Vanessa Wooten said she was a shy, reserved adolescent growing up.
Wooten, 21, is a Suicide Girl, posing naked on a Web site for everyone to see.
Suicide Girls, once an underground Web site, now features more than 400 girls worldwide. An alternative to Playboy and other adult sites, Suicide Girls must be different from the typical pinups.
"If you look at me, I am really skinny and don't really have anything," she said. "It's nice, because a lot of people think the ideal woman has blond hair and big boobs. But on this Web site, being the opposite of that is considered beautiful."
The name Suicide Girls is from a reference in a Chuck Palahniuk book in which he writes about women who are gloomy and dark. Wooten said it is also a play on the saying that if one poses naked, it is suicide for his or her career.
Wooten said she heard about the site through a friend. Before, the thought of posing naked scared her, but when she broke up with her boyfriend, she chucked her inhibitions out the window.
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"I said 'Screw everything,'" she said. "I applied, and they accepted me. It was kind of like a liberation for me."
Many girls from New Mexico have applied to be a Suicide Girl, but so far only three have made it. Competition isn't lax. Wooten flew out to Los Angeles where she met with the owner of the site.
"We met at a coffee shop," she said. "They interviewed 10 of us and they picked three."
Then she had her first paid photo shoot, which Wooten said was a bit intimidating.
"After a while, it gets a lot easier," she said.
The majority of Suicide Girls have tattoos and multi-colored hair. Next to the girls' pictures is a box that asks what body modifications they have.
"You don't necessarily have to have anything pierced," Wooten said. "You just have to have a certain demeanor."
Wooten doesn't believe the site is about porn.
"I guess it could be labeled porn," she said. "But most of it is just artistic nude pictures. There isn't any penetration or anything."
Aside from the site, the Suicide Girls perform in a traveling burlesque show, which came to Albuquerque last May.
"We dance and do skits," said Wooten, who helped with the show. "We start out wearing clothes and get half naked, like an old-school burlesque show," she said.
Wooten, who has wanted to be famous since she was a little girl, said opportunities have opened up for her since her decision to be a Suicide Girl.
"I get recognized all the time," she said. "The exposure has helped me get a lot of different offers."
She said the type of guy that surfs the members-only site varies.
"There are a lot of guys with the colored hair and the tattoos and pericings," she said. "But there are also 40-year-old guys with beer bellies, and they are just as nice as the others."
For the most part, Wooten doesn't get negative reactions.
"People will ask, 'How can you pose on the Internet?' or 'What does your mom think?'" she said.
Wooten's mother wasn't thrilled with the concept at first.
"I didn't like the idea," Yolanda Jones said. "But she's 21, she can do what she wants."
Jones said once she looked at the site and saw her daughter's photos, she relaxed.
"I haven't seen her like that since she was a baby," she said. "But they were tastefully done, and she seems to enjoy it."
The site is growing rapidly with celebrities like Dave Grohl hyping up the girls. Wooten said this may be disheartening for those who think the Suicide Girls are losing their special meaning. What started as a site with 50 girls has now grown to more than 400.
"Out of all the girls that apply each week, 400 is still pretty special if you ask me," she said.
Wooten said now she can express herself and feels comfortable posing naked in front of photographers.
"It takes a person who is comfortable in her skin to do what she is doing," Jones said. "I could never do that, even at her age."
