The ##

Here at The ## we have a segment called Tumblrviews where we interview authors of popular Tumblrs. Today’s is with both Suicide Blonde and Bohemea.

First of all, I’ll make a confession. I did not know you two were girlfriends until I was actually deciding which of the two of you I would interview next! What’s that dynamic like, between the two blogs? Do you ever fight over photos?

I’m going to quote The Dude here & say that we answered these questions as ‘The Royal We, you know, the editorial.’  We’re not surprised that you didn’t realize we were girlfriends. We recently realized that we never actually mentioned each other in our bios on our Tumblr main pages, so we fixed that. We mention each other often in posts, but until recently didn’t answer questions about our relationship publicly. It’s fun though, to talk about how much fun we have together.

We’ve been blogging together for nearly as long as we’ve been sleeping together, so we’ve got it down to a fine art. We used to post separately on one blog, but wanted to separate further just to have our own sense of self represented on our blogs. That’s why the reblog is so great, because we can still pick bits from each other’s Tumblrs to share on our own.

We do have many sexy lesbian fights involving biting & scratching & hair pulling, but never over photos. We each have preferred actresses, models, films, etc & if a set of photos crops up that we’re both very excited about, after gasping & moaning & clutching each other, we split the posting of the photos half & half. We’re very diplomatic. Also, posting pictures is a form of foreplay for one another. When Suicideblonde posts a photo of Naomi Watts, Bohemea can barely control herself. We enjoy sharing interests & also turning the other on to new artists.



On That Obscure Object (Bohemea) it says you’ve both been collecting images for over 20 years. Was this for another project? Where have you gotten them?

We’ve both been image collectors since we were young girls. Our eyes grow glassy with nostalgia when we reminisce about our first Vogue or issue of Seventeen. Picture books, teen pin-up magazines, fashion magazines, art books, we love & collect them all. Before the internet, our collections existed in scrap books & on our bedroom walls. Bohemea’s early collections were of New Kids On the Block, Mariah Carey, Alyssa Milano, Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Beverly Hills 90210, En Vogue, Niki & Kristy Taylor, Cindy Crawford & Claudia Schiffer. Suicideblonde’s earliest collections were more fashion based: issues of Vogue, Steven Meisel & Ellen Von Unwerth editorials, very early Kate Moss, all the Supermodels. Also Nicole Kidman & Tom Cruise, Jodie Foster, Gillian Anderson & Lucy Lawless. We were both huge Milla Jovovich fans from the start of her career as well. A fun game we like to play is to place a Vogue from the 80s or 90s in front of Suicideblonde & watch her identify all the models & the photographer.

We started collecting images on the internet in the late 90s. It was hard to find photos back then! We found them via very early versions of fansites & by trading with fellow collectors via newsgroups. We recently scoured our harddrives for our earliest image & found tiny scans of some of our favourite ladies from as early as 1997. One thing that thrills us is to find an HQ (high quality) digital version of an image that previously only existed on paper or as a small scan. It fills our hearts with joy!


Do either of you do any conscious promotion of the blogs, or did they become popular solely through tumblr? Basically, how did you get so popular?

We don’t promote our blogs outside of Tumblr. We’re always posting, so our Tumblrs have become a place to go where you can always be updated with new images. We’ve also recently been promoted on Blogs outside of Tumblr, which has helped contribute hits. We might get more hits than niche blogs that have a specific subject because we do share a wide variety of images, there’s a little something for everyone & we try to pepper our pop culture posts with posts of people & artists that may not be as well known, Our only rule is that we don’t post things we do not like, even if it’s a popular subject. Hopefully by sharing images of people & artists that are less popular, we’re exposing people to new interests while also gaining popularity for the lesser known artists.

I see both of you have Twitters, one locked and one open. What do you two think of it?

It’s alright. We find the character limit difficult since we’re both wordy people, but we find it’s a nice place to be a little more personal & we enjoy reading a lot of celebrity Twitters. As a service, we like that it’s stable & constantly improving.

I noticed that That Obscure Object has a personal tumblr listed called Theopania. I was wondering if you could tell me how you decide what to post where, and, if That Obscure Object isn’t personal, what is it?

I originally started the Theophania journal this winter. I used to keep a personal Livejournal & I really enjoyed it & had begun to miss chronicling our daily life. I like sharing anecdotes about our days with people that I can get to know personally. Our personal life went so haywire over the past few months though that personal journal keeping became something that I wanted to keep private, so I turned to a paper journal instead, but also decided to trust my Bohemea followers with some personal information about our life by turning on the message feature & answering personal questions. Bohemea is a personal journal because it reflects my interests & inspirations, but I don’t share many details or photos about our daily life.


I read the Autostraddle post titled “14 Lesbian & Genderqueer Tumblrs to Watch.” The author of the post observes: “when it comes to stuff gay girls like, tumblr is the best thing to happen to photography ever,” and how when “Tumblr came into our lives and the whole world changed.” In your opinions, what does Tumblr provide the LGBT community that it didn’t have before?

First of all, Autostraddle is great! We’re so proud to have been mentioned on their fantastic site. We had a fun discussion about this, and this is our conclusion: Tumblr has many fabulous aspects that make it unique. It’s a wonderful hodgepodge of different interests. Through your dashboard & the reblog feature, you can create your perfect visual scrapbook. Using a lesbian Tumblr users as example: let’s say you love photos of pretty girls kissing, The L Word, Rachel Weisz, brunette girls & photos of the girls from Glee hugging each other. You can search Tumblr & find all these things to look at & then share on your own Tumblr & you’ve created this safe virtual place for you to enjoy with others all the interests that make you you. From a gay point-of-view, having such a wide variety of images, thoughts, quotes & news to pick from is so enticing! We hope to provide for lady lovers photos that thrill them & help them develop & cultivate their tastes. Because Tumblr is such an open, accepting community, it’s a wonderful place for LGBT bloggers to express themselves & get to know others. There is definitely not a sense of exclusivity though. We love our male & heterosexual female followers as well & enjoy their unique ways of expressing themselves & reasons for following us. It’s a great blogging platform of open mindedness.

How important in anonymity to you two? Do your friends in real life know about your Tumblrs?

Our friends do, yes, but not our families. Our families would have no interest in our Tumblrs. It’s strange that we are so popular on Tumblr though because when we get together with family, they talk about how popular their Facebooks or Twitters are, and they have maybe two dozen Twitter followers or a couple hundred Facebook followers & we just have to sit there, acting impressed. Our families are very conservative though, and as you can see, we are the opposite of conservative, so we keep our Tumblrs to ourselves.

Do either of you worry about whether you’re giving proper credit when you post an image?

We work very hard to provide as much information as possible about a photo. We always credit the subject & also try to credit the photographer, publication & date if we know it. All our photos on our hard drives are labeled well, so we usually credit the photos thoroughly.

Have you ever thought about trying to make money from your blogs?

We honestly don’t know how, other than via ads, and we personally don’t like the look of ads. It would be awesome to be paid to blog, but so far, there have been no offers, so we continue our existence as penniless sitar players.

What do the titles of your blogs mean to you?

Suicideblonde: When I came up with Suicide Blonde it was a real quick decision — I was into the song by INXS at the time, and loved the sound of the term ‘suicide blonde’ the melancholy of it but also the neon pop of it, the innate late 80’s, early 90’s feel to the term. Though it’s not in everything I post, I feel like it’s a loose definition of the images I share, the icon of the suicide blondes.

Bohemea/That Obscure Object: I’ve been using the name Bohemea online for about 6 years now. I changed the spelling because Bohemia is usually taken on sites. I like it because it’s the title of my favourite Dorothy Parker poem & I believe Suicideblonde & I are most definitely bohemians in that we’ve chosen to live a penniless existence with only art & art appreciation to feed us. I chose That Obscure Object as Bohemea’s title because I had just read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides before I created my Tumblr & loved the way the author used the term. It’s part of a title from a movie in the 1970s called “Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object Of Desire)”. Honestly, what better way to describe all the images that delight me than by titling them obscure objects of desire? Beautiful.

How much time do you spend on your respective blogs per day? Do you two work on them at the same time?

We spend as little as an hour in one sitting to as much as many hours off & on all day. It all depends on if we already have pictures gathered to post or an idea of what pictures we want to share. We make queues most nights (Suicideblonde is more diligent than Bohemea) where we share an average of 50-60 pictures with 15-20 reblogs that publish throughout the day. We sometimes work on them at the same time, but not always. We try not to do everything together, which is hard, because we’re practically inseparable.

(Rachel Weisz, Tina Fey, Monroe, Timberlake, Brad Pitt, NPH, Blake & Leighton)