Why, yes, I did check the Urban Dictionary. Thanks for asking.
In the context of a nude or semi-nude pinup, what is a “Suicide Girl?” As a group they look sort of thin and Gothy (Gothic? WHatever.)
What is the origin of this odd phrase?
There’s a porn web site featuring goth girls called Suicide Girls, I thought the term originated with them.
It refers to suicidegirls.com and the models are tattooed, pierced, gothy, or otherwise somehow obviously subculture.
It’s alternative cheesecake, basically, and I have a few images saved of Lennon, a musician I recently discovered and quite like.
They’re not all thin or gothy-- quite a few are zaftig, and goth is just one of the subcultures that gets represented. Punk, emo, goth, rockabilly, the occasional raver, nerds, etc. (Though it seems like in the broader world of pin-up/burlesque fans, “goth” is applied to any alternative look, just as “Suicide Girl” is used to describe any model with more unconventional looks, regardless of the actual publisher). The earlier posters have nailed the origin of the term, though.
The term was coined by Chuck Palahnuik author of The Fight Club . It is an attitude more than a particular social/economic/political view. The Suicide Girls web site took it’s name from this.
Suicide Girls started out based here in Portland and are a pretty good cross section of what we call “Portland chicks.” SG’s tend to be pretty heavily into alternative ideals of beauty from the norm, tats, piercings, odd hair colors, gothic, anime–pretty much anything you wouldn’t find in Maxim and/or Playboy. You won’t find too may huge busted, bleached blonde, big hair, fake & bake pr0n queen clones in the Suicide Girl ranks. The girls keep their own website pages and blogs, do web cam work along with still photography and at least when it started it was woman owned/woman run, which is kind of unusual. Individual girls get pretty devoted followers and fans. Every once in a while there’ll be a SG only show at one of the strip clubs (Devil’s Point in SE Portland tends to favor SG type dancers all the time) and they put on one hell of a show, with fire dancers/eaters, girl/girl and other tasty alternative scenarios. They’re fun, I like them!
I didn’t know that, was in one of his books, or an interview, or what?
Survivor
They don’t, at least I’ve never seen it, act out suicides in their pictorials.
There has been quite a controversey in the photographic world about the site and the site recently lost a court decision about their contracts. They wanted a clause that the photographer would not work for any competing sites for a period of, I think, 7 years, and the definition of ‘competing site’ was rather vague.
HBO had a special on them. I was somewhat disappointed in the actuality of the girls and their attitudes, since it seemed to be as much of an affectation as any other pinup girl.
Interesting, I read the book, but I remember little of it.
The weird thing is that the SG site claims to be a place where one can find women with aesthetic beauty that would be otherwise considered outside the norm. The thing is almost every single woman they feature on that site is what I would call conventionally pretty. They might have some tats, some piercings, and they’re not all blonde but they’re certainly conventionally pretty.
Marc
As staid, drab, and boring as my life is, this is why I love this site. Now I can contribute to any conversation in which Suicide Girls pop up, field a few “How the hell would you know that?” comments, and smile modestly and say that I’m well read.
Or something.