I never intended to end up this way. In fact, if you time-traveled back into the past and showed twelve-year-old me a picture of myself, she’d probably be shocked. I came from a strict Catholic upbringing. I wore my Sunday school dresses on days that weren’t Sunday, I hung rosaries on my wall, went to bible-study classes three times a week, recited the Virgin Mary prayers to candles in times of turmoil, prayed every night on my knees, and wouldn’t dare to listen to music that even slightly cursed. But now, I sport painted on eyebrows, piercings, dark clothes, makeup, intend on having more than half my body tattooed, combat boots, and blast music like Bauhaus, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees while on my way to work or school every morning. But then again, Marilyn Manson also had a strict Catholic upbringing.
I grew up in a house with my grandmother, in which my one and only cousin would come to visit often. My cousin has a ten year advantage on me, so while I was only six, she was sixteen and experiencing her rebellious teenage stage. I remember she’d come over with straight purple hair, and baggy black pants that suspended several chains along her legs. The symphony of her jingles would fascinate me, as we all knew when she was about to come around the corner. I remember going to school, bragging to my other classmates in the first grade about how cool my cousin was. How she was prettier than any of their cousins, as if first graders had any other worries in the world to discuss. Her boyfriend at the time, (who would later become her husband) had long hair, giant gauges in his ears, and he too, wore long trench coats and stomped around in large platform combat boots. If anything, he terrified our entire family, and I could hear my grandma scoff and retreat to her safehaven of a bedroom when they’d come to visit together. Despite this fascination that my pure mind held of them, I was still also terrified. There was something about big black trenchcoats that sparked the fight-or-flight instinct within me, as my grandma raised me with the awareness of “stranger danger!” whenever possible. So I kept my distance. There was a time in which they took me out for the day, and my cousin’s boyfriend switched the then popular song, “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani to play “Psychosocial” by the heavy metal band Slipknot. I cried the entire car ride out of fear. The loud banging and screaming was something my six-year old Disneyfied, virgin ears weren’t ready for. Although, nowadays, it’s me playing Slipknot in my car as I side-eye those who play the lame pop tunes of today. I just like to say that reality hit me in the right way in the past couple of years.
My cousin and her boyfriend were clearly vibing along the strong industrial, metal, nu-goth wave that hit somewhere in the early 2000s. But these subcultures have road a long path in order to reach it’s standing point in today’s modern cultures. Especially the Goth subculture. Many people today would question, “Goth people still exist?”, while it’s not a culture that’s thriving in every day-to-day life, it still remains relevant to many people around the world. But where does the “Goth lifestyle” begin? What makes someone Goth, and what constitutes as Goth? Well, the answer is, that the list is almost endless. There are subcultures within subcultures within the subculture of Goth. Each Goth person dresses to their own standard, making themselves their own, unique person and type of Goth. Despite the endless ideas of what constitutes for Goth, it can be boiled down to a few main concepts: the music, the fashion, the ideology, and the lifestyle. While everyone defines Goth differently, it is these four main concepts weaved together into one which forms the quilt of “Goth” for me. Someone else may define it to their own comfortability, adding or taking away some of my main concepts. And that is perfectly fine, one of the main ideas of the Goth subculture is that it is a place of no judgement and flexibility, therefore while one person may define it as this, it is perfectly fine for another to define it as something a bit different. It’s very difficult to claim a word as something definite, especially when it’s evolved from being a group of invaders, to a style of architecture, to a style of music and fashion. For this research project, I will be mainly discussing the evolution of the modern Goth culture, through the dissection of Goth music, fashion, ideology, and lifestyle.
My cousin and her boyfriend were clearly vibing along the strong industrial, metal, nu-goth wave that hit somewhere in the early 2000s. But these subcultures have road a long path in order to reach it’s standing point in today’s modern cultures. Especially the Goth subculture. Many people today would question, “Goth people still exist?”, while it’s not a culture that’s thriving in every day-to-day life, it still remains relevant to many people around the world. But where does the “Goth lifestyle” begin? What makes someone Goth, and what constitutes as Goth? Well, the answer is, that the list is almost endless. There are subcultures within subcultures within the subculture of Goth. Each Goth person dresses to their own standard, making themselves their own, unique person and type of Goth. Despite the endless ideas of what constitutes for Goth, it can be boiled down to a few main concepts: the music, the fashion, the ideology, and the lifestyle. While everyone defines Goth differently, it is these four main concepts weaved together into one which forms the quilt of “Goth” for me. Someone else may define it to their own comfortability, adding or taking away some of my main concepts. And that is perfectly fine, one of the main ideas of the Goth subculture is that it is a place of no judgement and flexibility, therefore while one person may define it as this, it is perfectly fine for another to define it as something a bit different. It’s very difficult to claim a word as something definite, especially when it’s evolved from being a group of invaders, to a style of architecture, to a style of music and fashion. For this research project, I will be mainly discussing the evolution of the modern Goth culture, through the dissection of Goth music, fashion, ideology, and lifestyle.
