When I logged into Punk Planet and was greeted by an ad for Suicide Girls, I thought I had logged into myspace unintentionally.
Hmmm.
Really? Her?
the one about "fucked but ultimately life-affirming poetry". That phrase has ben making me giggle.
as soon as I can ask ben to make me a banner fucking ad for the love buns, then that shit might someday be up there yo.
if my lawyer does not break my knee caps for not paying him.
we talked it over but they are independent and, to some degree, girl friendly . . . also, i did some deep-ish research into them a few months ago when i was considering working with them, and their previous labor issues seem to have been resolved.
of course, anyone with differing information should post it here and let us know asap.
I just hope you charge them on the way far end of a sliding scale. SG got deep pockets. I'm just a prude I guess, but the whole girl friendliness and fetishizing subcultures... I don't know, the girls I've met who have been involved with SG seem a little damaged... Yeah, I'm just a prude I guess, but I was like watching this concert of some Spice Girls or PussyCat Dolls type band on the WB and its these 5 women in bondage gear and they go "This ones for all the little girls out there!!! It's our girl anthem...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was raw like me?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was fun like me?
Don't cha? (unhh aah)
Don't cha?
And I was like, "If my [hypothetical] daughter ever sang that before a softball game I would be mortified!"
Everybody's gotta put food on their families, though... I'm just a prude I guess.
this is more of an issue that, you know, we have certain minimal advertising rules for who we will work with here, and beyond those minimal rules, we really want to allow for as much diversity as we can. so refusing advertisers based on, essentially, the fact that it's porn. . . that seems super prudish. especially when, you know, i'm basically ok about porn.
but fetishizing girls within pornography is a totally different issue than fetishizing all girls in mass media, as that goofy song does.
I have some issues with SG:
1. Exploitation. They usually pay about $400 or less for a set and make you sign over ownership rights to them. That means that they can sell the women's images without permission and without paying them any more, no matter how much they make off of it. That's horrible, even for the porn industry.
2. Lying for the sake of pr. When they originally came out, they presented themselves as a woman-run, woman-friendly business. However, it was discovered a while back that it is actually men that run the operation. Perhaps that doesn't seem bad, but to me that is pretty sleazy. Especially since I have been told by at least 3 SG I know that they would not have gotten involved if they had known.
BUT
I have some issues with SG:
1. Exploitation. They usually pay about $400 or less for a set and make you sign over ownership rights to them. That means that they can sell the women's images without permission and without paying them any more, no matter how much they make off of it. That's horrible, even for the porn industry.
1. Exploitation. They usually pay about $400 or less for a set and make you sign over ownership rights to them. That means that they can sell the women's images without permission and without paying them any more, no matter how much they make off of it. That's horrible, even for the porn industry.
2. Lying for the sake of pr. When they originally came out, they presented themselves as a woman-run, woman-friendly business. However, it was discovered a while back that it is actually men that run the operation. Perhaps that doesn't seem bad, but to me that is pretty sleazy. Especially since I have been told by at least 3 SG I know that they would not have gotten involved if they had known.
as to point 1, this is clearly stated in the SG contract. which, if you sign, you agree to. (when i challenged this—and I was going to write for them, not pose, so I don't know how they'd be for models—they changed it. easy peasy.) so GIRLS? LISSEN UP: read the contracts and change them if you don't like them. and if they refuse, DON'T SIGN. And if they're not paying you enough, why do the labor?
and as to point 2, SG allowed this to be said in one, I think, TV show, and eventually were "urged" (forced, I believe) to correct it in some sort of public announcement. Now they no longer state this (I believe they're co-owned by a dude and a chick although he's kind of the controling partner? I'm only remembering vaguely here, so I could be wrong.)
so, seriously. I'd love to hear a solid, contemporary reason why we shouldn't run the ads. besides that porn is unchristian. because some of those naked girls are clearly wearing crosses.
This has been a good discussion, but I didn't write it to attack Punk Planet. Rather, it is simply what it is. I wasn't sure how I felt about Suicide Girls as a company and wanted to know what other people thought. I have no problem with porn, but I do worry about power systems. It is good to see that Punk Planet is worried about them too.
Punk Planet has the right to take ads from whoever they want, and I don't really have a huge problem with SG in particular. I guess for me it's more of a question of how many times I can ride the subway home to Jamaica, Queens with a fellow passenger watching hardcore porno on a portable DVD player with his hand in his sweatpants before I begin to start thinking that the normalization and ubiquity of pornography (hard and soft) just may have a deleterious effect on society. Bad reactionary! Bad reactionary! And wouldn't it be nice to have a community that didn't play into to this trend in even a very small way. I kinda wonder if this was 1997 instead of 2007 if the general consensus would be that to have misgivings about an advertiser based solely on the fact that they are pornographers is prudish. Which it is (the general consensus, I mean, societally and in the "underground"), and which is why I was almost embarrassed to respond to your post in the first place... But I'm cool with it, you know...
I've been curious as to how this discussion has played itself out. In a recent conversation with a very wise woman about the relationship between punk communities and corporate culture, she reminded me that "context is everything" and the "medium is the message." So while PP certainly has the right to run any ad that it wants, it is establishing a public relationship with those advertisers and what they are peddling. I respect r.john's insightful comment that "porn is good business" yet I'm not sure KungFuFlipperBaby's initial response should be written off as prudishness, even in his own self-effacing way. What struck me as interesting is that the SG ads appeared almost simultaneously with Cindy Crabb joining the boards. In fact, I recall the disjuncture of reading her two blog posts while the SG banner ad flashed above.
As she writes: “One of the things feminism taught me was that the patriarchy was deeply embedded inside my mind and inside my body. from the hollywood fairytales I'd been force fed, the prince in shining armor, the soul mate, the person who would complete me.” And, I thought to myself, to the SG banner ad above.
And she writes: “One of the thing Anarchism taught me is that the feeling of incompleteness is part of the neurosis of living in a world that robs us of our humanity by turning us into consumers … Our feeling of incompleteness was partially due to the attempt to fill our needs with empty products, fill our loneliness with empty fun.”
She continues: “I was one of the girls who got her self worth from men, and more than that, from my desirability … that my only worth was sexual, mostly.”
Me, I’m not a big fan of porn. I feel like the practice operates by placing the viewer into a masculinist/consumerist position, a position that I don’t enjoy or desire. But I do like erotica. Where’s the line? Beats the hell out of me. But I wanted to think about how these two blog threads are connected, while acknowledging that they are related in very complicated ways.
ONE LIFE CREW said it best when they said, "Equal Rights, Means Equal Fights."
I thought OLC said it best when they said "DP worthless scum should all die of AIDS"
I dunno, thats good too, but the thought of punching girls really does it for me, you know.
If they want to be treated as equals, then they are going to get punched in the face.
I like empowerment when it supports my theories that all girls love getting jerked off to...
I think something that's preventing thorough discussion of this issue is that the context of the discussion has not been clearly defined. Are we talking about this from a business ethics point of view? That's what'd I'd addressed earlier, but obviously you guys are a for-profit music-oriented magazine. If you feel okay with the business relationship with SG, then that's that.
Or are we addressing this from a moral/socio-political standpoint? As a feminist, a young woman, and a consumer/participant of punk I find the pairing repugnant, but pretty par for the course as far as punk goes. Punk is not a feminist safehaven (or especially progressive in regards to women), despite how much some of us would like it to actually be. I'm okay with porn and having porn ads, but how about some actual progressive porn? There's nothing progressive about SG. It reinforces the same old sizeism, ageism, etc as mainstream porn. Putting tattoos and a bad dye-job in the mix doesn't make it progressive.
Don't like it... just sayin'...