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/