Internet darlings a far cry from the meek bunnies of Playboy fame

With every step in technology, the pornography industry has been
among the first in line to cash in and prove that sex will sell no
matter what the medium. And alongside the growing brigade of books,
photos, videos and Web sites featuring a model measuring
36″-24″-36″ minus her clothes, is an argument
refusing to climax: Does depicting nudity and sex empower women or
does it lead to their degradation and objectification?

But while the academics and the socially conscious are busily
exchanging pointed fingers, the Suicide Girls, an army of over 300
pierced and tattooed women, pose evocatively on the sidelines.
Scoffing and holding up their middle fingers in high contrast, edgy
photographs posted on the Web, they proclaim that not only is being
sexy fun, but the industry has chosen to ignore girls like them, so
screw it.

Fighting disillusionment with her Web site-building career after
the dot-com crash, Missy Suicide founded Suicide Girls with partner
Sean Suicide in the summer of 2001 as a way to keep her passion for
the Internet alive.

Originally based in their hometown of Portland, Oregon, they
worked to form an online space where nude photos of girls who
embrace an alternative aesthetic was only icing on the cake. The
site, www.suicidegirls.com, also offers a place for the models and
other subscribing members to do web journals, create message
boards, and foster a community dedicated to giving the fringe of
society its own place for congregation. Missy’s two years in
photography school (she photographs all of the models in the
vicinity), and her eye for what’s sexy in an area not yet
consumed by the market, didn’t hurt.

“I always loved pinup-girl photography, and I wanted to
shoot the girls that I knew ““ the fierce, tattooed,
alternative girls ““ with the same sort of respect and control
that the classic pinups were given,” Missy said, seated on
the back porch of the Suicide Girls Headquarters, now located in
the hills of Los Angeles. “Everybody that I know is pierced
or tattooed, but you don’t really see it anywhere in the
media, and so I wanted to show that these girls are just as
beautiful as the girls you find on the cover of many
magazines.”

What may have started as a genuine response to the lack of
representation of girls refusing to partake in the cookie-cutter
mold of the ideal female, quickly resounded in counterculture
communities across the world. Members like Digdug, who prefers to
use his screen name in order to protect his career as a freelance
graphic designer, instantly related to the pinup-style photos that
exchanged the plastic look cultivated from tanning booths, peroxide
and silicone for permanent ink and body piercings.

“I was, at the time, looking for something that was more
alternative, something that represented the kind of girls that I
was interested in or dated or knew, (as) opposed to the pictures
you see in Playboy or mainstream porn,” said Digdug, who
earned his masters of fine arts in sculpture at UCLA and now does
graphic design for the Suicide site.

Advertised mainly by word-of-mouth, as well as a few online
links, the community quickly spread internationally, and
23-year-old Missy found her business mentioned in a wealth of
publications like Spin, Rolling Stone and the New York Times as
Generation Y’s hottest prospect.

Now, with around 750,000 non-members roaming the site a week
(and an undisclosed number of paying members), 100-250 girls
applying every day for coveted Suicide Girl status, and promotional
tie-ins with record labels, tours and bands, it’s hard to say
whether Suicide Girls really promotes an underrepresented minority
or has merely revised pornography to better suit ““ and better
profit off of ““ today’s generation. Often an image of
exclusiveness and secrecy can give a product the exact allure it
needs to become explosively popular.

“It is mainstream,” said Shera Suicide, a
23-year-old model from Pennsylvania who took her Suicide Girls name
(the models all take on Suicide as a last name, which is a
reference from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel
“Survivor”) from her childhood hero and will be
performing in the Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour, which will make a
stop at The Knitting Factory tonight and Friday night. “I
worked at the E3 (an electronic entertainment exposition)
convention, and it was surprising. There were some very
mainstream-looking people that said “˜Oh, Suicide Girls, you
guys are great. I’m a member.’ And we’re like
“˜Oh really?’ Some of the members of the site get mad,
but if something’s good, it’s going to become
mainstream.”

And that’s the double-edged sword of the Internet. What
has allowed for communication among otherwise alienated or isolated
groups of people, has also thrust open the guarded and sacred
treasure chests of varying subcultures to the visions of the
businessman.

“That happens with any kind of underground subculture
““ it eventually gets copied by the mainstream so that it no
longer is underground,” Digdug said. “There were lots
of discussions a year or so ago about whether the site had lost its
edge. It’s not really underground anymore; the kind of things
that it is now associated with are things that are very
popular.”

But unlike the stereotypical successful businessman, Missy has
not been sitting back and lazily filling up on profit. Although
girls are currently paid only a flat fee of $300 for a set of 20 to
40 photos, their payment continues to increase with the expansion
of the company, and much of the profit generated by the site is
poured back into creating new products and features. Message
boards, discussion groups, merchandise, a national tour, a print
magazine in the works, a book to be released at the beginning of
June, and a heavy presence in the L.A. entertainment scene has
turned Suicide Girls into the Nike symbol of the now-grown-up
Nirvana generation. Having claim to the name Suicide and the
opportunities it opens for them far outweighs the monetary exchange
the girls are given for their work.

“I’m not being exploited, and I don’t think
any of the other girls feel they’re being exploited,”
Shera said, who worked a waitressing job before joining the
Burlesque Tour. “All the girls love doing this site. I
don’t like many people, and I’ve met so many cool
people through this site. It changes your life. It’s a big
community of cool chicks; that’s why I do it, because
obviously it’s not for the money.”

Both Missy and Shera are in agreement that Suicide Girls is more
than just a hip site, but a place that promotes the diversity of
women by showing they can validate their sexuality without
fulfilling the “stereotypical predesigned accepted fantasy of
what is sexy.”

But are they creating their own stereotype? When Digdug first
joined the site around two years ago, there were only 20 or 30
models. He would not only look at their photos, but also read their
journals and become interested in their personalities. Now, with
such a large number of girls, their individuality is easily lost
among the pages and pages of what could be construed as the
cookie-cutter punk or goth look, and Digdug uses the site now
mainly for its other features. He said that even his girlfriend
noted that the models seemed “interchangeable.”

“From a visual standpoint, it does look like a lot of
girls are similar,” Digdug said. “But when it comes
down to it, representations of women in media are pretty similar
across the board in body types. This site is just as guilty as any
fashion magazine, but that’s also what people want to look
at.”

Still, Suicide Girls does represent a certain
“alternative” alternative within a largely homogenized
industry, even if it is only skin deep. But even with their
assertive poses and bold stares into the camera, Suicide Girls
can’t escape the debate concerning whether this difference
makes it any more empowering for the females involved.

“I’m conflicted about whether it’s truly
empowering or not,” Digdug said. “It’s not a
black or white issue for me. If it’s empowering to them when
they shoot and present the pictures, it’s hard to think of it
being empowering when some guy in Omaha is looking at the pictures
and jacking off.”

In the end, for Missy, it comes down to choice. In selecting her
models out of the piles of applications, she makes sure the girls
are involved in everything from the scene, the style, and the poses
as well as ensuring that a girl knows that once she becomes a
Suicide Girl, the nature of the Web and the popularity of the site
will leave little room for secrecy or reversal. And, just as she
grants her models a choice, she is entitled to her own.

“I wouldn’t let anyone else photograph me,”
Missy said. “It’s like getting self-portraits.
I’m never happy, and I’m not as comfortable in front of
the camera so it’s ““ I don’t know ““ I just
don’t think they would come out very sexy. I’d be too
nervous.”