Lit Gloss

by Erica Palan

Do we, as a society, still give a damn about the Suicide Girls? Since its founding in Portland, Ore., in 2001, Suicidegirls.com has grown exponentially, currently featuring 2,305,727 photos of women who are beautiful in a non-traditional way. Think Bettie Page meets Amy Winehouse at her most cracked out. Except way more attractive with a healthy body weight and badass tattoos. Over the last eight years, the Girls’ website has expanded to include celebrity interviews, member forums and message boards. They’ve released DVDs and organized a touring burlesque show that stopped at Philly’s Trocadero Theater.

Last month, Los Angeles-based AMMO books released Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined, a luxurious 396-page coffee table book featuring more than a thousand photos of the edgy pin-up girls and an intro by founder Missy Suicide. “What some people thinks us strange or weird or fucked up, we think is what makes beautiful,” she writes. Split into chapters based on the girls’ locations, nearly every model is nude, but Beauty Redefined expertly toes the line between pornography and art and comes out on the classier side.

But the question is: Do we still care? Sure, the Girls’ in-your-face attempt to promote an alternative to Barbie beauty is commendable and the community they’ve built speaks to the necessity of their mission. But in 2009—when Dove commercials show us pleasantly plump ladies in their skivvies and Juno scribe Diablo Cody is tattooed and sexy as hell—is it necessary to be loud and proud about body art? America’s nowhere near perfect, but haven’t we, for the most part, gotten past the stigma of outrageously dyed hair, tattoos and piercings?

Selected as part of Rolling Stone’s 2003 Hot List, the Suicide Girls’ were hot back then. And they’re hot now. But they really aren’t that unique. The downside of being a trailblazer is that once the trail’s been blazed, no one cares as much.

Beauty Redefined is a gorgeous book featuring gorgeous women. But it’s also about five years too late.