The story behind the hugely popular site SuicideGirls is fascinating to me. SG is the first and possibly the biggest porn site built on and appealing to the next generation of porn consumers—young people of my generation, and especially women. Though its articles, interviews with bands, model journals, and message boards, SG has been able to build a strong brand from its “alternative” models, who now number over 1,000. Watching SG’s rapid growth and their missteps along the way provides a lot of insight into this new kind of porn, which aims to appeal to women, politically-aware individuals, and young people receptive to online community-building. SG’s pitfalls and successes offer valuable information for other sites seeking to break into this new aesthetic and demographic.
For example, a central problem with building a site around a DIY aesthetic, sex-positive feminism, and freedom for models is that there is still a business to run. This is a challenge on two fronts: the headstrong models, and the (sometimes) incompatibility between capitalism and counterculture.
As far as the first challenge, one of the main reasons SG has become so popular is that the women featured on it are tough, self-possessed, and intelligent. This is great—far too many porn sites portray women as weak and sexually submissive—but the downside is that many of these women chafe under authority and are not sympathetic to the capitalistic decisions necessary to sustain a business.
To wit: on September 28, 2005, thirty models left the site in a huff. The models were apparently upset to learn that a man (co-founder Sean Suhl) was one of the main managers of the site, contradicting SG’s image as women-controlled. Another complaint was that at $300 per photo set, the site did not pay the girls enough. The Wired article detailing the outrage can be found here.
While it was never widely publicized, the fact that men were involved in the management of the site was no big secret. The charge that the site didn’t pay enough strikes me as absurd; potential SG models know the rate, and they have the choice to not appear on the site if they decide the fee is inadequate. Furthermore, the real value of appearing on the site is the network of members one gains access to; many models gain valuable exposure for their outside pursuits, and even if they do not continue with modeling, they will have built a network of intelligent, talented, and creative people. Plus, the cache of appearing on SG is really strong in certain social circles; as the site’s popularity explodes, it is becoming slightly less cool to be a SG, but it nonetheless commands a certain respect among peers. Because there are so many perks, the $300 seems to me a reasonable payment.
SG attempted to win back member sympathy two days after the Wired story broke, announcing that SG would be self-censoring some of its racier (though always soft-core) content in order to avoid government attention. A discussion can be found here. Members were outraged that the government was forcing SG into this disruptive act of censorship. Images depicting bondage scenes and anything involving bodily fluids (real or implied) were replaced with a black screen containing the message: “We found this image to be art. We didn’t know if Alberto Gonzalez would agree. So we had to take it down because of the war on porn.” Of course, the site had never actually been threatened with prosecution. Missy (the site’s founder and queen bee) posted the following in her official statement on the matter:
We have received no formal government notice to remove these images, however in the course of our involvement, as witnesses, in a federal criminal prosecution that does not target SG, we have been made aware of the risks posting such content poses the owners of the company. Given the U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales' new war on porn task force and it's intent to bring obscenity charges against their loosely defined "Deviant" imagery, we have removed any images with fake blood and any images we felt could be wrongfully construed as sadist or masochist.
The ploy seemed to work, and attention turned from the departure of the SG models to commiseration with SG over the Bush administration’s war on porn.
The latest controversy, reported last week by AVN, centers on Content Pinup’s distribution of images of Suicide Girls. It remains unclear exactly how Content Pinup gained legal access to these images (my hypothesis is that as one of the first sites expanding to mobile content, SG made some sort of contractual error and didn’t adequately protect its proprietary content), and is now selling them to third parties. Here is SG’s attorney’s letter to ContentBlowout acceding defeat.
Once again, the SG community is outraged. The models understandably don’t like the idea of their images being sold to outside companies. This whole mess sounds like a pretty clear mistake on the part of SG, since this leakage of content will likely damage the brand.
The thing is (and here enters the second challenge of running a “DIY” business) this is totally par for course in porn. Models’ images are sold and resold, packaged and repackaged, all the freaking time. A woman shoots a porn movie, and then along with the original movie, each scene will be repackaged in countless compilations videos for years. When a woman signs the model release, those images no longer belong to her and can be used for just about anything. It’s unfortunate the images were acquired by an outside party who will indiscriminately sell them, but it was always a possibility.
SG comes mighty close to misleading models about what they can expect (not in the contract but in casual postings on the message boards). I imagine models end up making decisions they might not otherwise make with full disclosure about the hypothetical uses of their images. It becomes easy to forget that SG is a business above all, and that just because it co-opts subculture aesthetics like DIY and sex-positive feminism doesn’t mean that the bottom line isn’t what matters most. The company would be well advised to reconsider its representations of its priorities to models. Perhaps asking models to just trust them isn’t a great move. I read in an interview with Missy that SG receives 1,500 applications a week; the site clearly isn’t hurting for models, and I think that even with full disclosure there would be plenty of interest in appearing on the site. There is no need to mislead models.
At the same time, the SG models who like to get self-righteous about their rights and SG’s betrayal should look more closely at their contracts. Frankly, I’m disappointed that these supposedly smart, savvy women aren’t more informed about the legal aspects of their decision to become a SG model. They decide to take their clothes off for a Web site, and now they’re outraged when they’re treated like porn stars.
This ties back into what I was saying at the beginning of this post about SG entering uncharted territory. The site aims to appeal to feminists and a younger demographic, but at some point its ultimate priority is profit. The struggle for companies following the SG model will be to stay true to feminist ideals while still remaining a viable business. It is not impossible, but it takes a little finesse, something the powers-that-be over at SG may not possess. One problem might be that people who tend to be super-committed to feminist (and other) ideals are not so interested in running a large company, and those interested in running a large company aren't so interested in feminist ideals. I’m curious if others have a different take on this situation…for example, isn’t it a little unfair that a generally women-positive site like SG gets so much flak for its policies while outright exploitative sites get away with much worse treatment of women?
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