She’s so suicide girl.

The phrase likely conjures images of tattooed women, adorned with piercings and uniquely cut or dyed hair. And that’s what a suicide girl is on the surface, but they’re so much than that, according to Suicide Girls co-founder Missy Suicide.

In 2001, before Friendster, MySpace and Facebook, Suicide Girls started as a community website where people who didn’t exactly fit into traditional society could come together and meet like-minded women who didn’t fit into the narrow definition of mainstream beauty.

"That was over 12 years ago and since then the definition of beautiful has expanded a little bit which is great, and we’re stoked on that, but when we started it was a different landscape," explains Missy. "There were two types of beauty; Pamela Anderson silicon enhanced buxom blonde beautiful or the waist thin Kate Moss sort of blonde beautiful."

But Missy Suicide and the Suicide Girls website set out to change that definition, or at least expand it.

"We thought the girls we knew were some of the most beautiful girls in the world with tattoos, piercings and crazy coloured hair and who chose to live life to the beat of their own drummer."

And more than that, the Suicide Girls site transformed into its own brand. Years later, and there has been books, pop culture references, they’ve been featured in televisions shows and movies. They’ve even had a burlesque tour or five, and now after a six year hiatus they are in the midst of a Canadian tour including a stop in Calgary in early April.

"I think that we’ve become more known and I think that the term Suicide Girl has kind of become its own way to describe girls that we represent. It’s kind of like if you say Kleenex, you know you’re talking about tissue, if you say Xerox you know you’re talking about a photocopy and if you say she’s so ‘suicide girl’, you know you’re talking about a girl with tattoos that doesn’t fit into that sort of [mainstream beauty]."

Not bad for a small website that started in Portland with not-so-lofty aspirations to make it to Seattle. But the site has grown to boast over 3000 female members from every continent including the Antarctic, with hundreds of thousands more applying to become a Suicide Girl. There are four coffee table books and six or seven movies. And the most impressive number? Suicide Girls have over 12 million followers.

"It’s been an amazing ride and I feel lucky to have come on this journey, but I had no idea that it would turn into this," Missy says, adding, "Maybe I should have dreamed bigger."

After a six year hiatus, the women of Suicide Girls with their Blackheart Burlesque tour, hit the Marquee Beer Market on April 4th. But a lot has changed since Suicide Girls initially toured and performed burlesque.

"When we were first doing burlesque shows, there wasn’t really anyone doing any shows and now there are tonnes of different alternative burlesque like Star Wars burlesque and large scale spectacle performers, so we knew we really had to up our game."

And up their game they did. Fans of the show should expect a "super sexy fun burlesque take on pop culture."

Blackheart Burlesque features all new performances and music, complete with tongue-in-cheek humor and raw erotic sexuality.  The new show features stunning choreography from renowned choreographer Manwe Sauls-Addison, who has worked with world famous performers such as Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga. Audiences can expect stripteases and performances poking fun at Kill Bill, Game of Thrones, The Big Lebowski, Planet of The Apes, Dr. Who and more.

"We really upped our performance factor by ten,  we really turn it up to 11 and you know we took the same sort of sexy spirit we pioneered back in the day we just really executed everything at a much higher level," Missy says.

Before the Suicide Girls went on hiatus they performed for thousands of fans across North America for five years, opened for Courtney Love and Guns ‘N’ Roses, as well as performing at music festivals in Europe and Australia. The group has just finished a successful American and Australian tour and are now ready to take on the Great White North.

And while there are other burlesque shows, it’s not a competition for Suicide Girls who are happy they might have played even a small part in paving the way for other alternative acts.

"I like to think we were doing it before it was popular and I feel like hopefully we had some influence but I wouldn’t dream of taking full credit for this shift in society being more accepting," Missy says. "But I think that hopefully we played some small part.  I think society is definitively shifting to becoming more accepting and diverse."