At first glance, very little seems to be happening at the loft-like LA offices of the Suicide Girls. No goth hotties flashing their tats and naughty bits. No burlesque dancers prancing atop the tables. Not a single scantily clad woman in sight. With the exception of the large photo prints of variously pierced and inked nude girls adorning the walls, there are few clues that this is the world headquarters of the pioneering punk-erotica site.
Yet, it’s a typically insane day for Missy Suicide and her several dozen employees, almost all of whom are female from the looks of it. Production is underway for the next issue of the Suicide Girls magazine. Four SG models are supposed to arrive separately for a comics convention in Las Vegas and they’re having flight delays. There’s a meeting scheduled at the studios of Indie 103.1 FM where the Suicide Girls radio show is taped weekly. Soon after, Missy and VP of operations Victoria Santino are due to meet with a new manufacturer of SG-branded merchandise to plan for an upcoming apparel show—of course, they’ve got to schlepp clear across town in rush hour traffic to get there. They’ve also learned that a shipment of hoodies and shirts headed to an event in Amsterdam has been held up by customs officials.

On top of it all, Missy is nervously prepping for a debate on Internet decency to be broadcast on the Fox network.
“The female form is the most celebrated thing in all of art history,” she says. “Women shouldn’t be afraid of their sexuality or sensuality. Besides, the site is protected against underage viewing. I’m hoping that will diffuse their argument,” she says, laughing.
Meanwhile, she’s still got the day-to-day business of maintaining the site—the photo sessions, blogs, journals, forums, podcasts, interviews, etc. etc.

Welcome to the frenetic world of Suicide Girls Inc., the sprawling lifestyle company that has grown out of a website that once merely showed pictures of pretty punk/goth girls. From its humble underground beginnings, Suicide Girls has branched out into books, magazines, DVDs, radio, live burlesque shows and clothing. SG models have appeared in television shows, music videos and films, including an upcoming Quentin Tarantino vehicle. There are even plans for a Suicide Girls movie and a Pussycat Dolls-like band, though Missy is keeping mum about it for now.

It’s hard to imagine that Suicide Girls began just seven years ago in a studio apartment in Portland, Ore.
“It’s been a wild ride,” says Missy, who started the site with business partner, Sean Suhl, as a gallery for her pin-up photography. “The biggest challenge of growing from a site into a brand has been finding the time to manage it all. There’s just a lot of exciting, big stuff happening right now.”

Of course, growing up hasn’t come without its growing pains. In a widely publicized brouhaha in 2005, several SG models complained of being mistreated and misused—a charge that put a dent in the company’s feminist-friendly posture. But Missy dismisses the incident as the isolated complaints of a few (SG now boasts some 1,500 models from every continent including Antarctica).

“Occasionally, some girls may disagree with us and that’s fine and they can move on,” she says. “The overwhelming majority is happy.”
Suicide Girls also faces some competition from upstarts, such as God’s Girls, who have jumped on the soft-core, alt-porn bandwagon.
But none of them “do it with the same heart,” Missy says. “We’ve had several hundred couples who have met on the site and gotten married because the site allows people to meet based on interests, whether its music or politics. I’ve actually been asked to officiate at a couple of weddings.”

Despite the hiccups, Suicide Girls continues to expand and attract new fans. Count celebrities among them. At the Indie 103.1 meeting, it’s clear that the radio show has no problems getting famous faces to come into the studio for a chat. Upcoming guests include Tom Green, Margaret Cho, Peaches, Janice Dickinson and the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne.
From midnight to 2 a.m. Sunday nights, the show gives advice to the loveless in LA. Hosting duties are usually handled by Missy and a Suicide Girl named Bee Jellyfish, a petite redhead who today sports a peach-colored skirt, lacey blouse and artfully torn—yet matching—peach stockings. How to keep the two-year-old show engaging is a constant topic of discussion.
“What’s your feeling on Flaming Lips?” Missy asks the group, which includes Indie’s programming director Max Tolkolf. “I’m not their biggest fan, but they have a good following.”

“I really want this,” Bee responds. “I’m one of Wayne’s biggest fans. He got into a giant bubble and threw out cookies to everyone. What kind of life is that? It’s awesome!”

The meeting at BC Ethic, the retro clothing company best known for its bowling shirts, is a bit more serious. Victoria Santino, who oversees SG’s merchandising, has a little more than a month to prepare for an important trade show in New York called London Edge, which showcases street, punk and goth wear. She wants to come armed with samples of new SG-branded hoodies, tops and pants to show buyers.

“Basically what I want to accomplish today is figure out what we can do and how fast,” Santino tells the reps from BC Ethics.
What follows is a lot of discussion about fabrics, cuts, prints and deadlines. The bottom line: BC Ethic will focus on getting samples ready for the trade show, but then take more time to develop an entirely new retail line for Suicide Girls.
“Retail is so tough now,” says BC Ethic’s senior VP of marketing Jim Baltutis. “You gotta make a good impression from the beginning—or else it’s done.”

The meeting ends with one last bit of business for the day: a photo shoot at the BC Ethic warehouse. A Suicide Girl who goes by StellaBlue poses with a vintage hot rod. Missy does the shoot down and dirty with a single digital camera and no assistants. It’s outdoors under the glaring sun. But Stella doesn’t mind—nor does she mind stripping down to nothing.
“I love being naked,” she says. “My roommate used to hate the fact that I would come out wearing heels and nothing else and ask, ‘Do these shoes make me look fat?’”