City Pages: Cynical, Bitter, Jaded as Hell. Also Naked.

Websites like Suicide Girls provide porn with an indie rock attitude

The women on display at Suicide Girls look a lot like the indie-rock chicks you'd expect to see at a Strokes show but never thought you'd get to see naked.

Or perhaps, as these sites would have it, they're not even porn at all. After all, you'd be hard pressed to find the word anywhere on the site, or for that matter on any of the slew of websites, such as Friction and Supercult, that are joining Suicide Girls in retooling the online adult industry for the hipster set.

Of course, alternative sexuality in 2002 is not exactly revolutionary. Popular sex columnists and activists like Dan Savage and Susie Bright, and webcam pioneers like Jennifer Ringley (www.jennicam.com), have long since brought frank sexuality out of the brown bag and into the popular consciousness. And the Internet quickly realized that a female-friendly take on male-dominated porn could be a seriously profitable venture. Cake (www.cakenyc.com) has taken its "entertainment for women" (read: women-centric sexual shenanigans in swank New York clubs) from homespun enterprise to the pages of Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. Meanwhile Nerve (www.nerve.com) has been peddling its brand of literate smut since 1997, blending erotic fiction, reporting, and photos with phenomenally popular and sexually charged personals (the same ones that currently grace the City Pages website). This service has almost singlehandedly transformed the personal ad from the last resort of the desperate to a new kind of status symbol for the sexually aware--and, while you're at it, a great moneymaking scheme for Nerve.

I like Nerve but haven't read it in months. See if you can find my old personal in Salon or Nerve. This is another in my one or more posts a week dealing with naked women because real liberals are fun loving and like sex.