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Drift Net > digital culture The Most Beautiful Girls on the Planet
Sex, Love and Suicide: Drifnet catches up with 26 year old alternative porn queen Missy Suicide for some ONE ON ONE LIVE ACTIONIf you haven't run into the Suicide Girls' website, you may have caught their new photo compilation, simply titled "SuicideGirls", in stores. After its June 1st release, it quickly rose to the top five of Amazon.com's arts and photography section. If for some reason you managed to miss that, you may have seen flyers and posters for the Suicide Girls burlesque show, which has been touring across America for several months. Panned by some critics as "not an actual burlesque show", (How low class!) the show features, among other things, women being smeared in chocolate as well as reenactments from the film Reservoir dogs. Both projects come on the heels of an aborted Suicide Girls print magazine, which had been tentatively titled SG Pin Up. (Advertisers unsurprisingly were frightened of the word "Suicide" being used in the title.) While the Suicide Girls seem to be expanding their brand into the "real world", the site's founders are intent on keeping their members-only website as the focus of the brand. The site, which has inspired countless copycat sites, allows users to view a gallery of 325 girls as well as participate in the online Suicide Girls community, which includes bulletin boards, personalized journals and member profiles. Not bad at all for a website that broadcasts "punk rock," "goth" and "alternative" nudes. But may be that off-kilter, slightly asymmetrical aspect of the product that allures customers. Or it could just be the best marketing of a porn site since the advent of the Web. Or maybe people just like nekkid girls. Driftnet spoke with "Missy Suicide", one of the site's founders and photographers about the origins of the Suicide Girls project and its impact on culture.  Portland's "Missy Suicide", eyes heavenward. Copyright 2004 SG Services, Inc. DN:You grew up in Portland, Oregon. Why does everyone in New York want to move to Portland? Do cute vegan hipsters spurt from the trees like Cabbage Patch Kids and hand out acoustic guitars? Missy: Portland has the most bookstores and strip clubs per capita in the nation. It is a magical place where trends never die and people are accepted for who they are. 1977 punk rockers live harmoniously with 1969 hippies. Everyone does something creative to pass the rainy indoor hours. Rent is cheap and the Oregon Health plan provides lowcost health insurance. It is a magical wonderland. DN: Suicide Girls is successful for a lot of reasons, but the most obvious is that you were timely and insightful enough to hit on an untapped market. A site like Disinfo.com, which seems to be thriving through a series of total flukes, can make the same claims. This market in particular; countercultural, intellectual, and left- leaning individuals who enjoy meme-spliced hot pink pomo smut, might not have been so obvious a few years ago. How did you know your audience would be so responsive? Was there something in the air? Missy: I had no idea the site would be so popular. The site started as an art project/experiment. Something to feel passionately for and get excited about while working on mundane corporate freelance projects. I had no idea the demur have such an appeal. I just wanted to show that the girls that I knew, the pierced, tattooed, Suicide Girls were just as sexy as the airbrushed wonders found in most magazines and ten times as sexy. DN: Were there any websites whose financial model, or design model you were influenced by when you started Suicide Girls? Missy: Sean and I had worked on several community and music sites in the past and I think that experience DN: Much of the time, "counter-cultural" types might define themselves by what they wear. How do you maintain a unique identity for your models while at the same time selling them based on what they aren't wearing? Missy: Attitude is the most telling accessory. That comes through whether the girls are dressed or undressed. I try very hard to make sure the girls' personalities come through in the pictures and give them the freedom to express themselves through their images. DN: One thing you've managed to do, which is incredibly difficult to do on the Web, particularly if you are a pornography site, is create a brand identity for yourself. As one might refer to "Kleenex" when speaking of tissues, one might now refer to nude web-hipsters as "Suicide Girls". How did you manage the way Suicide Girls was advertised, designed and made available for consumption in a way that preserved its identity as one unique from similar sites on the Web? What gives Suicide Girls its identity?  Cover to the first Suicide Girls anthology. Copyright SG Services, 2004 Missy: SuicideGirls is a pin-up site. We treat the girls and the brand with respect. We listen to our members and observe how they use the site. We create functionality that our members want and can use. We try very hard to only involve ourselves in projects that will make our members and models proud to be associated with the site. DN: Suicide Girls opened the door for many other small Alternative Porn sites. Do you find that competition arose that started chipping away at your base, or do you think your audience remained more or less loyal? Missy: SuicideGirls is a pin-up site, we do what we know, what we love and what we are passionate about. You can't make everyone happy all of the time, you can only be true to yourself and hope that people respond. DN: Missy Elliot or Bikini Kill, and why? I'll go first: Missy Elliot. When I'm dancing to Missy Elliot, there's a chance I might get laid afterwards. When I'm dancing to Bikini Kill, I'm probably bleeding or being knocked up for dope money afterwards. Missy: Missy Elliot because she is strong, in control and lays down dope beats. Bikini Kill for nostalgia, I saw them at a Skate World on Easter when Iwas 16. They were a big influence on my youth. DN: Browsing the Suicide Girls' catalog, what strikes me is the sheer amount of splintering sub-sub-cultures all branded under "counter-culture". There are darkly clad women who read Aleister Crowley and H.P.Lovecraft, listen to Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy, and rock out with cyber-goth wear. There's bisexual vegan hipsters who read Jeanette Winterson and Tom Robbins, listen to Ani Difranco and Tegan and Sarah and enjoy soy milk. Is it weird to see a polysemous mixture like this under a single brand? What is "counter-culture" and what is "mainstream", to you? Missy: We don't claim any one sub-culture. I think branding people by the music that they listen to is as outdated as John Hughes movies. I don't know anyone who claims to be goth or punk anymore. I think the only classifications are mainstream and outside of mainstream. That is why the site is called SuicideGirls. It was a term that my friends and I had been using to describe the girls who hung out in Pioneer Square in Portland. the girls with skateboards in one hand, wearing a Minor Threat hoodie, listening to Ice Cube on their I-pods while reading a book of Nick Cave's poetry. Girls that didn't take anyones shit andrefused to fit into any one category. DN: I've got this really pathetic thing where every girl I fall in love with looks in some small way like Tank Girl or talks like Kathy Acker. Are there more of me out there? Are fetishistic nerdy comic dweebs keeping you in business? Missy: If it makes you feel any better the most popular interview on our site is with Jhonen Vasquez. People went crazy for that interview. I feel it is safe to say that most of our members have read a comic book or two. DN:Were there any rocky financial roads you had to overcome while developing Suicide Girls, or that you are still going through? Missy:We have been very lucky and very frugal. The site has always paid for itself and we always reinvest. DN: There's really nothing sexy about suicide at all. Unless it's auto-erotic asphyxiation. Or the band Suicide, which is pretty fucking sexy. F'real, yo. Missy: The term was taken from the Chuck Palahnuick book, Survivor.There are no dark sinister undertones. If I had known the site would be so popular then I might have thought the name out a bit more. Like I said earlier, it was just a term my friends and I had been using to describet he girls we knew that didn't fit into any conventional subculture identities based on musical taste. In starting the site I built it for my friends, I didn't really think it would become so popular. It is a name that no one forgets though. DN: Is the atmosphere for left of center pornography expanding or shrinking? What do you think your impact has been on sexual culture, net culture, and culture at large been so far? What would you like it to be? Missy: I would like to expand society's idea of what beautiful is. I think there is something far more sexy about real women rather than the unattainable, surgically enhanced figures presented in most magazines. The girls on the site are presented exactly how they want to be and I think they are the most beautiful girls on the planet. DN: Please talk about web cams, exhibitionist pornography, and the Web a little. Do you think web-cams empower people like the Suicide Girls, or is the audience's desire for up to the moment window gazing turning their identities into narratives? In other words, is the webcam phenomenon shrinking privacy or extending our cultural voice? Missy: I think webcams provide the ultimate forum for exhibitionism and voyeurism. It is a perfect marriage of performer and audience. Everyone is looking for the "Rear Window" moment, when something exciting happens but 99% of the time webcams are boring as hell. I never look at webcams, I have too much else going on to sit and wait for something exciting. I like my life and find plenty of excitement there, I don't need to watch low quality video updated every 15 seconds of someone typing on their computer or sleeping, even if they are naked. DN: If you're not doing anything Friday night, my mom said I could borrow the keys to her Chevy. Would you, like, wanna get milkshakes or something? I mean if you're not doing anything. On Friday. Cause I'm not. Missy: I am lactose intolerant but I could be up for a movie if you buy the popcorn and Red Vines. xoxo -Missy |
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 08.21.2004 - 4:06 pm EDT"Roshan shares a personal anecdote about P2P software"
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