UPDATE MAY 2020: This Suicide Girls book is no longer in production. Suicide Girls still sells books though – just not this one. This review remains as a reference for those who want information on this old Suicide Girls book.
After having purchased Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined, Jor has been whining about wanting another picture book. He seems to enjoy the picture books about as much as I enjoy my books with text in them. Well, after awhile, I settled on ordering this, and I’m actually really happy that I did. It has works AND pictures, and the words actually kept Jor’s attention.
The Suicide Girls book includes 155 pages in this hardcover book. All of the pages are in full-color, and while they aren’t printed on as high of quality paper as the sequel, they still are printed on some nice photo paper that holds up well to the flipping of pages. The book isn’t square – in fact, it’s more rectangular. It’s really about the size of your average sheet of printer paper. This book was printed in 2004 which means it also probably doesn’t include your current favorite Suicide Girl.
Something else to consider about the year (and the making) behind this book. SuicideGirls was never intended to end up printing book copies of their photography. This means that all of their photography was optimized in size for the website. Back in 2004, I think a “good” camera resolution was 8 megapixels – which is nothing compared to our like 16 or 20 today. Because of this, most of the pictures included in this book aren’t the full page size. Most of the pages in the book include about two inches of full white space along the outer edges with two or three pictures in the middle of the page. The pictures aren’t huge, but they are still gorgeous. Just in case you were expecting full-page pictures like the sequel.
So how is the book set-up? Well, in the photography section, each page has a background of white and has a specific girl (or girls) featured on that page with one, two, three, or four pictures. The girl’s name is also included on the page in a small grey box. There is usually one large “focus” picture with two smaller pictures off to the side – usually each page of the book focuses on a single set of the featured girls.
At the time of the publishing of this book, Suicide Girls had only been around for two years. This is what most fans consider the time of their best and most “real” photography. Compared to the sequel, I’d have to agree. This book has a lot more piercings, tattoos, and dark themes. The girls themselves really seem to be more “alternative” in personality rather than just alternative with a butterfly tattoo on their ankle.
This book features lots of naked women (if you couldn’t guess). However, it is mostly considered a softcore book. Most of the women, while naked, are usually covering their genitals. Usually the viewer only will get to see bare breasts. There are quite a few pictures in the book showing bare genitals though. Most of the pictures feature around a “dark/fun” nature. For example, in one set, a nude girl is wearing sparkly red horns and sparkly red gloves while trying to look evil.
When it comes to bodies, like most nude photography, the girls in this book are all of skinny size. There’s only a couple who are included who even have the slightest trace of stomach fat. Most of these girls look like slender girls you’d find on the average street. (Albeit, only the attractive ones.)
After the photography section (which takes up 110 of the 150 pages), we move into the self-portrait section. This is a section where the girls are actually featured in neat profiles that show off the inner person that they are. Each portrait is a page long and seems to feature information straight off of the Suicide Girls site. Each portrait includes one picture and the girls’s vital information. After that, what is included varies. Sometimes, they include one of the “profile questions” that the website asks like “How has your life changed since becoming a SuicideGirl?” or other times, they print some of the girl’s journal entries from off of the site.
Both Jor and I think this was an amazing addition to the book. We got to see the girls for who they really are instead of just naked women. He loved reading about some of them, and another one of our friends was suprised to see how many of the girls actually had advanced college degrees.
At the end of the book, they did include an awesome “Index” of all of the girls including which pages they were featured on. So if you have a favorite Suicide Girl and know her name, you can look up her name and find what pages in the book she was on. I thought it was an amazing feature.
When it comes to which one we prefer more (This or Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined), we’re split. It really depends on what you are looking for in your book. This book provides a lot of great behind-the-scenes type of intimacy while still remaining artsy while the other book just provides a lot of big pictures. This book treats the girls like they are humans with feelings and lets you see a bit into the company while the other book is just more like a collection of softcore porn. Neither book is worse off for their faults – it really just depends on what you want to look at and why you are buying the book. If you are buying it because you love the Suicide Girls and what they represent, this book is better. If you are buying it because you want hot pictures of girls to look at, Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined is better.
While it didn’t include as many pictures, and if you planned to use this for sexual gratification it may not work for you, I was still impressed by all of the pictures and information that the book included. There were tons of pictures of pretty girls who really seemed to be comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. They sincerely seemed to be enjoying taking the pictures – not just doing it as a career choice.
