Trigger warning: At the direction of a survivor, this article contains an undetailed reference to sexual assault—SA.
Happy day. Dainty Rascal and Heart of Gold Horse Sanctuary have their forever home.
This stand-alone piece updates the very first cover story I published on modern feminist icon Suzy Berry, whose singular story inspired me to step onto that marquee platform—“Mane Attraction,” Bohemian, Dec. 10, 2024.
Berry is best known for Dainty Rascal, her label for restored vintage and original designs that echo Golden Age Hollywood idols and pin-ups. Her self-filmed viral videos see her modeling these sometimes sheer designs, posing and dancing to vintage records. They sell the clothing right off her and advertise her art nudes and sex-positive adult content.
All proceeds fund her rescue ranch for old, neglected and frequently abused horses, which she rehabilitates with rewards-based “natural horsemanship,” herbal and veterinary medicine and, most importantly, by spoiling them with love. I have seen firsthand broken old horses enjoying a second spring dancing in Berry’s green fields.
Berry has been bounced between West County properties for years, all the while nursing in her heart of gold an ambition to own land and establish her rescue permanently—fairytale weddings and horsey retreats stabilizing the rescue’s funding and allowing her to establish a free hospice for sterling citizens nominated by the community. That work is a multiyear process of adapting the buildings of her new 31-acre Cloverdale property to those purposes. This will take a lot of volunteer hands, and dollars too.
One of her fundraising efforts is a large-format art book she has just self-published. The title, Nude Muse for Hire, derives from a Craigslist ad she maintained for years, which led her into work and misadventure, deeper into the gray area of sex work.
I met her in one of the converted train-car studios at Wine Country Radio to hear this happy update and have a first look at her book. As she sat across from me, I turned the pages. The book alternates glossy pictures of her art nudes with stories from that dangerous period of her life.
It was not in the least awkward to talk to Berry as I looked at her explicit photos. Her art nudes have always had a quality of innocence to me, natural and strangely nonsexual—even presexual, as they seem pre-traumatic. They are post-healing. What struck me as odd was their alternation with stories of encounters with dodgy Craigslist “photographers” in which Berry was sometimes in real danger.
Walking in with minimal briefing, I had assumed she would favor her fun stories—as the adventurous Berry has in quantity. When I asked why, Berry admitted with bright-eyed relish that the book was at least partly a trap for predatory men, lured by her photos into stories where their tricks and setups for entrapping unsuspecting women are exposed and disarmed one by one, as the women who are their targets warned against them.
With her explanation, a second aspect became apparent. The pure quality of the brazen nudes, facing these predators from opposite pages, became a defiance—that of a woman who retains what those men tried to take from her: her innocence, her comfort in her own body, her joy of sex, who sees her and how.
In that aspect, this singular book took on a transcendent beauty and power that brought me to tears.
Learn more: Local resources for SA survivors at ourverity.org. Find the horse sanctuary at heartofgoldsanctuary.org; the clothing at @daintyrascalvintage on Instagram; the ranch restoration at @sonomacountyfarmlife on Instagram.
