodies splashed with decorative ink, they come in peace to bring us a message of subversive pr0n. Live Nude Lesbians arrive jiggling to the theme songs of James Bond and Marilyn Manson.

But of course, this isn't just any burlesque show, right? It's the Suicide Girls! We are tired of centrefolds and divas, tired of the bones and the silicone. The smiling faceless countenances have blurred into a boring blob. And these girls are here to change all of that. They are different. They have a paysite where they pose nude like the others, except that this website has a community. These girls have blogs. They are people; they have stories to tell. They are the girl next door, just add some metal and post some pictures online. A new aesthetic is born!

A visit to their eponymous website may give a glimpse as to what exactly is different. Let's begin with what's similar: it's a porn paysite. Here the parallels end. The girls are their own managers, subjects in their own right. They have the ultimate word on what gets posted to the site, the poses in their pictures, how many fleshy bits the spectator gets to see or not. Some girls are only seminude, others let their legs do as the wings of an eagle in flight. Let's face the facts: men are willing to pay, and women are willing to show. The Suicide Girls make no pretense of this in their website. So why not let women control the content and distribution of porn?

Montréal was the first stop in Canada of their burlesque tour. The Mirror, a local free paper that tracks the hip ongoings of Montréal, ran a cover story of their upcoming performance. This was enough advertisement to convince me to go. The Mirror, anglophone as it may be, has nevertheless enough of an edge on Montréal youth culture to be a reputable source of opinions. I ran to the Suicide Girls website to verify some of the claims of The Mirror. Yes indeed, piercings, tattoos, and attitude galore. This is Something Interesting.

I talked about it with Talia, my girlfriend. She decided to come along too, probably just to humour me. She's accompanied before some of her bisexual friends to erotic shows. Although they do nothing for her, she assured me that she's "seen some pretty nasty shows" herself. My curiousity boiling, I bought two tickets and waited a day in anticipation.

I was first surprised by the venue where they would perform. It was a smokey and crowded lounge. Well, it's a burlesque show silly, what did you expect, the Globe Theatre? Let's have a look at the assembled rabble instead. Ah, here is the diversity I was looking for. Goths' night out in full garb, punker chicks emulating the performers of the night, metalheads, English-speaking francophones, middle-aged couples, lovely shaved butches clutching onto their girlfriends, and even quite a few clueless nerds like Talia and me. Watching this hoi polloi alone was enough bang for my buck. Together, we had to endure five songs from two unmemorable American bands. A very energetic pair they were, but let's not kid ourselves: we're here for the girls. Talia and I passed time by putting on a dirty dancing show of our own for our fellow patrons. We were both wearing earplugs to minimise eardrum damage, and we needed some distraction from the suffocating smoke of tobacco, marihuana, cloves, and anis.

Minutes later Shera, our first live Suicide Girl, came onstage and rewarded our patience with some onstage banter and introductions. After catcalls, cheers, and some return banter of our own she went offstage and was replaced by her cohorts and blasting music. The show had begun!

One nurse in black uniform accompanied by two assistants in scarce costume entered the stage. Undulating to the rhythm of a recognisable pop song, they mimed a familiar fantasy of every teenage boy who's ever gotten injured during the football game and sent away for a little professional attention. The catch, naturally, is that through a series of fortunate blunders, the ridiculous items of clothing one by one start to fall off. Oops, I meant to take your temperature, not to remove your halter top. Just like in real life. Eventually, in perfect synchrony with the end of the song, nothing but hip-high panties, g-strings and pasties disclosed every bit of ink or metal on these vixen's bodies. Exeunt, and the crowd roars.

Ever seen any other burlesque show? No matter if you haven't, for I'm sure you can imagine just how it proceeds. And on it goes. Another girl comes onstage, perhaps two or three, clad in a costume whose ease of removal cannot be denied, all the while miming familiar moments of the cultural collective. In this fashion the two blonde members of the troupe gave us their own impression of the theme song from James Bond's Goldfinger. While Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson plays, another couple retell the story of the seductress and the temperate youth. Mind you, this is a youth with breasts and a sock stuffed in her g-string. Burlesque and parody no doubt!

Some of the choreographed pieces are simply satire of every erotic cliché. Yes, a plumber, complete with a wig on her chest and a moustache, does ring the doorbell when the missus is skipping around in nothing but a towel, and a lesbian couple seems to get infinitely more aroused by the thought of being public to all of us. They demonstrate this by kissing onstage for our delectation.

Other pieces were much more original or energetic than that. Pearl, I believe was her nom de strip, brought an interesting prop: a hoola hoop. With forceful skill, her hips swung the hoop up and down her body as her arms worked on removing all that pesky clothing. I had to agree with the playful glances she threw over her sunglasses: it was kind of stuffy in our smokey lounge. But it wouldn't be until Marilyn Manson's hatred and ire rocked the stage that things really got hot in here. For then an angry girl came onstage decided to break some rules. She ran around holding scissors. She stabbed her adorable stuffed monkey with those scissors. And just to drive this point home, she bit her monkey and did her best to shake her head like an angry bitch that's trying to kill a rat. (Don't worry; no stuffed animals were harmed in the production of this show.) Of course, her clothes seemed to be restraining her freedom of expression, and off they go! Wailing and naked, it's like being born again.

Let us pause for a moment. Why are we here? What has brought this motley crew of spectators to this show? A novel aesthetic, remember. Gutterpunk, I have heard it called. And are we getting it? Well... That's hard to tell. Sure, these girls' bodies have modifications that differ from your average centrefold. Metals substitute metalloids. On the other hand, as Talia pointed out to me, they all have the same body! They're all white skinny girls! True, not exactly anorexic yet, and perhaps with somewhat varying cup size some well below B, but is straight and narrow really the only beautiful?

And what's with the pasties? Maybe Montréal strippers have spoiled me, and I'm being a snob. I'll say it anyway. Pasties are hypocrisy. We have already seen you naked, practically every inch of your physique has been revealed to us, and you are worried about us seeing your nipples? What kind of ambiguous prudery is this? I'll understand the modesty of keeping at least one piece of clothing below the waist, even if the local talent prides itself in foregoing it entirely. I don't see, however, the need of coloured duct tape crosses on twin mounds of flesh. How very un-Canadian. Why not cater to your audience? Some lessons are to be learned from street Saint Catherine's Club Supersexe. Not all elements of traditional burlesque shows need to be preserved.

This is not my greatest disillusion. I could even accept an argument that pasties still leave something to the imagination, in accordance with a traditional burlesque show. Rather, I just don't see what is new here. Judging by how the cheers and catcalls in the audience waned as the show progressed, I was not the only one who was let down. Let's consider a few things. These girls have their porn site with a twist, and yet, Playboy still negotiated to have in their own website a different Suicide Girl each week. They purport to be celebrating the beauty in diversity and imperfection, while on the other hand all the "imperfections" are artificial enhancements to their bodies that otherwise remain in perfect accord with the average centrefold.

My complaint is not that these girls have become more mainstream. It is not that they have "sold out", that their popularity is their own curse. If Rolling Stone and The New Yorker have run stories of them, all the better. Rather, there is nothing to see here. Perhaps the website and the blogs have something for us, perhaps that is where the true spirit of these girls lie. For now, we're moving right along.

So we did. Talia and I did not stay for the much-lauded chocolate syrup finale. We have our own ways of getting sticky and gooey. We left early to catch the last train back home. The reality of our own ending was much better than any fantasy the Suicide Girls could have provided.

As of this noding, a movie preview of the Suicide Girls burlesque show can be downloaded from http://suicidegirls.com/live/

Note: This was written in early 2005 and I haven't updated it since, despite the exponential growth of SuicideGirls. I've leaving it as-is, below, so I can look fondly back on the site's pre-myspaceification days. That said, some of the information below may be outdated.

SuicideGirls > Pin-Up Punk Rock and Goth Girls

Apart from the burlesque stage tours that have recently thrust the SuicideGirls into the public consciousness, in the beginning it was, and remains, a website and virtual community. The owners, Missy (no last name specified) and Sean Suhl (of Seanbaby fame), first started photographing models in late 2001, and the website went public in May 2002. Its focus, as may be implied by the site's name, is on "alternative" girls (aka "altporn") modeling nude for photosets of varying size, usually between 25 and 75 pictures, as well as occasionally-released QuickTime videos, set to whatever alternative music is du jour at the time, of the models in action at 30fps. At first there were only about a dozen such girls, but as the site grew, it started soliciting more models and its collection of photosets blossomed from a few dozen to several hundred, then to several thousand as the years progressed. The "SuicideGirls" moniker is said to have been coined by author Chuck Palahniuk in his novel Survivor, whose residence in Portland coincided with SG's original headquarters. He's also one of a handful of actual celebrities to use the site (Wil Wheaton is one, Courtney Love is another), and he's given a few interviews to SG's press staff.

The financial successes of the site and its related odds and ends (the burlesque tour, a coffee table book, SG-brand merchandise, and of course membership fees) are ample enough to keep a permanent staff of two coders, four support HR/support technicians, two talent scounts, two principal photographers, and enough in reserve for traveling abroad to do photoshots (i.e., Missy ventured to Italy last year specifically to shoot half a dozen models).

I first joined the site in early 2003 (and I'm still a member; it's worth it), paying $9.00 USD for a month's worth of access. The community aspect is much like any other website community; message boards, usergroups, blogs, interviews with public figures, and even news headlines and advice columns all add to the community factor, although the thread keeping the whole together was the ability for the users to interact directly with the models. The models, as varied as they are fulsome, also interact with the users, usually through comments in users' blogs or in the models' own blogs, or any number of other aforementioned site features. At first most of the girls were quite goth, with a few punk types thrown in for flavour, but as the site grew, the typical Suicide Girl could be the mainstay goth or punk, or also emo, hippie, raver, and even a few rather plain (but nonetheless beautiful) girls, all ranging in age from 18 (the minimum acceptable age) to a few girls in their late 30s. SG even boasts (well, not openly) the fact that they have a transwoman model (and no, I don't know who it is). There were about 90 such girls when I joined; as I write this, there are 564, with more being added every day. As expected with a community like this, there is a rate of turnover among the models and users; some models retire, others quit to join other, similar sites, some are forcibly booted off for various reasons (usually unrelenting meanness towards particular users). The user base stays fairly steady at about 100,000 members, and they too leave, while new people join, if they can no longer afford the membership fees, or for flaming other users or the models themselves.

Interestingly, the entire site, backend and all, is assembled by a handful of the models themselves; Missy, the owner, acts as a general administrator and the chief photographer out of SG's Los Angeles base of operations (though she has not, as yet, modeled); Olivia first came on as a coder and completely redesigned the site to its current (ever-upgraded) state, and then became a model, lauded for her size 32G breasts, as well; Erin and Katie, both models, handle model/photo selection and merchandising, respectively; London is a model first and foremost (with about a dozen photosets of her own) and a photographer second -- usually she does the traveling for photography missions rather than Missy. Olivia, Katie, and LE handle support issues. Sean handles the business end of the site (he doesn't model, of course; there are no male models in any of the photosets). Many of the models photograph themselves or have friends photograph them, or hire a professional (such as the notable Lithium Picnic, or the actress-cum-photographer Paget Brewster) if they're so inclined. Many, many photosets are sent in, though reportedly only 15-20% of them are bought and put on display on the site.

The photosets display a great deal of variety, though multiple tattoos and piercings are largely the norm. They break down into three categories -- single girl, multiple girl, and candid.

• Single girl sets are just that; one model and a background, sometimes with various props or themes. These sets range from very softcore to very light X-rated, all depending on what parts of her body the model wants to show (i.e., not every model is comfortable with between-the-knees type shots). A good example of a single girl themed set would be the one entitled "Lydia" by the model known as LuluMae, wherein she reenacts the "my life is a dark room" scene from the movie Beetle Juice, complete with costuming, cobwebby attic, and handwritten suicide note. Also, SG very occasionally attracts public personalities to pose for the site, including Arista Records heavy metal singer Lennon Murphy, and Zia McCabe of the Dandy Warhols, who was seven months pregnant during the shoot for her first photoset and has inspired a few of the other models to work while visibly pregnant.



• Multiple girl sets always feature light lesbian themes, mostly just posing together but sometimes with light contact (kissing, breast play, mutual stripping). Mostly these sets aim for the titillation factor; what could be more beautiful than two stunning goth girls, one with the other's nipple ring between her teeth? Some of the models are actually lesbians (though they are a small minority), and so a large percentage of their photosets tends to be of the two girl variety.



• Candid sets are mostly random shots from parties thrown at SG-themed events. In the earlier days of the site, these were mostly private parties at someone's home, and would involve, for example, a dozen girls stripping, getting drunk, and playing spin the bottle. Common in the earlier days when the models were not as plentiful, but pretty rare nowadays. Most candids now involve the annual SG Prom, a bicoastal event (one in San Francisco, one in Toronto, both on the same night) for models and members.

Up until about a year ago, the site would have a "new girl day," usually a Friday, where a new model would be introduced with a photoset. When the model selection staff started loosening their standards and accepting more girls to model, they started introducing a new girl every day, along with another photoset from an already-established model, or a multiple girl set. Many of the models have been with the site from its inception to present day, and some of them have dozens of photosets available for viewing. However, due to the near-constant influx of new models, most models now average about one set posted per year, though a few are so popular that they shoot and sell several photosets per year, while most of the other models have their photosets put into a queue which moves really slowly while the big names bypass the queue completely. There are now SuicideGirls in almost every corner of the world, even Antarctica (one of the models regularly summers there, working for Raytheon at McMurdo Station). The largest international contingent comes from South America, particularly Chile.

Most of the models are American or Canadian, with sizable citizens of the Scandinavian countries, England, Australia and all over Europe. All of them speak and write English, which is a requirement for acceptance, though some don't speak/write it very well, but that's easily forgiven. A relatively new feature is voice introductions by the models for their photosets, which is (IMO) a rather cute idea -- you get to hear little sonnets or short speeches in a wide variety of exotic accents. The reasoning behind this idea is, of course, to bring the models closer to the user base, and most of the new features implemented share that cause. It's infinitely more personal than, say, Maxim or Stuff Magazine, and also unlike typical mens' magazines, the site is extremely girl-positive and feminist. SG's mission statement is that a woman shouldn't be afraid to be herself, and that nudity is an extension of that. Given the 500+ models and 100,000+ users, this philosophy has gone over spectacularly well. The user base isn't all testosterone-poisoned frat boys, either (though they have a definite presence); it includes a large number of women (lesbian, bisexual, and otherwise), male feminists, and even bisexual and gay men because they dig the fashion and style. There's a small contingent of transgendered people as well, there for exactly the same reason as everyone else -- they enjoy immersing themselves in the free-spirited nature of the site, and find pleasure by involving themselves with the community and looking at (not leering at, as is the case with most porn site visitors) non-traditional beauties in various states of undress, and for the opportunity to converse with said beauties and other users with whom they share various interests.

In conclusion, Suicide Girls is a fun place to be, inasmuch as one can "be" on a website. It's not as intellectually stimulating as E2 (and quite a lot of members type like AOLers who flunked out of the third grade), and not as stiff and glossy as Penthouse.com (or other well-known porn sites). It's definitely worth the membership fees (which max out at $48.00 USD per year, if you pay annually), and overall a positive experience for anyone who isn't a total prude.

SuicideGirls > Pin-Up Punk Rock and Goth Girls