Friday, 03 July 2009

  • Posing Nude

    There's days I think I would like to be a Suicide Girl.

    For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, here's a not-safe-for-work website to check out:

    http://suicidegirls.com/join/gallery/

    Suicide girls pose nude in "artsy" photographs.  Most are heavily tattooed.  The idea is that they are "redefining beauty".  Lately, though, I think all the girls are starting to blend together.  They're getting skinnier, you see a lot more fake boobs.  The initial idea though, was pretty great.

    I can't seem to get past the question of whether SG is art or porn.  Whether posing nude is liberation or exploitation.

    Sometimes I think that saying, "screw my insecurities" and posing nude would be the most cathartic experience.  Maybe I would finally accept my thighs, my rumply stomach.  Maybe I could move past shame and reach a feeling of peace.

    But what if it isn't cathartic?  What if the photos only made me feel worse?  What if the photo shoot left me feeling like a piece of meat?  What if the images floating on the internet came back to haunt me?

    I always wondered about Playboy Playmates.  What really goes through their minds as they strip down in front of photographers.  Is it power?  Is it need?  Are their friends and family able to understand the decision?  What happens when the photo shoot is over, when the magazine gets old? 

    Does daily life feel like a disappointment after such an experience?

    What do you guys think?  Is posing for nude photographs liberating to women, or is it just another form of exploitation? 

     

Comments (83)

  • Drakonskyr

    I, ahem, had an experience with one of the fetish/glam photographers out of SF who worked with suicide girls awhile back. Afterwards, aaaaalll she did was talking about photography and girls and blah blah blah, I didn't care, I was busy looking through her records. She had bitchin' records. But! She did mention a lot of girls found it empowering...and some other ones were basically like "tits. money. awesome. thanks".

    Apparently it's a very individual case thing. 
  • Murazrai

    That will depend on how they were done.
  • lotta_valdez

    @Drakonskyr - You would make a great suicide girl.
  • maniacsicko

    personally, i see it as exploitation....  it's a success story of how some men successfully exploits the mind of some women to see it as liberating to do such things...

    but that's just how i personally see it
  • royal_diadem

    all very important questions. personally i find that if you're someone who doesn't associate nudity with sex, then you may not feel as bad about naked pictures. historically the female body has been looked at as a work of art in many cultures.

  • Mercredi@lovelyish

    I think that some pictures can be really beautiful/interesting. Not all of them. but it depends on the girl/photograph...

  • ginsu417

    First off, I didn't come here because I thought there were going to be photos.  I'm a dirty old man, but not that dirty.  But I've met a couple of the SGs.  And they're.... not playing with a full deck?
  • Drakonskyr

    @lotta_valdez - I don't have the tits for it. Nor the piercings, tattoo, or general demeanor.

    I am, though, quite personally empowered.
  • BenevolentOne

    The most important aspect of posing nude is what YOU think about it. If you think its exploiting you as a person, then its exploitation. However, if you like posing nude in an artsy kind of way, who is anyone to tell you its wrong? Its up to you to make that decision.

    Personally, SG pose very well on the artsy side of nude photography and Playboy is more for porn. The two are only similar in that they show naked women.

    What I suggest you do (if you have not done so already) is too take your own photographs. Make a scene or something, get naked, and shoot some of your own pictures. You can have a friend take them or you can do it yourself, up to you. Look at the pictures, and even though they will be highly amateur you can still get a sense of how you might feel behind professional cameras. Get a feel for being nude in a picture.

    Going back to what I previously said, once you have taken your own pictures, you can then decide whether or not they are liberating to you, or exploiting you as a person.

    PS: Your thighs? really? rumply stomach? o.O ... I don't believe it.
  • relaxolgy

    either way we can never control what others think of us, or our writing, or nude picsm the way we sing, or... anything we do.
  • meanii

    I think the best advice is to think of your future kids before doing things like nude pictures and playboy pictures and stuff. My childhood friend's mum did pictures like that and it ruined her life and my friend was bullyed very badly in school for them.


    But I do understand where you are coming from tho. I would love to be able to do stuff like that. It's not only sexy but arty too.lol.
  • LucyWrites

    Much of the stuff that passes for "liberation" is actually exploitation. I think you'd feel like a piece of meat.
  • lonelywanderer2

    As long as you pose entirely of your own free will, it is up to YOU how you feel about it afterward.  Those who view the photos will have their own feelings about them, and that you can't control.  Myself, I try to view all girls or women as ladies, and treat them accordingly.  Having nude, or even blatantly erotic, sexual pictures taken and published doesn't change the fact that they are ladies, nor lessen my respect for them in the least.  I have been planning to do a post about this, and will do it very soon.
  • FOXHOUND_HQ

    @maniacsicko - I agree. I believe posing nude reduces a woman's reputation in the eyes of men. 
  • forwhomthebelsentolls

    Well look, men who don't know you, looking at pictures of you in their rooms behind closed doors and then lying on the floor and jerking off, maybe even on a red towel, and skeeting on it, that's not very picturesque to everybody, but at least the sperm isn't going into the vagina of a single parent teenaged mother who is gonna have a baby that she can't take care of, THAT'S exploitation, if you ask me, dads, and grandparents, who won't take care of their kids. 


    People who beat their kids to death like the guy in Worcester, Massachusetts who beat his 7 year old son to death recently when his son was in his custody for the summer.  Prostitutes buried in a shallow grave behind a motel in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Stuff like that.  That's exploitation and abuse.  Just some lonely dude having a wank at a peep show and somebody going around with a mop to mop the floors of the booths once every 1/2 hour to wipe up the peckerprints is not so terrible in my mind, and anyway if prostitution was legal but unders strict controls so that the workers had safe conditions it would be an improvement.  Hypocrisy and judgmentalness are everywhere, but the sex industry is very ancient, all substantial Roman ruins include brothels.
  • haloed

    I think if it's most definitely art, then it's empowering.  If it's tasteless, slutty, etc, then it's just more exploitation.
  • jacksoncroons

    First off, you're right Suicide Girls have changed - something is missing. As for posing nude . . . it can be empowering. I think if your head is in a place that you can say, "this is me nude, big deal!" then it would be a good experience. Will it come back to haunt you? It will resurface, that's a given, but it doesn't have to haunt you - you just have to say "this is me nude! big deal!"
  • SimplyNita

    I suppose it would depend on the poses and how the pictures were taken. 
  • PPhilip

    Let me  say if you post a nude picture of yourself and make a commentary it would/could be more of a political statement saying that you are ok with certain views of your body.

    Hiding fat theighs, featuring the left or right side of your face may be justified in saying that is the side that you think is more beautiful. Well some artists and photographers do know what features to bring out and what features to not emphasize.

    Let me say if someone falls in love with your image and then begins to stalk you that would make posting your nude image a big mistake. Then again Madonna posts images of herself and she  doesn't allow stalkers to get too close to her so she must have the resources to take care of stalkers.

    What image has a sign that says I am not wanting you to see it if you turn into a stalker? Pretty much there isn't any way to prevent stalkers except to remain anonymous which when writing a blog pretty much means you are giving away a lot of information that may allow a stalker to be harmful.
  • Jillycarmel

    my sister said at the college you can make $10 an hour and that the art class has all types of people even 60yr old women who pose nude.
  • a_place2freely_scream

    its probably whatever you precieve it to be.  i saw this interview with a porn star and she said she and other girls in the field were very conservative in their personal life.  they go way out of their way to get emotional satisfaction in their sex lives.  you could try taking nude pictures in private to see if you like the expirence.  you could get your boyfriend to take them, he'd really like that haha. 
  • Lordv16

    I know a SG model personally, and she absolutely loves it. I remember how nervous she was at the start, but its been about a year and shes thriving. I've seen some of her shoots, and I get a sense that the goal is based around being artistic rather then dirty.

    I don't think it's exploitation, I think it's a profession. We as a people have wrapped so much meaning around the nude human body that people will throw huge amounts of money just to see it.

  • randaness

    I think that exploitation is dependent on purpose. I'm not sure, though, about the balance of purpose -- the woman who is posing nude might be doing so for one purpose, but the photographer might be doing it for another, and those who view the photos may have entirely different purposes as well. I don't know which purpose defines a situation as exploitive.
  • long_haired_muse

    America has such a terrifying obsession with sex, in an unhealthy way.  I think it was royal_diadem  who mentioned this -- artsy pictures of naked women have always been around, in my opinion, because the female form is quite possibly the most beautiful thing ever.  I was thinking about this.  Pornographic art is an integral part of Japanese culture and no more offensive than mildly-violent art is here (think: gunshot wound or visible weapon).  In fact, in Japan (as in Europe and much of Africa), violence is culturally considered as reprehensible as pornography is here, while things we would consider pornographic (nudity, etc) are perfectly acceptable.


    If that were the case culturally here as well as abroad, I'd have no problem posing nude.  But, unfortunately, America's still stuck in some repressed Freudian stage of sexual development...
  • a12906

    @haloed - & how do we know if it's art or exploitation?

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