'Uniquely beautiful': Blackheart Burlesque combines the geeky and the sexy

Combine cosplay with a strip-teasing burlesque tour and you get Suicide Girls, a community of women working to redefine female beauty.

And it will be showcased on stage at 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Southwest Florida Performing Arts Center, 11515 Bonita Beach Road SE.

"We put on a hell of a show," said Missy Suicide, a Suicide Girls co-founder, who prefers to go by her stage name.

The Blackheart Burlesque live tour is a geeky fantasy, with each number inspired by a different pop culture reference. A six-member cast will represent "Harry Potter," "Star Wars," "Westworld" and other popular movies and TV shows with singing, dancing and extravagant costumes.

For example, there's the "Planet of the Apes" performance complete with monkey masks and silver bikinis, or when the girls recreate "Stranger Things" with twinkling Christmas lights and the same kind of jazzy, acapella versions of pop songs from the Netflix original series.

"We took cosplay and comic con interests that the girls have and we merged them with the sexy," Missy Suicide said. "Each number is themed out to represent some sort of aspect of pop culture that the girls are really into."

But the concept for Suicide Girls actually started with pin-up photography about 16 years ago. There was something about women taking photos of other women, Missy Suicide said, that inspired her to get behind the camera.

"(A female photographer would) take a photo a half a second before or after a man would have, (when the subject is) in her most natural state," she said. "She wasn’t trying to beautiful for a man... And I thought there was something so uniquely beautiful about that."

Next, she created a blog for her subjects to share their thoughts and opinions in an online message board. It was about breaking stereotypes, Missy said.

"I didn’t find anything that looked like me and my my friends in mainstream media," she said. "The women that I know are beautiful and they have something to say and they're powerful and their ideas and thoughts are interesting and our bodies aren't something that we should be ashamed of. We have beautiful artwork on them and we’re embracing our flaws."

Missy thought the site might be popular in Portland or Seattle, if she was lucky, but her audience grew fast. And so became suicidegirls.com.

"The site resonated with people around the world," she said. "We have 3,000 models from all over the world, including Antarctica. We get 50,000 applications a year from women that want to be Suicide Girls."

The 60-city Blackheart Burlesque tour started earlier this month in San Diego. The show is created entirely by Suicide Girls, from the choreography all the way down to booking venues.

Audiences to the Blackheart Burlesque must be 18 and older, but other than that, Suicide Girl fans come from all walks of life, Missy said. The show does typically attract more women — about 60 percent — than men.

"You don’t have to look a certain way to be a Suicide Girl fan," she said, "you just have to feel a certain way."

General admission tickets cost $25, with pre-show meet-and-greet passes available for $85. Doors to the SanJan Theater at the Southwest Performing Arts Center open at 6 p.m. for a buffet and cocktails, while the show starts at 9 p.m.

Missy Suicide said she hopes audiences come away with a renewed impression of beauty.

"I hope that people embrace their own body and their own unique quirks," Missy said, "and they can feel a little bit more confident about themselves and they think it’s OK to be sexy and silly."

IF YOU GO

The Suicide Girls' Blackheart Burlesque

• When: Doors open at 6 p.m. for buffet and cocktails; show at 9 p.m.
• Where: SanJan Theater at Southwest Performing Arts Center, 11515 Bonita Beach Road SE, Bonita Springs
• Tickets: $25 general admission; $85 VIP meet-and-greet passes
• Purchase: swflpac.com
• More information: blackheartburlesque.com; suicidegirls.com