At first, it was just a trickle: A Goth girl here or there, the occasional fuchsia-haired vixen, tattooed vamp, or pierced heartbreaker cropping up in the most unexpected places. Their approach was unconventional, their appetites voracious, their erotica hypnotic, and the effect on the consumer populace was at once alluring and repellant as the wave washed over everything in sight. Love ’em or hate ’em, you’ve got to admire these.
The face of the American porn starlet is changing. In the past, just mentioning the words "porn" or "adult movie" evoked images of Barbie-perfect young women with perky breasts, tight asses, flawless skin, and platinum-blond tresses erupting from their crowns in "just-fucked" curly profusion or running board-straight down their backs like inviting silk bed linens.
Although the usual suspects certainly continue to populate the celluloid and digital marvels of modern adult cinema, an entirely new complexion has sneaked onto the scene of late—and in a big way. Known as "alt girls," the emerging representatives of American adult entertainment aren’t attractive in the same way their silicone-enhanced sisters might have been, but that’s the point, really. Piercing, body art and modification, hair that defies logic (if they have hair at all), vivid makeup, and punk attitude to spare combine in alt-porn chicks (and dudes) to create a fiercely feral sexuality with a raw, brutal edge. It’s enough to make observers wonder if dalliances with these women could be fatal, or at least a little dangerous in a terribly exciting way.
While they’re not exactly staging a bloody coup, alt models and performers are attracting a growing number of consumers to their Web presences and brick-and-mortar products. Whether or not alt-porn fans also are fans of the cultural scene that spawned the adult content niche, they seem to enjoy the less-perfect, devil-may-care, counterculture twist on life and porn the new wave represents. A Google search for the phrase "alt and porn" in mid-February returned almost 1.5 million results; "alt and sex" returned more than 5.5 million results. While both of those numbers (neither of which includes just the territory narrowly defined by this article) represent only a small portion of the 95.5 million results returned for the term "porn" and the 431 million returned for the term "sex," they are indicative that something is going on: Evidently, lots of people pay attention when alt starlets roar.
Thermo-genesis
The "alt" in alt-porn refers to "alternative," although alternative to what isn’t easily defined. Photographer Philip Warner—whose Houston-based Lithium Picnic studio has photographed many of the most popular alt vixens—said it represents an alternative form of self-expression: artful body decoration that falls outside the mainstream. Model and filmmaker Joanna Angel said alt is alternative to established societal norms: a rebelliousness or indication of "issues with authority." Unlike the anti-establishment rebels of the 1960s and ’70s, however, these young lions and lionesses aren’t "tuning in, turning on, and dropping out"—they’re making statements in more proactively creative ways that may not involve psychoactive substances any more potent than alcohol. Still, one cannot escape the notion that Timothy Leary would have been proud of these non-conformists. And so, by the way, would the sweet transvestite from Transexual Transylvania and his little gang of libertine aliens. (Rocky Horror, which incorporated some archetypes for what is considered alt today, was cool long before alt-porn was even a gleam in its progenitors’ eyes.)
According to Vivid Alt producer, director, and videographer Octavio "Winky Tiki" Arizala, the underground club scene where so-called "head-banger" and punk music reigns lent the alt-porn movement its style: adult content infused with tattooed, pierced, fiercely independent women and edgy rock music. Most of the habitués of the scene are young (under 30), although Matt Zane—who many consider the founder of the alt-porn genre—is considerably older than that. Zane—himself a rock musician and a walking shrine to body art, extreme hair, and terminal angst—began making in 1995 what today is referred to as alt-porn. He took a break from adult in 2001 in order to focus on his music, returning in February 2007 to discover that his formerly obscure "signature style" no longer was obscure nor uniquely his. It had been co-opted by a number of brick-and-mortar studios and online impresarios who had discovered the approach-avoidance allure of the alt mystique.
Alt-porn wormed its way into the collective connected consciousness circa 2001, when SuicideGirls.com appeared on the Web. Founded by two alt folks who worked out of a loft in downtown Portland, Ore., SuicideGirls rapidly became an icon of modern culture in much the same way Playboy captured hearts, minds, and erogenous zones in the 1960s. Today, the website boasts more than 5 million unique visitors a month, hundreds of thousands of paying members, a successful book and DVD in stores, and a signature clothing line. Co-founder Missy Suicide and her cadre of global co-conspirators with names like Kerosin, s5, Napalm, and Fractal continue to set the tone for the movement worldwide, although they vehemently resist the label "pornography" for their work. Instead, SuicideGirls prefers to think of itself as "the forefront of a generation of young women and men whose ideals about sexuality do not conform [to] what mainstream media is reporting. SuicideGirls was founded on the belief that creativity, personality, and intelligence are not incompatible with sexy, compelling entertainment….The site mixes the smarts, enthusiasm, and [do-it-yourself] attitude of the best music and alternative culture sites with an unapologetic, grassroots approach to sexuality," according to what would be called its mission statement in any other world.
In truth, SuicideGirls’ aesthetic is more like Playboy’s than it is like any modern incarnation of hardcore porn. The website’s oeuvre is decidedly softcore, if edgy, mixing music, culture, technology, and political news and opinion with celebrity interviews, blogs, and titillating pictorials of the international cast of alt girls for which it has become justifiably famous (or infamous, depending upon one’s point of view).
It’s also a zealous guardian of its niche, reportedly suing photographers and talent who leave to strike out on their own. Both Warner (SuicideGirls’ first male staff photographer) and some of the talent at GodsGirls.com (a 2006 alt upstart featuring some former SuicideGirls models) report having been on the receiving end of the famous alt attitude in the form of court summonses. Although no one is eager to talk about the legal snarling, it appears SuicideGirls claims a certain amount of ownership in the alt-porn concept.
The effect is almost Faustian: By helping to popularize the alt-porn niche, SuicideGirls has become a victim of its own success. Within the past year, sites like Apneatic.com (home of a former SuicideGirl), DeviantNation.com, Toxxxy.com, BlueBlood.com (which is only months younger than SuicideGirls), FatalBeauty.com, InkyGirls.com, RazorDolls.com, and a bevy of others have realized an increase in traffic and revenues as consumers have become mesmerized by alt-porn’s spell. There’s even a semi-official chronicle of the genre: AltPorn.net, which includes a "world-famous" alt-porn site-name generator, an "A list" of sites to watch, the requisite news and commentary, and model and photographer directories.
A post-modern aesthetic
What contributes to alt-porn’s unique siren song? According to Joanna Angel, the recipe incorporates attitude, uninhibited sexuality, and "lifestyle" components in varying measure to sate the vacillating desires of its audience. "It’s an alternative to mainstream porn," which Angel and many others who work in the genre see as predictable and created for paunchy, middle-aged men with bad comb-overs, she said.
"When I first started BurningAngel.com [the five-year-old alt-porn shrine that now also serves as home to Angel’s burgeoning film studio], it was just me and a few friends naked. It had interviews with bands, pop culture, fashion, music, humor…," she said. "It started outside the porn industry, and basically it was a lifestyle site with naked people on it. Ask anyone between 18 and 30 in New York City, and they know BurningAngel."
That’s partially because Angel and her naked friends were fixtures in New York’s alternative-culture scene. The people who knew them trusted them as arbiters of all things hip, and as the site grew and attracted attention from the media, their reputations grew. BurningAngel was a force with which to be reckoned on the alternative scene long before it made baby steps toward adult.
"We started on our own, and then the porn industry just kind of came and found us," Angel remarked about how her company now straddles two worlds. "Originally, it didn’t feel like [we were making] porn."
That changed when Angel and her cohorts began to lens people having sex, instead of just posing provocatively. Burning Angel Entertainment’s first effort was Re-Penetrator, a spoof of Stuart Gordon’s 1985 gore fest Re-Animator, based on a chilling novel by twisted horror and sci-fi genius H.P. Lovecraft. Shot with limited resources, it became an instant cult classic, winning an AVN Award for "most outrageous sex scene" and attracting capacity crowds in limited theatrical release. The XXXorcist and Lovecracked: The Movie followed…and then Porn Valley came calling. Burning Angel Entertainment signed a contract with Larry Flynt and produced Joanna’s Angels under the Hustler umbrella—with a real budget and real production values. Because of "creative differences," the relationship was short-lived—but it was groundbreaking, proving alt-porn could be successful in the mainstream porn world.
Angel said her movies are indicative of the kind of adult entertainment alt fans crave: They’re humorous, they tell tales, and it’s apparent the cast is having fun. "They’re a modern expression of youth: a little bit rebellious and with issues with authority. They resist normal patterns; don’t really think about the consequences like other people do," she said, describing both the films and their audience. "Some people think what I’m doing is a big ‘fuck you’ to mainstream porn, and it’s really not. I wanted to make something, more than anything else, that I would enjoy watching, so it’s a bit silly—but I think most porn is kind of silly.
"My movies are definitely pornos," she continued. "I create problems, but the solutions always involve sex. It’s just that I love not to take myself very seriously. I’m just here to have a good time."
Porn, interrupted
Having a good time seems to be a theme for the alt-porn movement. So is bashing stereotypes—about porn, about cultures, and about people. "There are so many lines blurring between sexuality and gender in alt culture and society at large," according to photographer Warner. "Alt juxtaposes all those elements in new ways in order to make sense of them. It incorporates self-expression, rites of passage, and rebellion."
Although some of the imagery may be confusing and off-putting to "outsiders," Warner was quick to point out that society nonetheless is enthralled. "There’s a fascination with the alt subculture," he said, citing popular television shows like Miami Ink and the chop-shop series featuring motorcycle maven Jesse James and others. Often, those pop-culture representations of alt play up negative stereotypes, but "some of the smartest, sweetest, brightest, non-drinking, non-partying people I’ve ever worked with are these pierced, tattooed models," Warner said. "[Being alt is] not a badge of deviancy."
According to celebrated New York photographer "The Lovely Brenda" Staudenmaier—who since 2000 has documented the alt subculture in ways that have been called "vibrant," "fearless," "passionate," and "scandalous" for publications as diverse as AVN, Hustler, Maxim, Time Out New York, Tabu Tattoo, The Village Voice, High Times, Vice, and Bizarre—"Alt models seem a little more dangerous than the blond bimbo types from Cali. They’re not trying to fit into some cookie-cutter mold of what beauty is. They’re making themselves into what they want to be through piercings, tattoos, dye-jobs, stuff like that. [The aesthetic is] more original; it’s exciting and colorful. It’s intimate, but it’s also honest."
Arizala agreed. "Shooting alt is my therapy," he said, adding with a chuckle that the people and the subject matter he works with in the genre "keep me from becoming a very angry person." Thankfully, he said, traditional adult-content producers that have begun to embrace the genre seem to realize the alt-porn audience can spot fakery, so they cede control of details down to the box covers to people who have a deep appreciation for and understanding of the material. Consequently, alt-porn has found its own community within the larger one of adult entertainment. "It’s like some hippy-ass co-op," Arizala confessed. "We all do everything."
Although he admitted Vivid Alt does "dress up" some mainstream adult performers to make them look "alt," many alt performers honestly are disciples of the subculture (as he, Staudenmaier, and Warner are). As with all other adult entertainment, "it’s a fantasy we’re peddling here," he said. "It’s not the Jenna Jameson fantasy, and it’s hard to define because it’s such a big stereotype, but you know it when you see it.
"There’s an image associated with alt-porn [among the general public], but it’s more than that. It’s pretty much adult content that’s marketed toward a particular community that wants to see content that matches its own lifestyle or aesthetic preferences or peer groups. A lot of it is very softcore, but it’s starting to push the boundaries."
He added with a wink, "Everybody has to pay the rent, you know."
