Suicide Girls

Photo by Macwagen

Interviews with MISSY SUICIDE (co-founder) & FANNY SUICIDE

Girls! Girls! Girls!

BIANCA talks shop with SUICIDE GIRLS alterna-porn site co-founder MISSY SUICIDE.

“To do list” – Friday: Attend MTV Video Music Awards, hang out with Green Day‘s Billie Joe; Saturday: launch fashion line in Las Vegas; Monday: launch tour DVD at Hollywood’s Rokbar owned by Dave Navarro and Tommy Lee who both make appearances to show support along with Velvet Revolver and other rock alumni); Tuesday: instore book signing, with book debuting at #1 on Amazon.com; Wednesday: launch radio show; Thursday: sold out Burlesque performance with ten of the hottest alternative girls on the planet naked smearing themselves in chocolate sauce; Friday: conqueror the world!

Sounds like a charmed life doesn’t it? The stuff made of very sweet dreams! Well… it’s not a dream, it’s Missy Suicide’s crazy world. “Today is the first time that I’ve actually stepped back in weeks and had time to reflect on everything that’s happened. I think today it’s just sinking in,” says the blue haired vixen. “It’s like, OMG I got to do that! There’s the fourteen-year-old me coming out,” she giggles.

SuicideGirls.com or ‘SG’ as fans affectionately call it, had humble beginnings. Launched in 2001 from Missy’s apartment with one time boyfriend Spooky Suicide in Portland neither had any idea just how huge it could become. With over a million unique visitors every week, an ever-growing online community, 753 Suicide girls and counting, a multitude of press with everyone from Rolling Stone to The New York Times, numerous milestones achieved (see to do list) and a who’s who of celebrity jumping on the SG bandwagon – Dave Grohl, Courtney Love, The Strokes – it seems as though SG is very here, very in your face and very, very hip.

From the get-go, Missy had a vision: to create a site to showcase the beauty of girls outside the classical version of what beautiful is – girls with tattoos, piercings and attitude – punk pin-ups. She also hoped to make a difference, helping to broaden societies vision of what exactly beautiful is so, she created a place where like minded people could get together, share ideas and build a community – make a connection. “I hope that it has given the punk and hardcore community an opportunity or a forum to connect,” she says. “In the punk and hardcore scene it has helped bridge gaps.”

On the way to L.A airport to drop off a bevy of beautiful SG’s which have performed on the first US Burlesque tour, Missy informs of the number of hopeful girls applying to be part of the ultra-hip SG elite. “We get about a thousand a week. It’s crazy. It’s been really amazing,” she tells. “We have girls from every continent including Antarctica.”

With its phenomenal success and its advance into mainstream sights is Missy’s original goal of broadening society’s idea of beautiful still something she maintains? “Yeah!” she says. “I think it was yesterday that I got a submission from a girl and she sent it with this letter that pretty much said ‘I had so much fun shooting this set, I don’t even care if it gets accepted, I just want to say thank you for putting the idea out there and for inspiring me to feel beautiful about myself’. It’s very exciting that they might see other girls on the site with similar body types and that it may make them feel inspired.”

Along with the raunchy (yet artistic) photos of the girls, each girl keeps a journal type blog and interacts with the online members, some even building friendships with their fans. “The photo sets are designed to showcase what’s unique and how the girls feel sexy about themselves. They decide how they’re presented, how they pose, how much they show. I see the photo sets and the journals as a way for each girl to express themselves,” Missy explains. “It’s more of an artistic outlet than anything else. I see my style of photography to be more documentary. I work around the girl and what she wants rather than sit on a director’s chair.”

Recently on the site several new SG’s have debuted with no tattoos, piercings or crazy coloured hair. I ask Missy about it, ’cause after all aren’t the body mods and zany hair an important part of the SG look? “I think that it’s more about your personality and your attitude then about how you look on the outside,” Missy defends. “Tattoos and piercings do seem to go hand in hand with the punk rock attitude but what’s more punk rock than to be yourself? There’s a lot of girls on the site that don’t have tattoos and piercings that are more in your face and out there and true to themselves than the ones that do have tattoos and piercings.”

If you’re one of the chosen ones to make it as an SG, life seems like it would be one big party (see to do list again) right? It is for the lucky ones. In doing research for this assignment I came across a livejournal where ex-SG’s post about why they left the site (or at in some instances were booted from the site). Comments included feelings of disappointment, confusion, anger – one ex-girl going as far as to say that the girls are used for ‘cash flow’. Confronted with this Missy answers, “The site has always been the same amount of money from day one $4 a month. You can’t go to the movies or barely buy a tank of gas for $4. It’s not about the money – I drive a Toyota, I don’t drive a Jaguar or a Mercedes. You try to give back to the girls as much as possible. Everybody has a different position; some girls have really unrealistic expectations. You just can’t make everybody happy all of the time. There’s nearly eight hundred girls on the site. The whole design of Suicide Girls is that everybody is special.”

Next on Missy’s to do list is an SG comic book, a European Burlesque tour – with an Australian tour not totally out of the question – and an upcoming SG compilation CD out on Epitaph.

FANNY SUICIDE

In the past six years the online US based alternative erotica site, SUICIDE GIRLS has become somewhat of a worldwide phenomenon. The alternative web portal features girls with tattoos, body modifications and brightly coloured hair who are unabashed about their sexuality and that have in your face attitudes in daring pin-up style photosets. In recent years the SG empire has expanded to include an extremely popular line of clothing, a radio show and a touring rock n roll burlesque show which is about to head down under for the first time. BIANCA VALENTINO catches up with one of the show performers FANNY SUICIDE.

It’s a cool overcast day in London (surprise, surprise) and the ever-lovely raven-haired self-proclaimed ‘exhibitionist’ Fanny Suicide is holed up in her apartment doing media for the upcoming tour. “I’m one of the six dancers,” starts Fanny an Australian native who moved to the UK two years ago. “We basically do solo routines and group routines. It’s very much in your face!”

Late last year indie punk label Epitaph Records released a Suicide Girls DVD: The First Tour which gave fans an insight into the world of Suicide Girls and life on the road with the alternative darlings as their very first rock n roll burlesque show sold out every venue and crossed the US. “If you’ve seen the DVD it’s very much like that,” Fanny says in her acquired English accent of the show headed our way. “We’re down the front, we’re chucking shit at the audience, we’re slapping shit in your face, and we’re taking it as hard as we can. We’re very much ‘RAH!’ It’s an assault on you for about an hour. It’s a lot of fun,’ she giggles.

Describing a typical day out on the road Fanny explains that it’s not quite as glamorous as one might think. “It’s all driving for ten hours, and then arriving in the town; going to an instore; going to a hotel dumping your shit then you’ve got twenty seconds to change,” she informs. “You go to the venue, hang out for about three hours before the show, there’s cleaning up and doing signings and going home getting into bed and getting up again at eight in the morning to drive for another ten hours. It’s not glamourous at all. It’s so far from glamorous it’s not funny! You get treated really, really well though, they pay you really well and you get to stay at Hilton Hotels. You get lots of people going ‘Oh you’re amazing!’ It has its perks.”

On the subject of perks Fanny tells, “I definitely do (get perks) especially in a place like London. You have a name to drop if you need to at some point. I’ve seen a lot of the girls further their careers and their abilities and they’ve learned so many things through it (being a Suicide Girl) It’s been such a positive aspect in their lives in terms of getting them/helping them to do stuff they dream of like becoming better photographers, becoming better burlesque dancers, better designers, stuff like that – it’s given everyone a really good push. It’s definitely good.”

Fanny came to the crazy world of Suicide Girls in 2004 when a friend informed her about the site. “I had been doing a similar body of work before I started doing Suicide Girls,” she gives us a little background. “I had been working in Sydney with a photographer called Lady Penelope in 2001 doing classic kind of pinup styles of work for a magazine called ‘Slit’ which is a sex, art, politics lesbian magazine that’s collectively produced and based out of Sydney. We’d been doing stuff for that for about three or four years and I decided to move to England for a bit and I said to a friend ‘I really want to keep doing stuff like this’ and he was like ‘My flatmate is a member of this website called Suicide Girls. You should check it out they kind of do similar stuff to you’. I bounced on there and check it out within a few minutes I applied. That’s kind of how I got about to doing it.”

Observing how far the site has come from its indie maven roots to its increasingly, whether it likes it or not, alternative mainstream success status Fanny says, “I think it changes a lot all the time. It just keeps on growing and growing. It just keeps on getting bigger and broader in its focus and it keeps on utilizing the talents of the girls in their areas more and more and more.”

Asked her feelings on the growing popularity of Suicide Girls she states, “I think it’s a good thing because the bigger it gets the more they keep pushing it further and putting more money into the book and the show and the radio show and they have some of the girls designing merchandise and artwork. The bigger it gets the more possibilities there are for the girls which I think is a brilliant thing.”

In recent months though things have not all been so rosy for the Suicide Girls camp. Late last year almost forty of the 1,000 Suicide Girls staged a web-out and stalked off the site amid claims that despite all the ‘go-girl’ messages the site was run by people who couldn’t give a hoot about female empowerment. “I personally haven’t ever encountered anything negative,” Fanny is quick to defend. “I think the only thing I ever encountered that was negative was when I really tried to explain to people in Australia in 2004 what I was trying to do and it was very hard for me. I had only been a member of the site for a little while and I didn’t really have an idea what I was getting myself into. In America and the UK everybody knows what it is. I’ve always had positive reactions. On the site it’s always been positive with members and staff. I’ve never had any problems.”

Changing subject, Fanny tells in her bubbly voice how since acquiring a slight slither of fame from being an SG she’s had people recognise her on the street. “Weird things have happened. A girl cam up to me at a Le Tigre concert and she was practically hyperventilating going ‘OMG! You’re Fanny Suicide I’ve seen your pictures’. I was like ‘OK this is the first time this has happened to me, this is really weird… ah I’m going to go to the bar’ and I ran away. I found it a little too full on,” she laughs.

Not only is the burlesque tour an exciting opportunity for Fanny to showcase her talents, see the world and get paid to do it but the Australian leg of the tour will be quite special for her – a homecoming of sorts. “I am so looking forward to it!” she enthuses. “I haven’t been home in two years. For me personally it will be very overwhelming, everyone I know if coming to see the show. It’ll be like ‘Oh hi! Here’s my art. Did you miss me?’ It’s going to be really full on for me. I’m really really excited. I’m really homesick. When they told me I was going to Australia I was over the moon happy and ten times again. I get to see my family!’

So does the family approve? “They’re quite OK about it because it’s giving me really great opportunities and making me happy,” she answers. “It’s letting me do what I want to do and I get paid for it. They’ve always not worry about me ’cause I’ve always done something a little out of left field.”