Kristin Waller wants to be the first SG with a Harvard degree — the Oklahoma native even has ver-it-as inked on her left forearm. The site has accepted girls — like Fatality, a thin blonde from Brown University — from Ivy League schools, but none who have publicly staked a claim to Harvard. Waller, a 23-year-old class-of-2005 graduate who works as a “counter bitch” at Chameleon Tattoo Shop in Harvard Square, first posed nude for Harvard’s undergraduate sex magazine, H-Bomb. In the 2004 debut issue, she’s in the centerfold spread wielding a whip; on another page, she’s PhotoShopped into a nude pirate.
“[SuicideGirls] appealed to my competitiveness, which is a stupid thing to say about showing your tits on the Internet,” says Waller over a grilled ham-and-cheese and beer at Charlie’s Kitchen. “The same urge that got me through Harvard admissions processes makes me want to be a model. It’s so exclusive.”
Waller first submitted a set — shot by a New England School of Photography student — of her posed with a static-y TV. Too dark. Then she tried another one, of her lounging around and dunking cinnamon sticks into a coffee mug. That didn’t get accepted either. “On my second-to-last set, I had a lot of comments saying, ‘that’s boring.’ I thought it was pretty. Pretty boobs!” Then Palo and Dan Wherren tag-team photographed a “Midnight Snack”–themed set that had Waller raiding the refrigerator in a nightgown. Alas, even though that didn’t make the cut either, Waller says the process was fun. “Lexie was there as my fluffer.”
Waller posts links to her rejected pictures on the SG Hopefuls group, inviting public critiques, some of which can be brutal. “An established model or an established member can say, ‘I know exactly why that wasn’t accepted: because every single one of your expressions was the same and that’s boring and you don’t know how to pose flatteringly for your body type.’ ” Says Waller: “Ouch.”
Still, she dreams of being a SuicideGirl. It isn’t about the money or even about nude modeling. To her, and to the other countless hopefuls, SuicideGirls has a certain standing. “If I weren’t concerned with status, I would’ve gone to Oberlin or the University of Oklahoma, instead of Harvard.”
The drama
“I’m not gonna lie, I actually had to stop some drama today,” admits Sid about halfway through a 90-minute conversation over a bowl of chicken-noodle soup at the Greenhouse Coffee Shop, in Harvard Square. “The story is, I thought I offended somebody. I honestly couldn’t pinpoint a time or place when I could have offended this person. . . . I came to find out it was all based on a lie that somebody else believed. I feel bad, but I at least didn’t do anything wrong.”
Anyone who reads Sid’s public journal knows she’s been troubled by a few people in the SGBoston community over the past few weeks. The day before, she’d lamented, “No matter how good of a person you try to be, there is always one fucking bitch there cutting you down behind your back.”
