In case you missed it, my interview with “To the Best of Our Knowledge” host Angelo Bautista about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, which aired the other day on NPR, is also on Wisconsin Public Radio. You can listen to it or read the transcript here: “Looking for the Story of Her Life.”
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I was interviewed about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, for NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. The episode is “The Sum of Our Data,” and it includes interviews with The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life author Lowry Pressly and The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care author Carl Öhman. You can listen to it here.
From the description:
“Every click on your computer, every swipe on your smartphone, leaves a data trail. Information about who you are, what you do, who you love, the state of your mind and body... so much data about you, expanding day by day in the digital clouds. The question is—do you care? Would owning your data, or having more digital privacy, make life better? And what happens to all that data when you die?”
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New York Times bestselling author Dani Shapiro interviewed me about my life story and my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, for her widely-listened-to Family Secrets podcast. The episode is entitled “I Was 758,” and it’s available on most podcast distributing platforms. Thank you to Dani for doing this intimate interview. You can buy Data Baby from the retailer of your choice here and read more about it here.
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Image credit: Nicole Daddona
This story was originally published on Forbes.com in July 2020. It has been lightly updated.
Nicole Daddona, who goes by Friday, is 32, lives in Los Angeles, and is, as she puts it, “an artist, comedian, fashion designer, filmmaker, and toy designer” who’s created a popular line of blowup doll fashions. If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a handbag with the face of a vintage blowup doll on it or a coat covered in blowup doll faces, Friday has you covered. Here, Friday, who’s also the editor of FRIDAY Magazine, explains how she got into blowup doll fashion and why her designs are so coveted.
Susannah Breslin: How did you come up with the idea of turning blowup dolls into wearable products you could sell?
Friday: Last year I was living in a retirement community with my dad in Connecticut for a few months. I found a vintage blowup doll at the thrift store and immediately purchased it. I've always been drawn to blowup dolls. I just think they're such a fun part of pop culture. I've always made things out of other things. I used to go to the dump with my dad a lot as a kid and turn little trinkets I'd find into accessories I could wear. When I was in high school, I made a chair out of recycled plastic bags. I like upcycling and turning things into other things a lot. After having Judy—which is the official name of this style of blowup doll—around the house for a few days, I knew that I wanted to keep her with me always and that the best way to do that was to turn her into something wearable. I cut off her face—which sounds terrible, but was oddly cathartic—and assembled a very poorly made prototype of what is now the Blow Me Judy Bag.
Breslin: Where do you source the blowup dolls from?
Friday: At first I was getting them from eBay and thrift stores when I could find them, but after posting the bag as a pre-order for sale and getting a larger and more positive response than I anticipated, I knew eBay's blowup doll supply was going to run dry quickly. I found a manufacturer who makes blowup dolls, and now I source the blowup dolls from them directly.
Breslin: How do you manufacture the blowup doll products?
Friday: At first I was making them myself, but each bag was taking hours to make, and I was getting injured a lot by my sewing machine, so I knew I needed to find some manufacturing help. After a lot of research I was able to find an amazing manufacturer to help with production.
Breslin: Are the items made entirely from blowup doll materials, or do you add other materials?
Friday: The original prototype was, but after wearing it out a few times I realized that the vinyl material of the blowup doll's body wasn't going to be sturdy enough for longtime wear. I like a bag that's sturdy and can fit a lot or a little while also being great for casual or classy events. The Blow Me Judy Bag is all of that and more. When it came time to manufacture the bag on a larger scale, I did a lot of research. It was important to me that the bag, like everything I sell, was made of all vegan materials. I found a great vegan leather material that was the same color as the original blowup doll's hair, and that's what I use for the bag, which is essentially supposed to be the rest of the doll's head.
Breslin: The Blow Me Bag is $89 $150. How did you settle on that price point?
Friday: $69 seemed too obvious. I wanted to pick a price point that would cover my expenses, labor, and time. I run Magic Society completely on my own. I do all the marketing, customer service, shipping, web design, photography, product design—you name it—myself. The price point is on the lower end in the world of designer handbags, which was important to me because the Blow Me Judy Bag is definitely a designer piece, but I wanted the price to be something I'd be willing to pay for a designer bag. I also see it as a piece of collectible art and myself as an artist, so hopefully the value will go up over time. My dream is that one day it will be in a museum between Pedro Friedeberg's hand chair and Warhol's paper dress.
Breslin: Is the Blow Me Judy Bag your bestseller? How many have you sold?
Friday: It sells really well. So far I've released two pre-orders of 100 pieces each. I'm just about to sell out the second pre-order.
Breslin: Why did you choose this model of blowup doll?
Friday: Judy's the one! Out of all the blowup dolls out in the world, she's the most iconic. She has a classic design that's been around for decades, so she has a warm nostalgic feeling about her. I like that she plays it classy with her closed mouth, but we all know what she's really got on her mind.
Breslin: Is working with blowup doll materials easy or challenging?
Friday: It's 1,000% challenging! The mask part of the doll is flexible plastic, which is very thick and difficult to sew, but makes for a sturdy bag. The vinyl the body is made of is difficult to wrangle in the Los Angeles heat, but it's all worth it when I catch Judy's hypnotizing gaze.
Breslin: Your blowup line is amusing, but it's also sort of disturbing. In the product description, you even refer to the Blow Me Judy Bag as a potential "relationship ender." Do you think your blowup products are beautiful? Terrifying? Art?
Friday: I definitely think of it as all of the above. The blowup line is pop art personified. It's high fashion and lowbrow all at the same time. Magic Society's slogan is "Lowbrow High Fashion.” I don't think anything sums that up better than the Blow Me Judy Bag. The good thing is that the blowup line is a great conversation starter. It also makes uptight people uncomfortable, which is always fun. Gotta love scaring Karens.
To quote Delia Deetz, "This is my art and it is dangerous," kind of sums up most of the work I do. From the films I make with my directing partner Adam Shenkman to the clothing I design, I like to make things that dwell in the subconscious, touch on surrealism, and most of all amuse me. I know in a world as big as the one we live in that there are like-minded people out there who will get it and get something positive out of my creations.
Breslin: Have you gotten any interest in carrying the Blow Me Judy Bag yet from, say, Nordstrom?
Friday: Not yet, but hit me up, Nordstrom! I'm ready to take this line all the way to Fashion Week and confuse the masses. London. New York. Paris. Milan. Retailers, drop me a line! Magic Society will cast a spell over you!
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Image via Mark Ebner
Last weekend, I got a call from a friend who had heard that Evan Wright had killed himself. I knew Evan, had met him over 20 years ago, had kept in touch over the years but not in recent years. Before he did all the war reporting, he had been an editor at Hustler. So we had writing about porn in common. I wasn’t really surprised to hear that he had killed himself. This kind of journalism takes a toll on you. It’s taken a toll on me. It’s hard to bear witness when you stand in the face of insanity. Back in 2009, I interviewed Evan about Hella Nation for The Daily Beast. In the last question, I asked him about his friend David Foster Wallace’s suicide.
You were friends with David Foster Wallace. Were you surprised that he killed himself?
I wasn’t surprised because, I mean, actually there were a couple conversations we had a few years before where, you know, he said as a grim joke, “Well, if I continue in this state of mind …,” and then he did say, “I’d be hanging from a rope,” or something like that. On a super-functional level, he had a gallows sense of humor. It was actually a theme. When I heard about [Wallace’s suicide], I was surprised.
I once complimented him on some piece—he referred to his writing as his “shtick”—and he was very self-deprecating. He separated himself from the persona he had as a famous writer. So, when he died, I was very sad. Back to that gallows humor, knowing him pretty well, what I resent is all these stories where they’re all, “Oh, it was inevitable.” I look at it like he had a bad day. And as an accidental death. I know there were attempts before. A lot of people almost do this, and then they don’t. He was a really great person, a really extremely generous person, and it’s hard to see him as anything else but that.
Read the rest here.
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Really love this animated W Magazine profile of Amanda Lepore’s Life in Parties. Savage. Individual. Super hot.
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What happens when one former child lab rat interviews another former child lab rat? Things get unhinged. Seth Fischer, who was himself studied as a child by his psychologist parents, and I talked about growing up under a microscope, the consequences of being a human guinea pig, and what happens when the subject sets out to tell his or her own story. Read the rest of our scintillating, strange conversation in the newest issue of Air/Light: “‘I Hate the Subject and the Subject Hates Me’: An Interview with Susannah Breslin.”
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I was interviewed about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment (read more about my book here) for a recent episode of ABC Radio National’s podcast about the human mind, “All in the Mind,” out of Australia. The episode is “Being a Human Lab Rat for 30 Years: What Happens Next.”
From the episode’s description:
“Researchers knew Susannah better than her own parents.
They may have even known her better than herself.
Today, how spending thirty years in a psychological study warped journalist Susannah Breslin's life.”
Listen to my conversation with host Sana Qadar here.
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I was interviewed about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, for a recent episode of WHYY’s The Pulse, which is part of the NPR Network. The episode is “Discovering Your True Identity,” and the interview I did with host Maiken Scott starts at the 34 minute mark. (Read more about Data Baby here.)
From the episode’s description:
“Identity's a complicated thing — a mixture of nurture and nature, ethnicity, gender, culture, conscious decisions, coincidences, and more. In many ways, though, who we think we are boils down to the stories we tell ourselves; stories based on our origins, our families, and how we came to be. But what happens when those stories change? When we discover that the narrative of our lives is completely different from what we've always believed?”
Listen to the episode here.
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Sex machine | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This article was originally published on Forbes.com on April 23, 2012.
You might think being a male porn star is easy. Have sex for a living? That's a piece of cake.
So, what can some of the biggest woodsmen in the porn business teach us about work?
As it turns out, guys who get it up for a paycheck have something to offer when it comes to career advice.
I heard from seven of Porn Valley's biggest studs via email and got the secrets to becoming a successful working stiff.
TIP #1: Get your coworkers to like you.
In the porn business, it's doubly important your coworkers like you.
According to Brandon Iron, star of "Perverted Planet 7" and director of "Sex Crazed," getting along with your costars is the key to getting ahead in porn.
"The hardest thing about being a male porn star is convincing your female co-workers that you are an interesting, well-rounded, fun guy who they might consider dating in a parallel universe after a few drinks," Iron says.
TIP #2: Don't confuse the professional with the personal.
For male porn stars, the line between professional and personal can get blurry. If you think keeping the professional professional and the personal personal is tricky in your line of work, you should talk to a male porn star, who may have a wife waiting at home for him to finish his latest scene with another woman.
Jeremy Steele, star of "Naughty Neighbors" and "M.I.L.F. Money," says the hardest thing is what happens when he's not working.
"[The hardest thing is] having a relationship with a significant other," Steele says. "The first time I told a girl I was in porn she disconnected her phone number the same night, and I never saw or heard from her again."
Not only that, changing career tracks can be tricky, especially if you leave the adult business and try to reinvent yourself.
"The second hardest thing is having a post-porn career that doesn't make you 'infamous' if or when it is discovered that you were a sex worker on film/video," Steele reports. "You can lose a job or not find one if you're too well known for having been a whore on camera, in spite of it being legal."
TIP #3: Be cognizant of how others perceive you.
Whether you're a twentysomething or fiftysomething, your age can impact how management perceives your abilities. Are you too young to be getting the salary you're negotiating for? Or are you perceived as too old to be promotable?
Dave Cummings may be the oldest working porn star on the planet. At 72, he's appeared in "The Sopornos 2" and directs his own series, "Sugar Daddy."
On the one hand, Cummings owns a niche market. On the other hand, his age can be an impediment.
Sometimes, Cumming says, he worries his coworkers would "prefer working with a younger guy than me."
TIP #4: Rise to the occasion.
Seymore Butts has had in his own Showtime reality series, "Family Business," and he's directed and starred in adult movies for years.
According to Butts, it's not the porn starlet, the director, the producer, the cameraman, or the production assistant who has the toughest job in porn. It's the guy who has to get wood -- or else.
Butts opines:
The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on. They have to get it up and off on cue essentially and all the while in between maintain [it] for two to three hours. This must be done under the most difficult of circumstances, including not being attracted to their female co-star, having sex in the most uncomfortable settings, i.e. on hard surfaces, cold/hot weather, etc., and/or having to stop frequently for direction or shot setups. They have to be in great shape in order to perform. It all adds up to being the most difficult job in porn, in my opinion.
TIP #5: Successful negotiations are key.
You may have seen Richard Mann in "Freaknic 2" and "Big Mann on Campus," but Mann says he and his brethren are getting stiffed when it comes to getting paid what they should.
"I'd say dealing with the fact that you don't get any royalties" is the hardest thing about his job, Mann says. "When you shoot, they pay you once, and that's it."
Will male porn stars unionize? Unlikely.
TIP #6: It's all about confidence.
Zak Smith is an artist, author, and male porn star. With his unique resume, he's found porn is a tricky industry because it breeds insecurity.
"Everything that happens [on a porn set] affects whether people will want to sleep with you," Smith says. "The stakes could not possibly be higher. Every other thing -- including things that might lead to losing the job -- are just subthings of that thing."
TIP #7: Perspective, perspective, perspective.
Arguably the most famous male porn star of the moment, James Deen's work can be seen in "This Ain't Ghostbusters XXX," "Simpsons: The XXX Parody," and "Batman XXX: A Porn Parody."
Deen's secret to success: a positive attitude.
"I guess the hardest thing about being a male performer is ... um ... I don't know," Deen says. "My job is pretty easy."
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CBC Radio’s “The Current” host Matt Galloway interviewed me about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. We talked about “The Truman Show,” growing up under a microscope, and the rise of surveillance capitalism. It was a terrific interview. You can listen to the whole thing here.
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Matt Borondy of Identity Theory fame interviewed me about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. That Q&A is: “Secrets Laid Bare: An Interview with Susannah Breslin, Author of Data Baby.”
An excerpt:
“If you think of the main character of your memoir as just that, a character, she must be a product of her environment. In my case, she is studied by researchers who assign her a number and spy on her through one-way mirrors. She has a mother who touches her rarely and resents being a mother and sometimes says to her daughter: ‘I don’t want to be a mother anymore.’ Her father leaves her with her depressed mother who the main character feels like she has to parent or save or fix. Do you think this character is going to freely express her emotions, be vulnerable? No, she’s not. That has been studied, grinded, strangled out of her. There is no fixing her. She is what she is.”
Read the rest here.
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Daily Blast Live interviewed me about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. Watch.
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Zibby Owens interviewed me about my new memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, for her Moms Don’t Have Time to Read podcast. You can listen to the episode here: “Susannah Breslin, DATA BABY.”
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When I’m not anxious, I’m depressed. Why am I anxious and depressed? Find out more about my particular brand of crazy and its roots in this interview I did with Anxious Dude: “I Am Anxious… Susannah Breslin.”
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I really loved doing this interview with Brad Listi for his Otherppl podcast. What sets Brad apart is that he goes beyond interviewing the author about their book and really dives into the meat of their life, what made them who they are, what their story is. A lot of times, interviewers recite pre-written questions, or sort of follow the traditional format of interviewing a writer, or fall prey to the superficial premise of the author interview which is promoting the book. But Brad breaks the mold of what an author interview “should” be, and because of that, his author interviews are more like a conversation, one that ends up having kind of an alchemical effect. While my book, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, is a lot about a lot of things in my life, this interview also dove deeper into how I got started writing about sex and porn as an investigative journalist. One question caught me off guard, or rather caused me to hesitate considerably. At one point, Brad asked me what was the craziest thing I had seen while writing about sex, and the first thing that came to mind, was, well, pretty out there. Anyway, check out the interview to find out my answer, and make sure to check out Brad’s other Otherppl author interviews with authors who are a lot more famous than me, including Karl Ove Knausgård, Jonathan Franzen, Hilton Als, Maggie Nelson, Tim O’Brien, George Saunders, Melissa Febos, and Andres Dubus III.
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Rachel Simon interviewed me about DATA BABY: My Life in a Psychological Experiment for Shondaland.
“‘In a way, the study was the mother that I didn’t have. It paid attention,’ she says. ‘In my mind, it was always there, watching over me.’”
Read the rest: “In ‘Data Baby,’ Journalist Susannah Breslin Turns the Spotlight on Herself.”
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Image courtesy Lena the Plug
Meet Lena the Plug. Never heard of her? She’s got millions of followers across social media, and she’s raking in seven figures a year disrupting the porn business.
Read my latest on Forbes here.
About me. To hire me, read this and then email me here. Subscribe to my newsletter. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Read The Hustler Diaries here.
I was interviewed by Dr. Belinda Middleweek for “‘In a Pink Getto’: How Female News Workers Define Sex Journalism,” the first chapter in Sex and Journalism: Critical, Global Perspectives. I believe I’m “Interviewee 4,” who describes herself as “‘The Hunter S. Thompson of sex writing” and her role as “‘Virgil to the readers Dante,’” and “describe[s] the ‘war correspondent mentality’ […] that comes from this form of news work in which ‘your mental state and your body [are] on the line in pursuit of a story.” You can buy a copy here.
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My friend Valerie Baber interviewed me for her “Sex & Society” podcast. We talked about Playboy, empowerment, and porn. You can listen to the first episode here.
[Image via my Instagram feed]
Buy my short story: “The Tumor.” It’s been called “a masterpiece of short fiction.”
