SuicideGirls is a website that features erotica and text profiles of goth, punk, and emo -styled young women who themselves are known as the "SuicideGirls". It 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. Many similarly themed websites have since appeared elsewhere on the world wide web.

Origin of the concept and term

The SuicideGirls website and concept was created by SG Services, Inc. company president "Sean Suicide" (Sean Suhl) and photographer "Missy Suicide" (a still unidentified former girlfriend of Sean's) in late 2001, and based in Portland, Oregon. They perhaps facetiously claim they started the site "just to see hot punk rock girls naked." Missy has also stated that the purpose of the site is to give women control over how their sexuality is depicted.

The term "suicide girl" is often credited to a usage by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, in his novel Survivor, though this has been denied by Sean, who claims to be unable to remember the source of the name. 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, its models, 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.

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 SuicideGirls. Originally, only one or two of these were typically accepted per week, though this eventually increased to one every day. The website presently features over six hundred SuicideGirls, 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, sillicone-enhanced, bleached-blondes of stereotypical pornography. They are represented by nude photo shoots as well as self-written profiles and journal entries that they usually must keep updating in order to keep their images from being pulled from the site. The SuicideGirls 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. One notable SuicideGirl 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.

In the interest of fairness, 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 4,500-member SuicideBoys is one of the most popular, along with the "potential model" thread.

Suhl has claimed that 55 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 special and on Nightline. Rock musician Courtney Love is a member of the site, and frequently leaves "rambling, stream-of-consciousness posts on the site." She also brought along several SuicideGirls during an appearance on MTV. Sixty-six SuicideGirls appeared in the PROBOT music video, "Shake Your Blood".

SuicideGirls has also branched out into a coffee table book printing images and SuicideGirl profiles from the website, and a travelling burlesque show featuring several of the SuicideGirls. 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 cancelled. SuicideGirls also had a brief partnership with Playboy magazine, which regularly featured SuicideGirls on its own website.

External links

• SuicideGirls.com—warning: contains nudity
• SuicideBoys.com - redirects to group
• "Cynical, Bitter, Jaded as Hell. Also Naked.", City Pages, November 27, 2002
• "The Calculated Assault of Suicidegirls.com," Williamette Week Online, March 19, 2003