suicide girls

SuicideGirls is an altporn website that features softcore pornography and text profiles of goth, punk, emo and indie-styled young women, who themselves are known as the "Suicide Girls". The site also incorporates styles reminicent of the 1940's and 50's pin-up models. The website also functions as an online community with member profiles and message boards, and features interviews with major figures in popular and alternative culture. Access to most of the site requires a paid membership.

The SuicideGirls website and concept was created by the founding partners of parent company SG Services, Inc., "Spooky" (Sean Suhl) and "Missy Suicide" (Selena Mooney) in late 2001, and based in Portland, Oregon. In 2003, the site operations moved to Los Angeles, California. Suhl and Mooney perhaps facetiously claim they started the site "just to see hot punk rock girls naked." Mooney has also stated that the purpose of the site is to give women control over how their sexuality is depicted. The site is privately co-owned; in addition to Suhl and Mooney, co-owners include Steve Simitzis (server admin and SG user, "s5") and his wife Olivia Ball (site programmer and Suicide Girl). [1]

The term "suicide girl" is credited to a usage by Fight Club author, and Portland resident, Chuck Palahniuk, in his novel Survivor. Mooney confirms this novel as the source for the name in the Suicide Girls FAQ where she adds,

"Suicide girls is a term my friends and I had been using to describe the girls we saw in Portland's Pioneer Square with skateboards in one hand, wearing a Minor Threat hoodie, listening to Ice Cube on their iPods while reading a book of Nick Cave's poetry. They are girls who didn't fit into any conventional sub-culture and didnt [sic] define themselves based on musical taste like punk, metal, goth, etc. I think the only classifications right now people identify with are mainstream and outside of mainstream. That is why the site is called SuicideGirls."

Mooney also states that if she had known how popular the site was going to be, she might have thought the name out more than she did.

The use of "suicide" as a pun for those who "dyed by their own hand" (the source of the song title "Suicide Blonde" by INXS) may also have been relevant. As a trademark applied to the website, and related merchandise and media, the term "SuicideGirls" is a single word, though this camel notation is often violated by external sources who split it into two words. The girls themselves, on the other hand are referred to as "Suicide Girls"[2].

Website features

The website does not rely on model searches, but rather reviews international submissions at the rate of around 200 a week from women who want to become Suicide Girls. Originally, only one or two of these were typically accepted per week, though this eventually increased to one every day. As of March, 2006 the website features over one thousand Suicide Girls, each billed simply under a first name or one-word nickname. Most of the models have dyed hair, multiple piercings, and/or tattoos, in contrast to the often tanned, silicone-enhanced, bleached-blondes of stereotypical pornography. They are represented by nude photo shoots as well as self-written profiles and journal entries which they update as often as they see fit with their thoughts, snapshots, anecdotes, rants, and whatever else they wish to include. The Suicide Girls themselves have control over which images are included of them and how they are portrayed, and the photographs are generally intended both as an homage to classic pin-up art and a portrayal of alternative images of beauty. The level of nudity is approximately the same as that which appears in Playboy; full nudity is required of all the models, but spread-eagle shots are by no means required, and penetration is strictly banned. For various reasons, some Suicide Girls have decided to leave the site where they are then added to the site's "Archive," which contains over 100 previously active Suicide Girls. One notable Suicide Girl is Zia McCabe, the keyboard player of The Dandy Warhols, who posted a set of nude photos on March 8, 2005 that were taken while she was pregnant.

SuicideBoys

A SuicideBoys group was added as a subgroup to the site. The same SuicideGirls framework and aesthetic is applied to potential male models. Within the many member groups existing on the website, covering topics from specific people to regional notes, the over 6,500-member SuicideBoys is one of the most popular, along with the "potential model" group. The SuicideBoys however, do not hold contracts with the site and post sets voluntarily, and without pay.

Website demographics

SuicideGirls claims that 43 percent of the website's paid members are women (which would be atypical for an ordinary porn website), and that the nude photos rate less than 20 percent of the website's traffic. Members are often active in organizing meetings and events offline, and the company also sponsors many itself.

Media coverage and spinoffs

Positive reviews of the SuicideGirls site have been featured in Rolling Stone, Wired, The New Yorker and other mainstream magazines; it was also featured in an HBO Real Sex special and on Nightline. The literary magazine Fence used a Suicide Girl for the cover of a recent issue. Rock musician Courtney Love is a member of the site, and, in the past, has written "rambling, stream-of-consciousness posts on the site."[3] She also brought along several Suicide Girls during an appearance on MTV. Sixty-six Suicide Girls appeared in the PROBOT music video "Shake Your Blood".

Other celebrity members include:

• Former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry [4]
• CSI Creator Anthony Zuiker [5]
• Comic Book Author Roman Dirge [6]
• Geek author and actor, Wil Wheaton [7]
• Author Dr. Frank [8], also of The Mr. T Experience
• R. Stevens [9], author of the webcomic Diesel Sweeties.
• Actor Hal Sparks [10]
• Rapper Slug from Atmosphere
• Rapper Murs from Living Legends
• Musician Mike Doughty[11], of Soul Coughing
• Author Susannah Breslin [12]
• Author Beth Gottfried [13]

Wheaton is an editor for the SuicideGirls Newswire; Breslin, Gottfried and Dr. Frank have all previously been editors on the Newswire.

SuicideGirls has also branched out into a coffee table book printing images and Suicide Girl profiles from the website, and a traveling burlesque show featuring several of the Suicide Girls. A print magazine entitled SG Pin-Up was also scheduled for release, but after being delayed due to contract and licensing issues with some contributing photographers, the magazine was canceled. SuicideGirls also had a brief partnership with Playboy magazine, which regularly featured Suicide Girls on its own website.

While SuicideGirls was not the first altporn site, the enormous success of SuicideGirls has inspired many similarly-themed websites and played a major role in establishing altporn as an important pornographic genre.

Former model backlash

In 2005, a number of the paid models were reported to have resigned from the site or had their memberships revoked in connection with allegations of censorship and mistreatment of the models by the site's owners. [14] Numerous members have reported that their journals and message board posts were removed because they criticized management. This practice of deleting either objectionable content, disagreeable content, or membership altogether is very rare, and is reffered to by Suicide Girls staffers as "zotting".

A primary issue is the SuicideGirls modeling contract, which prevents its models (including past models, for a time) from working for competing sites or agencies (specifically those dealing in nude photography and/or erotica). [15] In response to this, the SuicideGirls website states that only models "who have chosen to be involved in special projects" sign an exclusivity agreement in addition to their standard modeling contract barring them working with direct competitors for a certain amount of time. [16] However, the standard modeling agreement for SuicideGirls includes a "Non-Competition" clause, barring any model that signs it from modeling for an "SG Competitor" during the one or more years in which the model is under contract with SuicideGirls, plus an additional two years. [17]

Many of the former models involved in the 2005 dispute are now involved with the competing sites GodsGirls and Deviant Nation. The owners of both of these sites have been sued by SuicideGirls LLC for hiring models who were allegedly still under contract with SuicideGirls and for allegedly violating SuicideGirls tradmarks. Several former models were also threatened with legal action. [18] [19] As of June 2006, none of SuicideGirls LLC's lawsuits or threatened actions against former models or competing sites has resulted in a victory for the plaintiff.

Critics have also charged that SuicideGirls has dishonestly claimed to be a women-owned and women-operated business, when it is actually co-owned by Suhl. There has been no evidence, however, that the company has ever denied his involvement, and he has always been an active personality on the website.

In response to the controversy, the website set up a page called "Trash Can," on which Missy addresses the various allegations and current models relay their positive experiences with the site.[20]

Image removal

Also in September 2005, SuicideGirls announced [21] that it had removed a large number of images from its pages, in an attempt to avoid scrutiny in the U.S. Justice Department's so-called "war on porn." The images involved depicted bondage and sadomasochism and real or simulated blood or weapons. Communications from the Justice Department indicated that images of that type might be the subject of obscenity prosecutions, though SuicideGirls was not mentioned as a target. Because Suicide Girls was never mentioned as a target, some have accused the site of using the "war on porn" as an excuse to remove some images that they no longer wanted on their site while shifting the blame for the image removal to the Justice Department.

External links

• SuicideGirls.com Warning: contains nudity
• SuicideGirlX
• sgirls: ex-Suicide Girls LiveJournal community

Articles

• SuicideGirls: Press Clippings
• "AMERICAN GOtH: SuicideGirls.com Reveals More Than Skin" by Rebecca Gray, AVN Online, December 1, 2001.
• "Profit in a tangled web" by Jim Redden, Portland Tribune, April 2, 2002. (Archived at Internet Archive)
• "Alt.XXX: Sub-Pop Porn", SexTV, November 9, 2002. (Links to RealPlayer video) Warning: contains nudity
• "Cynical, Bitter, Jaded as Hell. Also Naked." by Nick Phillips, City Pages November 27, 2002.
• "Sex, Dreads, and Rock 'n' Roll" by Annie Tomlin, Bitch, December, 2002.
• "Orgasm Addict: Punk porn gets off on the Internet" by Chris Ziegler, Orange County Weekly, January 23, 2003.
• "Maximum Tits 'N' Ass" by Sean Nelson, The Stranger, February 5, 2003.
• "The Calculated Assault of Suicidegirls.com" by Amy Roe, Willamette Week, March 19, 2003.
• "Live Nude Punks" by Julia Gaynor, Los Angeles CityBeat, September 18, 2003.
• "Suicide Is Painless: How Two Mainstream Dot-Com Burnouts Turned an Art Project into an Empire" by Erik McFarland, AVN Online, May 1, 2004.
• "SuicideGirls Gone AWOL" by Randy Dotinga, Wired September 28, 2005.
• "SuicideGirls revolt" by Deirdre Fulton, Portland Phoenix, October 7, 2005.
• "Pinup or Shut Up" by José Ralat Maldonado, New York Press, October 8, 2005.
• "Obscene But Not Heard" by Peter Koht, Metroactive, January 4, 2006.
• "Suicide Defense" by Ian Demsky, Willamette Week, January 11, 2006.
• "Nude Awakening" by Jessica Hopper and Julianne Shepherd, Spin, February, 2006.
• "Suicide Girls Gone Mad" by Esther Haynes, Jane.
• "Blueblood responds to rumors regarding SuicideGirls content sale" by Ed Roth, Altporn.net, June 5th, 2006.

Miscellaneous

• "Oregon State Business Registry Name Search"