Miami-born international fetish superstar Rubber Doll has, over the past year, realized a difficult feat: Crossing over into the mainstream. Kind of.
By the time she appeared on New Times' cover back in 2008, she had already become one of the world's most in-demand rubber models and performers. But her star was only beginning to rise. In the ensuing years, the buxom brunette has starred in an MTV-aired music video and a feature-length indie film, and has steadily toured the world.
She's performing again at this year's Exxxotica Miami Beach so we spoke with her about feature dancing, latex, and shock value.
She's performing again at this year's Exxxotica Miami Beach so we spoke with her about feature dancing, latex, and shock value.
In the meantime, she's also managed to regularly update her personal, members-only web site, the project that launched it all. Every week, RubberDoll posts new, artistic photo sets, for which she does all the set design, hair and makeup, and, most often, costume design herself. And when she's not working on that, she may well be doing the same for her second site, ShinySluts, which features upcoming new models in similarly slick rubber.
But all of that is now just squeezed into a couple days at home a week. The rest of the time RubberDoll's on the road, either as the headliner at international fetish balls, or in a new role, as a feature dancer at gentlemen's clubs and cabarets. After a meeting at a previous edition of Exxxotica, she signed with A-List Features, an adult entertainment agency that books top industry names like Jena Haze and Jessie Jane.
That doesn't mean that she's getting boring, though. Her crossover performances, as she describes them, are full productions, full of fantasy costumes, choreography, and high-concept narrative. A James Bond-themed feature show, anyone?
That might be what she airs out at this year's edition of Exxxotica Miami Beach, at which she'll appear before heading on the road to perform at all of the convention's dates. Or it might not be -- after last year's power tool-filled performance, her reputation for the unexpected certainly precedes her.
We caught up with RubberDoll recently between dates on a recent booking, at Atlanta's Pink Pony club.
RubberDoll: I've been doing this since August of last year. It is a little tricky because you're catering to a completely different audience, but at the same time, my fans are there. It's kind of interesting because my fans will be all dressed up fetish-y, and then you have the regular guys who don't really understand it.
But the really great thing is that I've tweaked my show so that everyone really likes it. I haven't had everyone tell me they're disappointed. I definitely keep in mind that I have to keep it sexy, and they like that. I'm still naked at the end, and I guess that's what they want to see!
Are you still uploading a new photo set to your web site every week?
Yes, 100 percent! When I go back home, that's when I'm doing all my shows. All the bookings are different, so sometimes it'll be four days, but sometimes it'll just be two days. So during the week, I make sure that the web site is updated.
The pictures have gotten even better, and I'm in a different studio now. I've become much more creative because it's much easier to work when you have a studio to go to.
I've been working with other latex companies, like one I really love, Westward Bound. They're fabulous, and they send me all this fabulous new latex I get to shoot for them because I became one of the official models for their web site. They make it in London and send it to me. So the variety of latex I have now is more amazing than ever!
When you appeared on the New Times cover, you had two closets devoted to latex. Has it grown even beyond that?
Oh yeah, that's totally different now! It's crazy.
Is there a point at which you retire an outfit? Do you ever reuse an outfit you might have worn in a particularly significant photo set?
Sometimes I sell them. I'd really love to keep all of it. It's hard to let go of them, especially if it's something I had custom made. I come up with a lot of my own outfits -- I draw them. And the show outfits, I never sell, because I can always go back to that show, say, a medical show. But sometimes I do sell something I know I'm never going to wear.
But now what's happened is, since I'm using a new studio, that's basically all latex. I'm in the middle of making those two huge closets into one closet, because the studio's going to be one whole closet.
One thing that stands out about your site is that you have so many new regular photo sets, but they're consistently high quality and you can tell there's a lot of care put into the photography, the set design, and the costumes. Do you work with just one photographer now? And why did you decide to take full creative control of your shoots from the beginning, rather than testing with different photographers as a lot of models starting out usually do?
Yeah, I'm so full of ideas, so to express it on my web site is really fabulous. I do work with other photographers sometimes, because I like to see what they have to offer, and it's nice to collaborate. That can be fun. But the fact that I can come in and really take control of this, and really see the product afterwards.... I do my own make-up and my own hair, and I see it, it's like, wow! It's very satisfying to me.
Of course for a magazine, a lot of magazines want to use their own photographers and I completely understand. So I come in and I do it because I might really want to be in the magazine.
But when it's for my web site, I want my members to see not only that I'm a model, but that I came up with the whole concept. A lot of them do appreciate that. The true fans really, really appreciate that. But I have my one main photographer, my partner, who also does all my video work.
What made you decide to launch your other site featuring other models, ShinySluts.com, and where do you find the time for that?
When I launched ShinySluts, what happened there was at the beginning, I wanted to do this whole creative thing. So I would do their hair, their makeup, and I would dress them up with my own latex. I don't have as much time any more, so my photographer is the one taking all those pictures.
A lot of the times, when I do have the time, I am there and I still do their hair and makeup. I love to get girls that want to get into modeling, where I can see they have the talent, but they're not there yet. I like to show them this is what they could do, and I like to help them pose and get more into it. Maybe along the lines, that's something I'll do more of. Maybe when I retire from doing shows, I'll go back to that.
Now that you're doing so many shows, including multiple shows in a night at the same club, how do you come up with enough ideas? And how do you structure them to keep them interesting without exhausting yourself in the process?
Well, I can repeat the shows, as long as it's not at the same club. But I have a large variety of shows. My latest show is a James Bond show, which is really, really nice. The way I came up with that is that I like James Bond, and all the James Bond movies.
So for this particular show, I decided I would do a compilation of a few of the most memorable moments -- like from Goldfinger, for example, or Diamonds Are Forever. So I got all these moments, and I put it all together into one show. You see it in front of you, my interpretation of James Bond. It's an amazing show, it's very artistic, very sexy, and very seductive.
Is that what you're doing at Exxxotica or will you do a different performance?
I'm taking a different approach. I always think about the crowd that's going to be there, so I'm still debating. I know what Miami likes to see. So I'm still thinking about it! There's always something special for Exxxotica -- but not all of the Exxxotica shows, because I'm going to be touring with them. They're all going to be different.
You've had power tools in your shows there in the past, so do you feel a lot of pressure to top that level of extremeness?
Not extremeness, but just being better. I always have a little bit of shock value, where people are going to either laugh or go, "Oh, what was that?" I really, really believe that when I'm onstage, any type of emotion that the audience could feel, it's good. Even if I fall, it's still something that the audience felt.
If you give them something that's going to change their feelings very rapidly, like, "Ooh, ahh, oh my God, she fell, her breasts are on fire!" -- and that could happen this Exxxotica! -- it's this roller coaster of emotions. I think that's important as a performer.
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