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Suicide Girls Take Burlesque on Tour

By Jason Schreurs
Monday Magazine | July 6, 2004
Seven nearly nude women with lots of chocolate sauce and whipping cream . . . No, it’s not last night’s unattainable male fantasy: it’s the SuicideGirls Live Burlesque show, which struts into town this Monday. An offshoot of the wildly popular punk-girls-get-nekkid website SuicideGirls.com, the live show promises to be a memorable one.

“It’s a lot of skits and skin,” says Missy Suicide, founder of SuicideGirls. “The show takes the sexy spirit of burlesque and puts it to a modern soundtrack. It’s like no other show out there.”

The performance features sensual stripteases and pop culture skits by the seven women on tour, including a Bond girl skit and a “sexy version” of the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs. Not sure how they’re gonna pull that off, but the chocolate sauce sounds promising. “If you don’t want to get messy, you should stay out of the front row,” warns Missy.

SuicideGirls has become quite the industry for Missy and her 340 models. A plethora of merchandise on the site includes a recently launched coffee table book of sexy photos. Despite criticisms from some that it’s just more naked ladies in cyberspace (albeit, naked ladies with piercings and tattoos), Missy explains the site has a much deeper meaning for her.

“I was out doing book signings on the burlesque tour and I had girls coming up to me telling me how much they appreciated that the site was started, that they have a lot more confidence with their bodies now and they feel beautiful because there’s real girls on there. They’re not these surgically enhanced, blonde, fake-tanned, airbrush women that are on the cover of every magazine. So they’re like, ‘Hey, that girl’s beautiful and she’s being recognized as beautiful, and I kinda look like her and maybe I’m beautiful too.’ So I think it’s definitely helped to raise a lot of women’s self-esteem.”

As for the models on the site, do they find it empowering?

“I definitely do,” confirms Pearl Orchid, one of the women on the burlesque tour, “and that’s why I’m doing it. I feel like people who want to take away from SuicideGirls are only looking at what we do on a surface level. All they see is girls who take their clothes off so people can look at them, but I know all the girls on the tour feel really empowered by our participation.”

Deeper meaning or not, the tour’s been a blast, says Pearl. “It’s often like a little sorority house on wheels,” she says with a maniacal laugh, “there’s make-up and bras everywhere!”
Tags: sex & reproductive issues

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