9 Divine Questions with Missy Suicide

With stunningly beautiful women painted up in dark eyeliner and inked from head-to-toe, the popular pin-up website devoted to the Suicide Girls can be intimidating.

Its founder, however, is anything but.

A beauty herself and an incredibly savvy business woman, Missy Suicide speaks in a charmingly gentle voice and is immediately affable. “We are so looking forward to starting the tour in Denver,” is one of the first things Missy cheerfully says to Out Front. She generously riffed on beauty tips and the nudie cutie website from which she spun an empire.

Is it true that I am chatting with you on SG’s lucky 13th birthday? A run like that is no joke. How are you feeling?

You know, time has gone by so quickly. It feels like it all just started yesterday, but looking back on it, at all the amazing people who have come into my life, I feel really lucky and at home.

Do you have any big celebration plans?

We should have something for 13, but it snuck up on us a little bit!

Suicide Girls was established to celebrate alternative beauty, or as SG itself puts it, “Beauty redefined.” What do you think makes a woman “beautiful?”

She’s confident, graceful, and fiercely independent. That’s what beauty is. The term ‘suicide girls’ is about women who choose to commit social suicide for refusing to fit into a box. And a lot of people ask me things like, “How many tattoos does it take to be a Suicide Girl?” As many and as few as you want! There is no quota. It’s not X (color of hair) by Y (number of tattoos) divided by Z (number of piercings) equals being a Suicide Girl. We are all about breaking the rules by being yourself.

A number of your models are lesbians or bisexual. In what unique ways do queer-identified women contribute to SG’s definition of “beauty?”

The host of our upcoming burlesque tour is actually out. There is definitely a wide range of beautiful women on our site. We’ve got some sets that are kind of drag king and then we have some girls who are super girly — we have everything you can imagine and some in between.

Suicide Girls have been described as the “daughters of Bettie Page.” Who are some modern day sex symbols you love?

Rihanna is really sexy and unapologetically so. Miley Cyrus. Well … not in her Hannah Montana days, but now. Diablo Cody. Yo-Landi Vi$$er from Die Antwoord. Scarlett Johansson. Ellen Page is awesome. Zoe Kravitz. Dita Von Teese is beautiful. And Christina Hendricks … when she walks into the room, all the dialogue and set can just fade away, and it’s like this bawdy, boudoir music comes on as she’s walking — at least that’s how it happens in my fantasies.

The girls on the site are, of course, incredibly gorgeous. What beauty tips do you have for the everyday woman wanting to bring out her inner Suicide Girl?

I think confidence is the sexiest attribute anyone can have. If you feel beautiful, others will think you are beautiful. I know it sounds simplistic, but people respect confidence and respond to it. I always feel better with lipstick. I could be a complete wreck, but a little bit of lipstick can make me feel put together. And a clean pair of shoes!

If Suicide Girls had a theme song, what would it be?

Well, Belle and Sebastian wrote a song about us. That was quite the honor.

You’re kicking the next Suicide Girls burlesque tour off in Denver.
Why here?

We played Denver last year, and it was the craziest sold-out show ever. And then we played the Cannabis Cup, and the girls really had a good time there! We wanted to kick off the tour on the west coast, and it was just the
perfect city.

What can people expect on this tour?

A lot of pop-culture references. If you’re a geek at heart, you’ll just melt. l

The Suicide Girls’ Blackheart Burlesque tour will kick off in Denver at The Summit Music Hall on October 14. For more information about Suicide Girls or the tour, visit suicidegirls.com.