Erotica without Guilt


	"I think your project is a terrific opportunity for an opportunist like me," says Romana Machado. (Photograph by Jim Gensheimer)

aven-haired voluptuary and philosopher Romana Machado sells artful nudie shots of herself on the Web and loves it. Peek of the Week, her soft-core website, features naughty, vaguely gothic poses. Most of the images are solo shots, though occasionally Romana can be seen entwined with another woman ("We look great together," she says). The site neatly combines three of the Net's strongest attractions in a single, small-business venture: self-expression, voyeurism, and profitability (if you want to peek, you have to pay).

Romana, a self-described "software engineer, author, cryptoprivatist, professional model, and hot-blooded capitalist," calls her work "erotica without guilt."


	"I'm showing what I want to show and selling what I want to sell. I control my own image and reap the benefits." (Photograph by Jim Gensheimer)


	Romana and Anna Chemavonian do "a kind of cyberpunk thing" for a photo shoot by Romana's husband, Geoff Dale. (Photograph by Jim Gensheimer)

"I get to interact with the cultural iconography of beauty -- like Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman did. There's no middleman. I'm not alienated from my labor." From modeling to HTML programming, Romana manages all phases of production. "There's no one here but me," she says.

Adventurous subscribers can follow links from the Peek site to Romana's other website, Frequently Questioned Answers. Here, the curious can find details about her philosophical interests, particularly "extropianism," an amorphous form of libertarian cyberthink. Extropians espouse free markets, complexity and chaos theory, space travel, smart drugs, huge pectoral muscles, and privatization of the oceans and air. A prime mover behind extropianism worries that Romana is too much of a self-promoter to be a serious disciple of the philosophy and calls her "the Madonna of extropianism."

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