We got an email about three weeks ago from a girl who is the subject of a new solo girl site we’d written up a few days prior. She emailed us to make the request that we remove the article about the site launch and not ever promote the site she was hired to model for at all. It was her hope that no high traffic sites like APN would promote the specialty solo girl site she had been hired to model for. Given the specific circumstances, we’ve decided to comply with her request. In return for the favor of removing any mention of that site (article, links, and galleries have been removed), and partially because it’s been weeks and we still haven’t gotten any sort of thanks at all for honoring her dire request, I’m going to make this post in it’s place, because this situation brings up some important issues worth talking about. Here is her email request:
I know you probably won’t, but if you could, I’d like for the post about XXXXXXXXXX to be removed. See.. I’m “XXXXX” and although it’s something I did knowingly, I’d prefer it not be marketed on high traffic sites unless someone is paying you to do so.. then it is out of my hands. I did what I had to do to get through a pregnancy in a shitty economy where neither myself nor my boyfriend had jobs.
If you can find it in your morale to take it down, I would find that very considerate of you. Thank you.
This brought up a few questions, so I sent them out to her in order to make what I feel is the best judgment. Here are the questions and answers:
What other sites have you modeled for? Do you feel bad about all of them, or just this one?
SuicideGirls. I’ve also done tons of other work earlier in my career including magazine work for Hustler, BarelyLegal. I did a set for Digital Dream girls as well. I’ve gone under the name Samantha, Pistolita and most recently XXXXX.. for this site. I only regret this one, simply because it involves my child. And unfortunately I had no other income options at the time, being pregnant I couldn’t get a job before needing maternity leave. I was between a rock and a hard place at the time, and have already been paid for all my work with the site. So no royalties are given to me from member joins. Therefore, I would rather not see it advertised.
Did you give the money you made from doing the job back? If not, do you plan to?
Like I previously stated, I can’t take away what I did. The money I made during the 4 months of shooting for the site got me through the last 4 months and the first 2 months of my childs life. So I can’t just give back the money. That’s $XXXX that I don’t have anymore. I can’t take the site down. I just ask that you not advertise it on your site. I’ve had 3 friends already see it and ask me about it.
How do we know it’s really you? People write to us more frequently than you might guess, pretending to be various models. We are more likely to honor your request if we know it is genuine.
I’m not going to post the results of that last one because it would be creepy, but I do believe it is her, so that answer was satisfactory.
Starting with the obvious or maybe rhetorical at least, why does it seem like it’s always a SuicideGirl in this kind of drama? Experienced or not, every model should really know by now that they should assume their friends are going to see what they do and that should always be a consideration. If you don’t know, now you know.
But, beyond that, she doesn’t get royalties? Duh. We hear this ‘no royalties’ complaint a lot from girls, but that’s almost never the terms they worked under in the first place. Very few sites have anything resembling a royalty system and if that is what a model wants, she should have negotiated that when the deal was made to begin with. It doesn’t matter how long the job is, one hour, a half day, or even four months, if she takes a flat fee job, she gets exactly that, a flat fee. The world isn’t evil for not giving her something she didn’t have a deal to get in the first place. The model on the cover of Vogue doesn’t get a percentage of sales, and she doesn’t get to pull the magazine off all the news racks just because she doesn’t like the dress they hired her to wear. I have a lot of respect for the hard working models that put a lot into what they do, but I’ve also seen too many that quickly start accusing others of being immoral or crooked whenever they don’t get whatever they want, even if it wasn’t what they agreed to from the start.
You want to run your own site? Then run your own site. You want to get royalties? Then make a partnership deal that includes royalties. You want to get paid hourly, or a day rate even, for modeling work? That’s good too. But do not whine to the world that you didn’t get what you were never supposed to get in the first place. It makes it hard to respect you as an intelligent person.
Some girls partner to do their sites with professionals, and some of those girls get a percentage of the earnings, but most of the time, it’s work for hire modeling, sometimes followed by work for hire participation, if they are lucky. Here is how it works: The site owner pays her to model, then pays a photographer and/or videographer to shoot with her, then pays retoucher/editor to make the media nice looking, then pays designer and coder to build a good looking salable site, then pays the host to put the site up and cover bandwidth usages, and then pays another designer to build sales tools like promotional galleries, banners, then sometimes even pays public relations reps and/or affiliate reps to get the word out about the site launch, etc. and at the end of the day, they hope that all those costs come out to be less than they earn back by having ‘high traffic sites’ like APN promote the finished project to people who might be interested enough to join it. That is a lot of work and a lot of investment into what will hopefully turn into a successful site. If a model gets her cut and then tells all the big sites not to promote what was created with her content, that is immoral. It’s bad business at the very least. Everybody has bills to pay. Her child doesn’t deserve to eat any more than all the other people doing their job to put food on their table.
Models, a word of advice. Think about what you are doing before you agree to do it. Think about why you are doing it and whether you will be happy once it is done. You owe the people you are working with honest commitment to your agreements. Creating erotic media is not evil or immoral and if you think it is, you have no business in this field at all. Taking the money and burning the people who hired you to do a job is wrong. It is wrong to be accusing other people of being immoral just because you selectively changed your mind on an agreement as well.
A-fuckin-men. I know how hard it is to get through a pregnancy and still come out on top, financially. I still dealt with mounds of debt until the past year, in fact. The problem here is that you can’t honestly say it was “the only way” to make money. I know lots of SUPER pregnant girls who get jobs doing 9-5’s, and have local, state funded health care. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, showing your body in ANY situation, and the mere fact that she has the audacity to say that it was wrong of her to do the site proves that maybe she should stay the hell out of all erotica.
Anyone who is stupid enough to work with Suicide Girls and still then think that the world owes them something, will be surprised to realize that most of us are sick of most of those girls for that very reason, and the fact that ANYONE will work with them is a god send.
If you actually want her to be anonymous then you should take out the other aliases. I found her like *snaps* that. The fact that she modeled for SG was a big help too.
Buuut given how much she talks about her personal life in her blog (she even submitted a maternity set to SG and referred to it as fetish–that’s paraphrasing but it’s the general gist) I don’t see why she’s so upset about all this.
This is the age old dilema of doing something you will regret later. Saying that “this is my only option for income” really paints the other women who do this for money and fun really poorly. I think if anyone tries hard enough they can get a solid 9-5 to pay the bills. But sometimes that quick paycheck for 3-4 hours of work seems alot more rewarding. My advice to her is to at least accept the fact that she chose this avenue of revenue and now has to live with the fact that there is content out there that millions of people are going to see… um thats why companies pay girls to pose nude…
And I agree with the “running your own site” idea. If you want control, just do it yourself… it’s so easy to do that now than it was say 5 years ago…
It was awfully kind of you to retract that post – I’m impressed that you did. I’m not impressed at her grasp of how little control we all have over our creative content on the web. It’s no different if you’re a photographer, musician or fan faction nerd. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.
And, from what I can see, this girl’s stuff is all over the place.
I just don´t get it – people should really consider all the options before going in to an industry like this one!! Everybody has an opinion, good or bad. You know, what your friends, parents, co-workers and so on, are going to say so just make up your mind if you really wanna hear them say it outloud to your face?! We are all adults here, right?! I did a fast Google on one of her nicks and she is all over the place – what made this particular job so different from the rest of her jobs, I wonder..
2nd, “I did it for the money” – I am sorry that this girl feels that she had to because of the kid coming and all, but getting some lame ass job, isnt impossible.. Hard maybe, but not impossible 🙂 For me, this is all about the fun of getting naked in front of the camera and being behind it and all the great stuff, that comes after shooting, talking to peeps and so on! THAT should be the main reason for doing it and not money, if you ask me!
3rd, I totally agree with Alex Chechs on this one; Saying that “this is my only option for income” really paints the other women who do this for money and fun really poorly.
Best of luck to her anyways and I hope, she figures it all out! 🙂
I have dealt with so many models of this type over the years. It is really annoying. I especially dislike it when out of understanding for their situation I offer to let them buy back the photos and take them off the site. Yet, they get angry because I will not do it for free.
I make it very clear to the girls I work with that everyone they never wanted to see them naked will see them naked. Their family, friends, everyone they went to high school with.. It’s all going to be out there to see so make sure you are ok with that. Somehow a few just do not grasp the choice and commitment they are making and then think that it is easy to take it back.
I honestly don’t understand why there is so much hostility being directed at this model.
– She was paid to pose and sign over the rights to the photos and video. She did that. So why on earth should she give the money back? She did exactly what she was paid to do; she is under no obligation to promote the site.
– She never said the site was “evil” or “immoral” so why does APN keep going on about that? The rant in the main post really has no relation to her situation.
– She isn’t asking them to take the pics down: she just asked you not to promote it. She didn’t even demand or whine about it. She made a polite request which you had no obligation to honor, and you politely honored it… only to go on this almost totally unrelated rant.
– the hostility toward someone saying that they did porn for money is also ridiculous. It’s also not insulting to people who do it for fun, that’s a stupid thing to say. It’s also stupid to say that your reasons for doing something are the only reasons people should do it.
– Also, anyone who thinks she had a lot of other economic options is living in a dream world. It is almost impossible for a pregnant woman to get hired, because employers do not want to invest in training someone who is going to go on maternity leave relatively soon. This is a fact of life and if you think it isn’t, you’re woefully uninformed.
Lindsay, there is no hostility towards her in this article, just a discussion of the issues her situation brings up. Nobody here knows her, as far as I know, and no ill will was wished on her. Her request was honored, but her situation and approach brought up some questions. At least four of the seven people responding here already either run or work for well known and successful AltPorn sites, so maybe they more clearly understand that when a model is hired for the creation of a site, that site needs to sell memberships in order for them to keep hiring new models and paying them. It is frustrating for webmasters when girls are hired to do a job and have no problem taking the money, but suddenly do have a problem with anyone getting the use/value of what they paid and worked for. Girls doing this also reduce how much modeling work is available for other girls, because then the sites either do not have the budget to pay the next model or are simply more hesitant to over extend themselves with the larger paying jobs.
When a commercial site hires a model to do a job, they are hoping to be successful with what they create with that model. This job lasted four months. A whole site was created around what she was hired to do. A well designed and tasteful site too. That’s a lot of time and energy and money for people to invest in a project. If she gets paid a significant sum to do the job, and then turns around and tells people with high traffic blogs like APN and others that they should find it in their morality (or ‘morale’) to remove any promotion or mention of the site that hired her, that’s a serious violation of what she was hired to do. She is undermining and diminishing the value of what she was paid for. Why would she give the money back? Because she was claiming to have strong regrets about what she sold.
If, as a model, she lived to regret her choice, as some models do, and decided to pursue removing her image from the internet and renounced that kind of work, as some models do, it would be naive but understandable. However, according to comments here, she did exactly the same kind of work for SuicideGirls, etc. So, claims of immorality seem very selective.
I agree with your article, except for where you “honor her request” to remove mention of her but tell everyone exactly who she is and where to find her. Why even bother to X out her one alias when you’re still going to reveal who she is anyway?
I love this site and think you do a great job, but that decision comes across as vindictive to me.
She requested that that one site not be promoted because she felt bad about doing that specific project, so that site isn’t promoted. The name she used for that project is gone too. She’s still doing work for other sites under different names and doesn’t have a problem with them. She didn’t request to be on total blackout. As far as I know, she’s ok with the other sites. She didn’t ask to be in the witness protection program (even if she did apparently screw some people out of their investment in her.) I don’t think you could easily find the site she didn’t want mentioned from this article or the name she used on it, so I feel like her request was honored. If you search under any of the names she has listed here, you only find appearances she’s fine with and no mention of what she decided she didn’t want her friends finding and giving her a hard time about.
I agree with Erika. You’re obviously calling her out on her own stupidity. Accept it.
I don’t think what she did was stupid at all, I think it was wrong, and I wanted to have a discussion about what was wrong with what she did, while honoring her request. I thought all that was fairly obvious to anyone who could read.
Altporn.net didn’t have to take down anything if they didn’t want to. It was immoral of her to take money from a site and then turn around and try to fuck that site over by directing traffic away from it. Her excuse is pretty BS. You always have other options, I don’t know what US state doesn’t have unemployment or some type of help for pregnant women. And if she really was upset about having a site that involved her child then maybe she should’nt post 50 photos of her baby and pregnant photos of herself on SG. Grow up and take responsibility for your own fucking actions.
I agree with Leila 100%, if you’re going to pose nude, you need to think about any consequences that may arise, and one of those is having your friends or family stumble upon it, so don’t do anything you wouldn’t want them to find, it’s pretty simple.
This is a business, and as Leila said, she’s directing traffic away, and I think it was a good discussion to be brought up. Even when I started, the sites I modeled for had the option to buy back sets. Why should a site/ photographer pay for content, then give it right back for free a few months later? (and if I’m not mistaken, didn’t she post a pregnant set for another site for free?)
And the “no other options”, that’s a load of crap. I wish I would have known there were no other options, because I would have come out of retirement and shoot pregnant stuff for any site possible…
But, seriously, I think at the top of the model release for every site, in bold letters, it should read “Check this box if you understand that being naked online has consequences such as family, friends, bosses, etc., can stumble upon these photos at any time.”
I can’t help but wonder if certain sites attract certain types of girl. The girl that would go on Big Brother, do Hugh Hefner or become a Suicide girl just to get some attention and hear somebody call her hot.
“To be somebody.”
But when when they realize they’re just one girl among many throusand, it’s not all that fun anymore.
Maybe there should be a streaking/be naked in public-clause in all contracts? If they can’t handle their neighbor looking at their tits, then they shouldn’t get naked online.
Plus, no newbie never gets naked for money. I’t not that good pay until you’re “somebody”.
I have to agree with you on certain sites attracting certain types of girls…at least in some cases. After I left SG I talked to models I know on the site about the shit that was going on there and in at least one case a model I worked with acknowledged that girls were getting screwed over but stayed with the site anyway because she “liked being recognized and felt like a celebrity at the local clubs”. That was her choice and something that was clearly important to her but in my experience those people don’t really have much worthwhile going on in their lives.