So today, I joined Suicide Girls. it has something I have been itching to do for a little while, and it is very nice. but i have some mixed feelings about it.
I am proud to support a site that propounds an alternative definiton of beauty than the plastic raunch we see on television, advertisements, and trickling down into our lives. Images of these girls who are marginalized from the mainstream are simply beautiful.
yet it's easy to exaggerate the degree to which it is subversive. If i'm being honest with myself, i am here because the counter-cultural image (ie tattoos and a few piercings) work as a fantasy or fetish--i dont typically encounter sucide-esque girls in my day to day life, to my chagrin.
to what extent is SG a competing discourse on beauty? well the site still seems ostensibly designed to be pleasing to men. let's not forget it costs money. many of the suicide girls' myspace pages are pretty much spam. one gets the feeling they were designed by staff and not the girls themselves, and their central purpose is to gain subscribers. my sense is about 99% of the site's girls still have it "going on" in the traditional sense. particularly the ones featured prominently on the site tend to be thin and white.
is it a radically new beauty image, or the same one with a different cosmetic (tattoos/piercings)? i think its debatable, but i sitll err on the side of new image. i think at the very least it is expanding what we think of as acceptable, beautiful, sexy. and for that i suppose it deserves my $48.
I am proud to support a site that propounds an alternative definiton of beauty than the plastic raunch we see on television, advertisements, and trickling down into our lives. Images of these girls who are marginalized from the mainstream are simply beautiful.
yet it's easy to exaggerate the degree to which it is subversive. If i'm being honest with myself, i am here because the counter-cultural image (ie tattoos and a few piercings) work as a fantasy or fetish--i dont typically encounter sucide-esque girls in my day to day life, to my chagrin.
to what extent is SG a competing discourse on beauty? well the site still seems ostensibly designed to be pleasing to men. let's not forget it costs money. many of the suicide girls' myspace pages are pretty much spam. one gets the feeling they were designed by staff and not the girls themselves, and their central purpose is to gain subscribers. my sense is about 99% of the site's girls still have it "going on" in the traditional sense. particularly the ones featured prominently on the site tend to be thin and white.
is it a radically new beauty image, or the same one with a different cosmetic (tattoos/piercings)? i think its debatable, but i sitll err on the side of new image. i think at the very least it is expanding what we think of as acceptable, beautiful, sexy. and for that i suppose it deserves my $48.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
niobe:
How are you liking the site so far?
atlas:
