So a few weeks before the SG Blackheart Burlesque show in my city, I had the opportunity to sit down with a local online magazine crew who interviewed me about being a hopeful. It's a lengthy listen being an hour long but for those interested, here it is!
http://theenemy.ca/articles/2016/the-enemy-interviews-discoverelle
By: The Enemy Staff
We interviewed Discoverelle a couple of weeks prior to The SuicideGirls' Blackheart Burlesque Show that happened last Monday at the Garrick. Dicoverelle is a SuicideGirl Hopeful, residing in Winnipeg by way of Vancouver. Her role as a Hopeful means she has a number of published photosets up on the site, but is waiting on one set of pics to ascend to "Photoset of the Day", which would allow her to be fully be jumped in to the SG gang. She's active on the site, and worked with the Burlesque show this year as she has done for the last 2 times they've stopped in Winnipeg. We talk about how she found the SuicideGirls, Vancouver edibles (and dab bars!), how the site helped her cope with anxiety and blossom socially, and also her mind-boggling disdain for Action Bronson.
The SuicideGirls are more than a collective of hot, tattoo-clad, "alt" models on Instagram. They're probably the most visible force on the Internet pushing for the representation of girls whose beauty may be seen as unconventional. The Western powers-that-be have been crawling towards that direction as of late (Ashley Graham on the Sports Illustrated cover, the increasing ubiquity of tattoos and curvier body types in the realm of celebrity, the popularity of women like Kat Von D, etc.), the SuicideGirls have definitely been a part of pushing that direction, especially pre-Instagram. The SuicideGirls originally started in 2001 with a dozen models and guy/girl duo from Oregon who hoped to re-create pin-up culture in a 21st century context. The site is now a thriving business that focuses on burlesque, growing a community, and giving those women who submit control over how their sexuality is portrayed on the Internet (penetration/crotch shots notwithstanding). The website itself is also an all-in-one stop for blogging, non-modelling videos, and a forum for conversation between the models that post on the site and their adoring male, female, and transgender fans. In our humble opinion, it's kind of a cross between Tumblr, Wordpress, an old Internet forum, and a softcore paysite, (think an alt. Playboy). As it was created to showcase the world's "geek goddesses", G4TV, television bible of the mid-2000s gamer, called the SuicideGirls site the Internet's version of a "decadent speakeasy hidden off a back alley in the wrong end of town".
The mystery and seclusion around this speakeasy drew in Discoverelle, a child of the Internet as most of us are. Discoverelle spoke of her community as a close-knit, ever positive and completely open utopia. As the site is pay to play, SG seems to be free of the anonymous douchebags and edgy adolescents that dampen many of our Internet experiences. The "12 and 13 year olds who don't have anything to say," in Discoverelle's words.
Discoverelle was cordial when she sat down with us, if at first timid. However, we all relaxed a little more as the interview went on. She was nice, but didn't fuck with Action Bronson, which we at The Enemy can't cosign. We spoke at length about anxiety, and the challenges of expressing oneself in spaces as a young woman and model who doesn't look like the prototypical supermodel. The opening to this conversation was her ruminations on dick pics. Discoverelle articulates her frustration with guys assuming that it's okay to throw her their unwanted meat prints because she's posting on instagram.Just because she is posting pictures of her body doesn't assume she is looking for cyber-sexual male validation, a rightful and important argument. It got a bit weird for a second, though. She made an unclear statement on the "foreign guys" that may need to be culturally educated on etiquette with women, words that were wading into those murky waters of a colonialist tinge that spring from either condescension or honest ignorance. She further extrapolated on the systemic fears women face in their daily life that guys are often unaware of, and the importance of hearing these stories. Overall, it was a good conversation with a girl who found herself a product of being on the Internet for over a decade, and the opportunities she was/is awarded for opening up to the SuicideGirls community. She isn't looking for much more, it seems, as an air of satisfaction with her current situation permeated the conversation, something we can all aspire to.
