Gawker: valleywag, cyan banister

Lingerie shots show a founder's dilemma

Owen Thomas — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:20:00 EST

Times are tight for Web startups: Catalina Girald couldn't afford to hire a model for her fashion site's lingerie collection. So she stripped down to her designer skivvies.

Girald, a corporate lawyer at Skadden Arps turned Fashion Institute of Technology student, had found a tech team, secured seed funding for Moxsie, lined up five designers for an online trunk show, and built the website. But there wasn't money left to pay a model. So she donned the Lucy B lingerie herself. On the site, her head's cropped out, but she provided this photo for Valleywag:

I'm not sure what to make of this online-designer trend. Gilt Groupe, which launched last year, hasn't set the world on fire. And Girald's site? "Love the jewelry, hate the '80s-inspired wrinkled metallic clothing, meh on the rest," was one female friend's insta-review of Moxsie.

I'm mostly interested in the notion that Girald had to step in front of the camera. Sure, Cyan Banister, the founder of Zivity, a softcore, user-created porn site, stripped, but she needed to demonstrate she really used the product. Fashion is a different business; amateur models don't suggest a site that's going to display designers' wares at their best.

If Moxsie is really so low on cash it can't afford models, it doesn't speak well for its prospects of surviving the recession. If it's just a publicity stunt, well, I suppose it worked, at the cost of a little dignity.

What do you think? Is Girald cynical, brave — or a little of both?

Bonus trivia: The other model on the site is Nicole Bulick, a Moxsie contractor who's dating Paul Pelosi, Jr. He's the son of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mom will be so proud! Here's Bulick:

The 7 Internet women Playboy should have asked to get naked

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Forget the glass ceiling for a second. This week anyway, the worst enemy of "women in tech" (like we're all one big happy girl army) is the Hot List. Playboy's "Hottest Blogger" contest is still rolling, still prompting faux-thinky "conversations" about objectification and what sets women back. (An aging softcore publication is the least of our worries.) By now a couple of Playboy's nominees have confided that they're eager to lose the vote and get it over with. What, there weren't any serious "Women of the Internet" who would pose anyway? Dear Playboy: Skip the voting on the collection of contenders we've assembled. Photo-shoot them all.

Julia Allison. Because she'd actually do it. And then write everywhere about how she was totally misunderstood but it was her choice. (Photo by Nikola Tamindzic)

Cyan Banister. Even though Cyan's already bared it on Zivity, the naked lady web community she co-founded, a little mainstream exposure doesn't hurt. (Photo by Merkley)

Susannah Breslin. Her Reverse Cowgirl blog was named as one of Time's Top 25, so she renounced sex writing. Breslin's still one of the only people blogging about sex openly unashamed to piss people off to get her story.

Zoetica Ebb. Zo's one of the sharp women behind Coilhouse, the alt.culture group blog that will be the nail in steampunk's grave. She may fuck you up for looking at her. You will like it. (Photo by Andrew Yoon)

Tracie Egan (Slut Machine). The spiritual leader-turned-editor of Jezebel, Gawker's dirty little sister, is the First Lady of sexual overshare. She once hired a guy to play rape her.(Photo by Nikola Tamindzic)

Marina Orlova. A philologist and YouTube queen, Marina's word origin lessons actually hold up beneath the blaze of her total power femme glamour. The Playboy audience might not make much of a dent in the 81 million views she's already got.

Arianna Huffington. Don't say you've never thought about it. (Photo by JD Lasica)

Zivity sparks Girl Geek porn panic

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Cyan Banister's Zivity seemed a natural choice to participate at the second Bay Area Girl Geek dinner, a networking event celebrating women in tech. At the last one in January, over 600 guests assembled at Google's HQ to hear tales of ladypower from female CEOs, founders, engineers, and VCs. Banister, a former systems administrator and network engineer, is the cofounder of Zivity, a social networking site driven by female users sharing sexy photos of themselves. The Zivity motto is "It's not porn." Call what you will pretty women getting paid for making and posting naked photos of themselves. As Zivity's Chief Strategy Officer, Banister was honored to accept the Girl Geeks' invite over five months ago, including their idea to have Zivity bring two female photographers along to lens red-carpet style shots of arriving guests who were up for it. This is where the cocktail of sex, girls, tech, and cameras got complicated, and the collective panties of some female industry "thought leaders" got blogged into a painful bunch. And it had about nothing to do with porn.

Zivity has been accused of using female sexuality as a ploy to get attention. A ploy, or a business model, one might ask. Mary Hodder, founder of online video startup Dabble, wrote, "It's not that we object to porn, just to the using (or appearance of using) girl geeks to get back their cred. Even if that's not what's happening from their perspective, the rest of us who would like to *not* be sexualized and objectified in our work lives really find the Zivity association disconcerting."

So maybe it is impossible to separate selling images of female sexuality from the sexist tech scene, but when it comes to the question of objectification, Banister objects. "I don't think the opinion that Zivity demeans anybody is one that's held by the majority," she told Valleywag. "I'm a tech vet, and I used to be very similar — you want to strip your sexuality and just live in your brain, and be a talented, smart individual so you can compete in a male-dominated space. You become sexless — but why can't I be both? Why can't I be beautiful and sexy and be smart?"

And a legitimate executive. Zivity isn't just another porn site aping MySpace, which is precisely why it's threatening. Zivity has a Silicon Valley pedigree, which means for the first time, a company that openly embraces female sexuality is rubbing shoulders with Valley oldtimers and chasing Valley money — $8 million in venture capital so far. When female entrepreneurs feel as if they have to fight for equal time as it is, sharing space with Zivity is tantamount to being asked to sleep with the enemy.

But for women, the enemy in this case isn't porn: It's turning against each other based on what's between our own legs. Is it any woman's fault that tech pundits don't give women a fair shake? "I think there's a lot of resentment for how much coverage we get," said Banister. "But we did place at TechCrunch40, and we're venture funded — and it's not just because I took my top off. The investors and the press aren't that naive."

Nor are we. Banister didn't mention it, but Banister's husband Scott was an early employee at PayPal, and some of the funding came from Peter Thiel, Scott's former boss. Part of Zivity's assumption-challenging reality: The Valley's most prominent gay venture capitalist is helping women make money undressing.

Banister told us that though she offered to bow out of the speaking opportunity, the Bay Area Girl Geeks asked her to stay. Dinner organizer Angie Chang told a San Jose Mercury News blogger:

We invited Cyan to give a 3-5 minute introduction as she was voted Sexiest Geek Alive in 2000 (just like Ellen Spertus of Google won the award in 2001 — Ellen was invited by Google to give the intro talk at the first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner). Cyan is also the cofounder of a Series A funded technology startup, which I respect greatly as a female tech entrepreneur myself.

That is, if embracing women in tech is really about changing the rules, then all women have to have a seat at the dinner party. Even if you don't approve of what they do for a living.

(Photo via takeitez)