Since 2001, SuicideGirls.com has been redefining our perception of beauty, featuring pin-up photography of female models with tattoos, piercings and alternative looks that mirror their own unique personalities. What started out as a website with a few female models posing nude has, in the past fourteen years, exploded into a worldwide phenomenon with books, movies, an online community of followers and their hugely successful Blackheart Burlesque tour, which is now touring around the world. None of this would’ve been possible without the creativity and vision of Missy Suicide, founder of SuicideGirls.com.
C.J. Asher – Hi Missy! First of all, please tell me a little about your background… how old you are, where you grew up and what you did before founding SuicideGirls.
Missy Suicide – I am thirty seven and I grew up in Portland, Oregon. Before starting SuicideGirls, I worked at internet startups pre dot-com bubble bursting.
C.J. Asher – How did you first come up with the idea of SuicideGirls?
Missy Suicide – I was inspired by Bunny Yeager’s photos of Betty Page: the confidence and beauty that came through when a woman was posing nude for another woman. I thought my friends were the most beautiful women in the world and wanted to photograph them with the same sort of respect and grace as the classic pin-ups had.
C.J. Asher – Also, where did the name “SuicideGirls” come from?
Missy Suicide – SuicideGirls is a term that comes from a Chuck Palahniuk book in which he describes girls that choose not to fit into the norm, girls who commit “social suicide.”
C.J. Asher – From its founding in 2001, SuicideGirls has grown into books, movies, clothing and even its own globally touring burlesque show… nothing short of a worldwide cultural phenomenon. What has been the most surprising aspect of the growth of SuicideGirls up to this point?
Missy Suicide – The world is so much bigger than you think it is, yet people are having the same feelings no matter where they are.
C.J. Asher – Being a new business back when SuicideGirls was founded, how did you find your first batch of models?
Missy Suicide – The first girls were friends of mine, then friends of friends and then we took out an ad in the local weekly then girls started applying from places outside Portland. Now, we get 30,000 applications a year from women all around the world.
C.J. Asher – Who was the first SuicideGirl?
Missy Suicide – Rose, she was my neighbor and a fearless friend who I am forever grateful to.
C.J. Asher – How do you define, not only in looks but also in personality and lifestyle, what a “Suicide Girl” is?
Missy Suicide – SuicideGirls are confident and beautiful, although not in the way typically celebrated by mainstream media. They confidently contribute their unique and personal beauty to our larger discussion of redefining beauty.
C.J. Asher – Do you consider yourself a role model for young women, both inside and outside of the SuicideGirls community?
Missy Suicide – Oh man, as I have grown up, I feel it is important to always behave responsibly and kindly. If you make a mistake, which I do ALL the time, admit you could have done better, apologize, learn from it and move on. We all see the world from our own perspective and I think one of the hardest things to do is to stop and think about things from another’s point of view. I mean, life is Rashomon, so that edict of behaving responsibly and kindly is hard to live up to. The longer I am on the planet, the more perspectives I am exposed to. The more mistakes I make, the more I can learn and hopefully be more of a role model. As it is, I feel like I am still just fumbling through life.
C.J. Asher – What are the most important issues facing young women today, and what changes does society need to make to better reduce and eliminate these issues?
Missy Suicide – I think having women involved, just getting female voices to the table. Our government, boardrooms, etc. are severely lacking females and diversity, so decisions are still being made by a primarily affluent white male perspective. I mean, I think that is what will need to happen to ultimately make things better, but then there are things like removing Planned Parenthood and women’s basic health issues that are currently being lobbied to keep women distracted that we need to deal with immediately. I have faith that one day we will get there, though.
C.J. Asher – How do you find new Suicide Girl models and what do you look for in your models, in terms of both looks and personality?
Missy Suicide – We get approximately 30,000 applications a year from women all around the world who want to become SuicideGirls. We look for confident women who want to contribute their definition of beauty to the discussion. We look for women who have something unique and interesting to share with the world. All of the sets go into member review, so the models have to resonate with the community through their images and words. We have had women who have contributed sets for years before going pink, but they became fixtures in the community, learned, listened and utilized the communities’ feedback and support to become the strong confident models they wanted to be.
C.J. Asher – How many SuicideGirls have there been to date? Also, what are you going to do when you run out of names?!
Missy Suicide – Haha there are nearly 3,000 official SuicideGirls and hundreds of thousands of hopefuls. The thing about names is there is an endless plethora of names, spellings, words, phrases. We often recommend the baby name book if girls get stuck coming up with their moniker.
C.J. Asher – If you could have any famous celebrity become a SuicideGirl, who would it be and why?
Missy Suicide – Oh man maybe Miley Cyrus, she is a bad ass that is completely comfortable and confident with who she is. She is challenging peoples’ perspectives while being respectful of differences and actively working to change the world. She is beautiful inside and out and embodies the qualities of a SuicideGirl.
C.J. Asher – How has SuicideGirls changed, in terms of both technology and culture, since the founding of the company fourteen years ago?
Missy Suicide – We have stayed pretty true to the ethos that confidence is the sexiest attribute a person can have. The site has improved, we spend more time utilizing other social networks, we have done some incredibly amazing things: we’ve made books, comic books, movies, television shows and burlesque shows that I would have never dreamed. We have a fully responsive site design which wasn’t even a glimmer of an idea that people would one day be able to use the internet on their phone. We are that old!
C.J. Asher – What would you consider your greatest individual accomplishment related to the SuicideGirls company?
Missy Suicide – The achievement that I am most proud of is having women come up to me and sharing their story of how SuicideGirls has changed their lives, given them confidence and made them feel beautiful about themselves. It incredibly humbling and the most rewarding accolade.
C.J. Asher – Tell me a little about the SuicideGirls community, not just the models but the fans on the website.
Missy Suicide – The people who are members of SuicideGirls.com all find tattooed and pierced girls attractive and are reasonable adults who don’t leave jerky comments. Those two things that people have in common has made it the meeting place for outsider culture on the internet for over fourteen years. You know that the people you meet on SuicideGirls.com think outside of the box and seek out the type of beauty that is not found everywhere. They know how to have a decent civil conversation, even on the internet. While this is a simple criteria, as you know as a user of social networks, is incredibly difficult, whether it is having to endure friends or family on Facebook expounding their conservative political views, or the “want to fuck?” guy who leaves the same lewd comments on any Instagram with more than 100 followers. We have had hundreds of couples meet on the site and get married, dozens of babies have been born because their parents met on SuicideGirls. Thousands of business connections, bands have formed, and countless friendships and life changing partnerships that have been made over the past fourteen years on our site.
C.J. Asher – What should we expect in the near future from SuicideGirls.com and the SuicideGirls community?
Missy Suicide – We have big plans for 2016: we have another art book in the works, a comic book and I am writing a book. We are working on a podcast and some super exciting collaborations. 2016 will be big for us.
C.J. Asher – Currently, the SuicideGirls 2015 Blackheart Burlesque show is on tour in the United States, Canada and elsewhere around the world. How did you originally come up with the concept of doing a burlesque show for SuicideGirls?
Missy Suicide – In the same way the photos on SuicideGirls.com take the sexy spirit of classic pin-up photos and creates a modern version of femininity, we wanted to put our own spin on classic burlesque and bring the same confident energy that we conveyed in our images to life through our geeky, fun filter. When we first put out our SuicideGirls Burlesque tour back in 2003, we were the only people who were doing non-traditional, non-old fashioned burlesque on a large scale. We were excited to put on a sexy performance that didn’t involve feather boas and songs like Hey Big Spender. We wanted to use modern music and references to modern pop-culture but still put on a show in the spirit of old time burlesque. Now, a dozen years later, there are a lot more non-traditional burlesque acts around, and some of them are doing really fun and different kinds of shows. The Star Wars Burlesque is a great example of just how diverse and non-traditional the Burlesque scene has become. Also look at the spectacle performers like Lady Gaga put on at live shows. People have seen a lot and it’s much harder to show them something that really feels new and original. So clever Quentin Tarantino Burlesque numbers and a leather pants AC/DC striptease is just not enough to wow people these days. We really had to take the spirit of pop-culture modern burlesque that we pioneered over a decade ago and up the production values, sexiness and performances by a factor of ten. It’s the same kind of Burlesque show we used to do, but we have executed at a much higher level in almost every respect: dancer abilities, costumes, choreography, everything.
C.J. Asher – Blackheart Burlesque isn’t your typical “burlesque” show, but is heavily driven by pop culture and entertainment themes such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Who designs and choreographs the routines and what is their inspiration?
Missy Suicide – The inspiration is all of the things that we nerd out about. We wanted to create a fun, sexy, silly, and unique tribute show to everything that inspires us.
C.J. Asher – Tell me a little about the 2015 Blackheart Burlesque tours… who are the performers and what performances are scheduled at each show?
Missy Suicide – The girls on the tour are incredibly talented dancers and performers. The dancers rotate in and out depending upon their availability, they are all professional dancers and this is a ten week tour. The girls choreograph their solos for the most part and all bring their unique flare to the parts the play in the show. No two performances are the same and all of the shows are full of energy and personality and individualism.
C.J. Asher – What can a first-time attendee expect at a Blackheart Burlesque show?
Missy Suicide – The show is a pop culture nerd-gasm. All of the routines are themed to reference pop culture that appeal to our audience; think Star Wars, super heroes, television, movies and video games, all set to a kick-ass soundtrack and also features some of the best choreography around. Seriously, this isn’t your Grandpa’s “shimmy-shimmy” burlesque; these girls are bad-ass dancers in Stormtrooper helmets. You HAVE to see this show; it has the sexy Adventure Time set to the Black Keys… enough said!
C.J. Asher – How do you select the performers who tour with Blackheart Burlesque? Are the drawn from your pool of existing SuicideGirls, or do you seek out and work with professional dancers and performers?
Missy Suicide – The girls audition to be a part of the cast. They are all amazing dancers. They come to us from all sorts of avenues. Sunny, the host of our show, was a government employee and fan who attended our show in New York City in 2013 and was called up during an audience participation number. She had so much fun on stage, she knew she had to follow her dreams. She flew to Los Angeles and auditioned for the tour. She made the troupe and has been traveling the world with us ever since.
C.J. Asher – What has been your largest Blackheart Burlesque show to date and how high was the attendance?
Missy Suicide – Our largest show will be our show in Santiago Chile, in January 2016. It is a venue that hold 2,500 people. We are thrilled to be making our South American debut in Chile.
For more information, please visit SuicideGirls.com and BlackheartBurlesque.com
C.J. Asher is a sex and adult entertainment blogger who has interviewed celebrities such as Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, BurningAngel.com owner, director, writer and actress Joanna Angel as well as a sugar baby advisor, burlesque dancer, feminist and many others. His blog, CJAsher.com, also review gentlemen’s clubs nationwide and posts a weekly adult entertainment calendar highlighting adult film star appearances. Follow C.J. on Twitter @CJASHEROFFICIAL
