technoculture314-09

If we take what Shoshana Magnet call a ‘utopian cyberfeminist perspective’ in looking at suicidegirl.com, we might view the site providing an infrastructure that free women from rigid norms of what is sexy, sexual and desirable female. It attempt to enhance female agency by giving voice to female participants. It operates as if it is following how liberated female wish them to be looked at and to be read rather than projecting the traditional female sexuality that often found in other mainstream media. In this sense, the site appear to activate the potential of Web 2.0 to foster democracy, interactivity, freedom and creativity by encouraging users to participate in posting their own material (nude photos and journals), commenting and voting.

However, model participants are paid for their contribution to the site in order for the site to ensure the amount and the quality of these ‘user-generated’ materials. To become a ‘suicide girl’, model’s submitted photos must be passed through the review of the staffs and other members. That means only a specific type of ‘beauty’ that cater to staffs and other members’ taste and definition of ‘punk, tattooed and alternative’ suicide girl will be selected to show on the site. At this sense, users do not have full control over what is to be showed and how it gets displayed, even though the site claimed to be ‘users generated’.


Motivated by the monetary reward, model’s personal identity, their sexuality and their thoughts and minds (represented in their journal and self-description) are commodified to reinforce the exchange-value of their product. It is unproductive and impossible to prove, but it is not hard to see there is specific pattern in the visual and text material that these models contribute. It leads me to doubt if the lives and the leisure time of these models are somewhat shaped by their participation in the site. Would they get more tattoo done to produce more ‘wow’ factor and to increase the chance to be selected? Would they more engage themselves to read feminist or punk literature in order to have more to say in their journal and profile – to attach more signifiers and thus increase the ‘authenticity’ of their product?

In encouraging a specific type of alternative beauty, the website is able to capitalize on niche market rather than activating any singificantly meaningful liberation and exploration on female sexuality. It facilitates capitalist mechanisms rather than democratizing online practices – cybersex. Those ‘suicide girls’ are just another users groups in Web 2.0 that have been exploited through the extraction of surplus value from labor not only by objectification of their creative inputs as commodities, but also, perhaps, the extension of productive work into some aspects of their life.

The society we live in has a clear perception on how females should look like to be accepted by the society. However Suicidegirls try to change the gaze of the society.

Suicidegirls is a site that goes against the normal pornographic sites. Women have been presented as an object on these pornographic sites, but suicidegirls attempts to change the perception of women just being an object. The site allows the girls to write and communicate with users, able to show what they consider beauty and show they also have brains.

The gaze laid upon females is very important and plays a vital role in how females are portrayed. The reading suggested Mulvey’s ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ theory of women being looked at and displayed at the same time. This voyeuristic gaze has been encouraged by the way female figures are shot in films. The position of the camera takes on the masculine position which is that males are the active onlookers while the females are the passive object to be looked upon. Films also adopted the concept of scopophilia, which is a concept “Freud associated with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze”. (Mulvey, 1990) The concept of scopophilia has been made a part of our society, which suicidegirls are trying to change. By altering the type of gaze laid upon the suicidegirls models, they are in control of the gaze laid upon them theoretically.

But even if they can control where the gaze of the ‘active’ viewer can look at, it still does not change the fact that the models can still be looked at as objects. I feel that it would be impossible for models showing their body on the internet can avoid being objectified, as one cannot control the way the active gazer views the model no matter how the photo has been taken, or whose hands the camera was in.