With porn a strong mainstream presence in national life, it seems almost inevitable that a not-quite-underground erotic counterculture would emerge. But the genius of SG is that they make their models appear accessible. So while they visually exist in a surreal world of well-lit, conceptually unified, realistically flattering fantasy images, they also read your e-mails, post comments to your messageboards, and exist in your town.
That’s maybe the best way to understand SuicideGirls’s success. If you consider eros a no-no and define pornography as smut hostile to women, then SuicideGirls will do no more than win your censure. But the site’s claimed one-million unique visitors a week find something more layered than five-minute Internet pleasure. SuicideGirls is cultural manna: it offers real women with real attitude within an authentic context. And for the 1000-plus women of the site (who have multiplied each year since 2001), the site provides the appeal of sisterly community, says Lexie, of like-minded young women who pair pseudonyms with the last name Suicide, in a gesture of family bonding. “Fame . . . wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for, I just wanted to be a part of the growing community.” What began mostly with cute, naked, tattooed girls posing alone in their bedrooms has invariably turned into something of an international subculture.
“We’re not girly girls and we don’t have a lot of female friends,” says Bailey Maxwell, a Dorchester resident who’s been a SuicideGirl for four years. “To have this network of girls to be friends with is amazing. I’ve met some of my best friends on the site. It’s like a naked sorority.”
The Massachusetts 17
If SuicideGirls.com is like a naked sorority, there are 17 members in the Massachusetts chapter (possibly more, since some girls obfuscate their coordinates by listing their location as “I’m lost”). Those 17 include: Palo; Lexie; Bailey, the oldest, at age 27, and the most universally revered SG forebear in Boston; Bowie, a blond, married florist; Sid, a teeny Berklee student with a baby-doll face, a helium squeak of a voice, and a corset piercing on her back; Kera, a 25-year-old UMass Boston literature major who edits a school-affiliated literary journal, holds office as the Student Senate president, and plans to study at Oxford this summer; Alexsandria, an adorable dreadlocked Floridian who strips down from a Bentmen T-shirt and Dresden Doll–like striped tights in her first photo set; Hellah, a cute Italian tomboy from Lowell; and Granny, a 20-year-old from the North Shore who’s into “loud trashy music,” “being an artfuck,” and “anthropology.”
The local SG community, of course, is much larger: SuicideGirls must endure a multi-tier application process; site members need only submit their credit-card information. Membership buys both male and female subscribers their very own journal; photo-uploading capabilities; and access not only to the SGs, but also to special subgroups that unite users with shared interests (“Weezer fans,” “Cunning Linguists,” “Plus Sized Women”), issues (“bipolar disorder,” “self-mutilation”), or geography (“SG Middle East,” “SG Iowa”).
