It's early 2000. A dejected figure sits at his computer despairing at the lack of quality indie porn available on the internet. He dreams about the day when slender white girls with big boobs would get a makeover at the Rock Shop, make their own porno shoots for minimal wages and pass the profits onto him. In 2001 this man turned his dream into reality. An alternative porn site that is self professedly ‘empowering’ for women was created, and all the dreadlocked voyeurs rejoiced.

For a long time now, I have despaired at the porn and sex industry and the objectification and degradation of women it perpetuates. So it was with considerable scepticism that I read a magazine article about the new wave in pro-feminist porn billed as a new hope for women in an industry full of exploitation, degradation and disrespect. The piece raved about a new ‘alternative’ website which liberated women and favoured unconventional beauty. Is this liberation? Or is it just another porno star in a punk rock push up bra?

‘Spooky’ is founder, financer, operator and designer of Suicidegirls.com. An internet porn site that touts itself as “Part alternative community, and part pin up showcase of more than 980 tattooed and pierced bad girls from Finland to Columbia”. On this web site, girls (like most porn, always girls, never women) have creative licence to do their own hair and make-up as well as design and photograph their own shots. True, the site offers more than just bodies, the girls have their own profiles and blogs, and you are more likely to click upon a “Tattooed, Trotskyite from Toronto” than a “Barely legal, busty bi-girl from Berlin”, but is this really the feminist porn revolution its cracked up to be? Or is it just sexual oppression with a septum piercing?

The pro-porn, anti-porn feminist debate has been raging over the last few years, with books like “Female Chauvinist Pigs; Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” by Ariel Levy. There’s nothing interesting I could add on that subject. Whether feminists believe that all porn is anti-women by its very nature, or that the elusive ‘feminist porn’ does exist, I think most would agree that there is a lot of pornography on the market which is degrading, objectifying and disempowering for women. Is Suicide Girls simply one of the other niche porn sites flourishing on the smut smorgasbord of the web (like Raver Porn, Grannies and Nannies, Women Playing with Star Trek Figurines etc) or is it a new wave in Girl Power?

In an interview with Annie Tomolin, ed. Bitch Magazine, Spooky said he wanted Suicide Girls to bypass all the sleazy porn speak, silicone and salaciousness of mainstream porn “I want it to be cute and naughty, instead of dirty and sleazy”. Spooky also emphasises that the site doesn’t encourage penetration or spread shots, but will allow them if its “important for the girl”. Entry requirement is that all girls be under US size 12, and although its not policy, 50 women of colour in over 980 models would suggest that white is the way to go. He is adamant in the interview that a Suicide Girl is not just T & A. All the models have blogs on their photo page where they talk about their daily lives, their families and other less than titillating information to show that the model is a human and not just the pair of boobs that you pay $48 a month to see. To reiterate the fact that the breasts you ogle are attached to a thinking, feeling person there is a profile beside the photos detailing the models tattoos and piercing, favourite sexual position and first sexual experience. Talk about progressive!

David Grohl said “the great thing about the SuicideGirls is that they completely tear down that Pamela Anderson image. They’re beautiful ladies, with crazy tattoos piercing and dreadlocks” and La Weekly also had a dig at Pammy “(SuicideGirls is) the cyberspace phenomenon that says that a green haired chick with facial piercings and a sleeve of tats can be sexier than any Pam Anderson clone”. So is the point that objectification of women is Ok as long as they’re not blonde and have body modifications? An ad for the site reads “These are women I can respect”.

What does that mean? That porn stars with plugs and peroxide deserve respect because of their body modification, but porn stars with sunless tans and silicone deserve scorn because of theirs? Shouldn’t women be respected for more than the particular style of beauty they ascribe to?

The implication of the comment is that normal women in porn don’t deserve respect, but SuicideGirls do because they are being a “modern day pin-up icon, while challenging social modes of beauty in the process”-Independent Florida Alligator. There you have it ladies, you can have your cake and eat it too- You can have all the self validation, attention and moderate celebrity of being a porn star, and still be a socially progressive, intellectual feminist revolutionary simply by wearing black and listening to Cannibal Corpse.

So when the powers of your slender body, leftist politics and Goth, emo, punk sensibility combine, the power is yours, right? Um, well, the power actually belongs to Spook, the businessman behind the website. A SuicideGirl gets paid US $100-$200 per photo shoot. The site has over 150,000 members who pay $48 a month for that privilege. Its easy to calculate that, with around $10,000 a month in expenses, Spook mayn’t be living the Heifner highlife, but he’s making a serious profit. Considering the women themselves create and photograph their own shoots and are required to make regular blog entries, Spook gets a pretty wide profit margin for someone who merely keeps the site running. I would concede that women in porn calling their own shots (literally) is a more women friendly approach to the sex industry, but those women should be paid, in full, for the work they have done. Its all very well for the male owner of the business to “empower women” to create their own pornography, but in actual fact, Spooky is exploiting women to do his work and conversely, being praised for his contribution to feminist friendly porn. Ironic, isn’t it, that making female workers do everything for a tiny percentage of profit, while the male profiteer does relatively little is considered female empowerment? Some would call it corporate exploitation. What could possibly be empowering about that?

When it comes to the crunch, the sex, dreads and rock’n’roll attitude of the SuicideGirls provides little hope for the revolution of feminist pornography. True, it’s positive to acknowledge women who stray from the traditional mould of fashion and beauty, but it seems from the white skinny models on the site, that SuicideGirls can’t see the alternatives in alternative. Alternative beauty should be more than just buying into a different fashion trend, it should be about accepting bodies of all shapes, colours and sizes for what they are. The ‘Cincinnati Enquirer’ raved about the girls on the site as “ beauty queens, with tattoos and a little bit of attitude”. Couldn’t have said it better myself, SuicideGirls resemble a cheerleading squad dipped in a bucket of Hot Topic remnants.

Sure, it is very different to playboy. Model’s have well written blogs, and list their pastimes as “painting, punk-rock gigs, herbal tea and Kafka” rather than “long walks along the beach, cooking and pleasing men”. I think it is a positive step to show the models as intellectual, interesting women with interesting things to say. So why are they only being heard because they have naked photos next to their philosophical musings? Why do they have to use sexuality to be taken notice of? This is not a feminist revolution. This is just a type of pierced patriarchy at its most insidious.

By Heather Easton