Suicide Girls…
Devoted to changing your idea of what makes a lady beautiful… As long as you are thin and white?
So there’s this website called Suicide Girls, they’ve been going a few years but I rediscovered them on Instagram recently. Their tagline of being “devoted to changing your idea of what makes a lady beautiful” caught my eye and upon looking through I saw a variety pin up girls sporting tattoos and piercings.
I love tattoos. A lot. If I had more money, I’d be covered!! And so a site and social media portraying so called alternative women with ink and metal made me happy.
That slogan of changing ideas of beauty also appealed to me and so I hit follow, looking forward to some awesome women coming up in my Instagram feed.
And they do. But after a week, a bloody annoying pattern emerges. Yes, there are lots of beautiful, interesting and inked up women. But the HUUUUUUGE majority are both thin and white.
Ok, it’s great to promote tattooed women as beautiful, but thin white women don’t usually have that many issues being portrayed in the media. And as tats become commonplace in society, it’s really not that alternative.
So where are the bigger women? Where are the women of colour?
In the first 100 posts on the Instagram feed there are 6 women of colour.
And one woman who looks bigger than a size 10. And that post is filled with fat shaming comments.
What’s going on Suicide Girls? I love the idea of promoting an alternative view to traditional beauty, but surely you could bring yourself to show some larger ladies to your audience?
As the average size of women is around a UK 16, why don’t you show more average sized women?
Or does the idea of “what makes a lady beautiful” only apply to the thin white ones…
Though progress is being made with more and more plus size women as models and most recently the wonderful Tess Holliday I just wish we could see more of this.
What do you think?
Sam x
oh my goodness – i had this same thought just yesterday. They praise “alternative beauty”, but as long as you are thin, white and have double D’s for the most part…i guess the alternative part is the body-mod and openness to claim their femininity through burlesque dancing and artsy nude videos???
I know EXACTLY what you mean. But that’s their standard of beauty and what they choose to feature on their little narrow-minded IG account. I just go elsewhere to see what I want to see. I discovered black pinups a few years ago. There are tons of them on tumblr: http://black-pinup.tumblr.com/
long long ago suicide girls was a fantastic site showing girls of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds. Alas it isn’t like that any longer, and a lot of the old skool members left.
I agree, it’s more of same old same old, with a few tattoos. The way they present themselves, I am thinking of the super-old Laura Mulvey concept of “the male gaze”- instead of really subverting standards of beauty, they almost re-produce them.
I understand the frustration, especially with all the body positivity going around lately. But you have to realize that the main reason hopefulsare turned into SGs is how much positive attention they get from the members of the site and public. You cant really blame the organization for that.
I don’t blame Suicide Girls for the attention from the public, I do blame them for a lack of diversity in their models.
I am a size 18 and getting ready to start a suiside hopeful page..I am tattooed and priced so I can only hope to break the mold and bring some of the “bbw” world ( we are normal size but seen as plus!