Girls with dreadlocks, neon hair, facial piercings and tattoos aren’t the typical models you see posing in fashion magazines. But these are the girls you’ll find posing on the Suicide Girls website.

“I was really tall and like an awkward teenager,” said Shaine Suicide, a model on Suicide Girls since 2007.

The site was created in 2001 and the About page on the site simply says, “What some people think makes us strange, or weird, or fucked up, we think is what makes us beautiful.”

The website is widely considered a softcore pornography site because girls often pose nude in their photos.

“What I liked about the site was taking control of your own sexuality and loving yourself for who you are,” said Shaine, who chose to use her member name because she’s currently in nursing school and was worried about her professional appearance.

“I’m comfortable with my friends and family knowing. My boyfriend knows. But it’s still not a norm. It’s still looked at as porn or taboo,” she said.

But that doesn’t stop her from participating on the site as both a model and a photographer.

“I had all these girls around me who only valued themselves based on what guys were thinking of them and how they compared to other girls, and I could never do that.”

What Suicide Girls refer to as an “alternative” look isn’t shocking to most of the generation Yers. In a few years, it won’t be strange to see grandparents with sleeves of tattoos.

Still, you probably won’t see these women in the pages of Vanity Fair or Elle Magazine. But you can see them on their Blackheart Burlesque show that is touring after a seven-year hiatus.

Last week they finished touring in Australia and will be starting in Canada on April 2.

Co-founder of Suicide Girls, Selena Mooney, or Missy Suicide as she calls herself, said she started the site because she was tired of seeing only blond, skinny or silicon-enhanced women in the media.

“I thought the girls that I knew were the most beautiful girls in the world,” Missy said. “And I wanted to give them a place where they could be celebrated on being themselves, and where they could share their thoughts and feelings.”

Suicide Girls is also a social networking site with different blogs and groups that models and members can join – ranging from music to photography to current affairs.

Suicide Girls has been growing in popularity with the rise of social media.

According to Missy, the site has more than 12 million social media followers all over the world, and a model on every continent – including Antarctica.

“We want someone who’s going to be active in the SG community,” said Shaine, who recently became a staff photographer. “It’s not just like ‘you gotta be this hot to get in.’ We’re interested in more of who you are, and what you’re interested in and what you can bring to the site.”

The application to become a model on the site says to try to “let your personality shine through” when submitting photos.

“It’s celebrating confidence and comfort in your body and yourself,” said Missy. “Confidence is the sexiest attribute a person can have.”

 

[box]More about Suicide Girls

–  “My personal opinion is the term Suicide Girl is more of an alternative lifestyle outside of the norm. Because most of the people look at it as something bad, and there’s a huge stigma associated with it. To be a Suicide Girl is to take the beauty out of what is the norm in society…I’m not sure if the two were connected in that way, but that just my idea of understanding it.”- Shaine Suicide

–  “Suicide Girls is a term used to describe girls who commit social suicide by choosing not to fit into the norm.” – Missy Suicide

–   Missy Suicide originally took the name from a book by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) called Survivor. The quote reads: “It’s the same with these suicide girls calling me up.” [/box]