Thank you! I’m glad that we could be of some help :)
Submitted by scarlettethroughthelookingglass via fan mail:
To the anon who said about being black and goth there’s an article on a website called mookychick..http://www.mookychick.co.uk/alternative-fashion/gothic-fashion/dark-romantic-goth-style-for-black-girls.php
I had a a little read of this article, if I’m honest, the tips seem like tips for any Goth of any race… So I guess that kinda proves that Goths of colour need not feel so different… But thank you for link :)
Also the woman writing it seems to be pro-Twlight Dx
Hello there fellow Goths,
I recently received an anon ask with 4 questions regarding the subculture in it. I found them quite interesting and I’d absolutely love to hear what some of my followers have to say :)
1. What made you get involved with the Goth subculture?
2. How does the Goth subculture distinguish itself from the mainstream?
3. How do Goths resist the stigma that all Goths are depressed and focused on death?
4. How do race and gender play a role in Goth subculture?
You don’t have to answer all of them, just pick the ones you have something to say about and send an ask with your reply.I hope to hear from some of you!
Thank you my lovelies,
Arianna
Submitted by orlokknyghtshroude via fan mail:
1. This is a bit of a long one, but being mildly physically disabled growing up in a smaller town where sports were king caused me to seek “alternatives” for myself. I also have had an obsession with vampires, love the colour black, and mainstream stuff just doesn’t “click” with me. I love the aesthetic, the musical style, and the literary genre. I don’t have much actual subculture experience due to living in the sticks most of my life but it’s a dream and a goal of mine to take part.
2. Goth sees the beauty in the macabre. Goth takes the dreary parts of life and celebrates them.
3. I resist the stigma personally by always striving to be polite and courteous, though I’m also human so a few bad days are of course accounted for. Goths unfortunately get a bad reputation from the media as “psychotic hedonistic lowlifes.” What the media doesn’t know is that there probably are goths amongst them in higher positions albeit probably covertly. As for the death obsession, we tend to counter it with a sense of humour. While not always nice, our snark helps everyone find light in the dark. Besides, if you put 15-20 goths in the same room, there’s bound to be laughter. I mean, this is a group that has some great pretentiousness and decadence within it; so if you put 10 lords or ladies of the mighty darkness and shadow together in the same room, there’s bound to be comedy. Being gothic is about “getting the joke”. It’s some of the greatest black comedy ever and only the mallgoths and seriously fucked individuals take it too seriously.
4. Race and gender : Predominantly, this is a “white” thing, but there are goths of colour. Gender can be fluid as well as traditional. It’s all depending on the group of goths in question, really.
— orlokknyghtshroude
It really upsets me hearing about people who don’t feel accepted within the Gothic subculture, or any subculture for that matter; to have something that you define yourself as, yet makes you feel unaccepted… It must suck having two groups of people who seemingly have issues with either the way you look or the way you act, and I’m sorry that I can’t help with people of your own race, but I might be able to help with the Gothic community. All these things ‘ghostly pale skin’ or long black hair, they’re all just stereotypes of what people say Goth is ‘supposed to be’. But in reality, Goth is what you make it to be. There is so much freedom and open-mindedness within the subculture, and anyone who doesn’t accept you purely because you don’t have pale skin is an idiot.
Thank you for answering, and I hope I could be of help :)
If you want to say more, feel free to send in a submission or reblog the original post and add your answers, but this did help! Thank you very much :)
Hello there fellow Goths,
I recently received an anon ask with 4 questions regarding the subculture in it. I found them quite interesting and I’d absolutely love to hear what some of my followers have to say :)
1. What made you get involved with the Goth subculture?
2. How does the Goth subculture distinguish itself from the mainstream?
3. How do Goths resist the stigma that all Goths are depressed and focused on death?
4. How do race and gender play a role in Goth subculture?
You don’t have to answer all of them, just pick the ones you have something to say about and send an ask with your reply.I hope to hear from some of you!
Thank you my lovelies,
Arianna
1. I’ve always been into things that were dramatic, stirring, and emotionally passionate, and even though I don’t usually call myself a “goth”, I do notice that many of the things I enjoy happen to be gothic. I love the clothing, and I love to write and create art that contains gothic themes and motifs. I don’t think I ever met any serious goths in school, but there were plenty of other kids like me to hang around with.
2. To me, intelligence and emotion are what make something beautiful or worth marveling at. I love it when I can look at something and see it was cleverly made and I can sense the feelings associated with it. That concept is popular in most art and literature, but I feel like it speaks the loudest when it’s gothic. Goth is both clever and passionate.
3. I have had people approach me and ask me if I am a goth, and that stereotype is undoubtedly what they mean. Usually they take it fairly well when I explain to them what I’m really like, and they’re interested enough to listen, but they’re like tourists; they probably just assume I’m an exception to the rule. Quite contrary to gothic stereotypes, my poetry and prose are generally whimsical and upbeat, and I’m the type who likes happy endings.
4. As much as gothic culture tries to break the mold and features intelligence as well as emotion, race and gender discrimination are a human feature. All cultures across the world discriminate between race and gender, though some admittedly more so than others. I’m sure there are racist and/or misogynist goths, and personally I rarely if ever see people of other ethnicities than Caucasian featured in gothic art. Gothic culture, whether by purpose or accident, does cater to a white audience. In addition, most gothic art and representations are female-centric. Men are less common in the culture. I think that’s partly due to the fact that gothic women are fetishized by men within and without the culture. Nobody except women wants to see a man in gothic fashion. Men want to see us ladies in our busty corsets and the skirts and dresses that hug our hips. We can’t choose to be beautiful if we don’t want to be sexualized. But, so is the dilemma of women of every race in every culture (almost, anyway).
Thanks for answering!
Hello there fellow Goths,
I recently received an anon ask with 4 questions regarding the subculture in it. I found them quite interesting and I’d absolutely love to hear what some of my followers have to say :)
1. What made you get involved with the Goth subculture?
2. How does the Goth subculture distinguish itself from the mainstream?
3. How do Goths resist the stigma that all Goths are depressed and focused on death?
4. How do race and gender play a role in Goth subculture?
You don’t have to answer all of them, just pick the ones you have something to say about and send an ask with your reply.I hope to hear from some of you!
Thank you my lovelies,
Arianna
1. I was always sorta Goth, having grown up loving the Addams Family, but I didn’t really go Goth until I got introduced to Goth music via Rock Band. That introduced me to trad Goth bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees and once I got into their music I realized that I had always been goth, I just never realized that. Part of that was because growing up in rural america I had never met a goth so Hollywood was my only exposure. Once I actually understood goth I embraced it.
2. Goth is best described as a sort off intellectualized rebellion focused on clothing, music, and art. The subculture distinguishes itself by pointing out the double standards and stupidity of normal society and pop music. Wearing black and listening to alt music seem to be the only standards across the multitude of different subgoth types.
3. Luckily thanks to NCIS the character of Abby has become the poster child of gothdom so the perky goth has gone mainstream. Most goths I’ve met online are just as happy and more well adjusted than most people I’ve encountered in real life. The only problem I have is when people confuse goth and emo.
4. Goths tend to be accepting of all races and genders as long as that person is accepting of goths. The goth culture does tend to be very open minded when it comes to transgendered people. I say as long as you respect others then all are welcome.
Thank you so much for your answers :)
Hello there fellow Goths,
I recently received an anon ask with 4 questions regarding the subculture in it. I found them quite interesting and I’d absolutely love to hear what some of my followers have to say :)
1. What made you get involved with the Goth subculture?
2. How does the Goth subculture distinguish itself from the mainstream?
3. How do Goths resist the stigma that all Goths are depressed and focused on death?
4. How do race and gender play a role in Goth subculture?
You don’t have to answer all of them, just pick the ones you have something to say about and send an ask with your reply.
I hope to hear from some of you!
Thank you my lovelies,
Arianna
1. I can’t remember really… It was a very gradual process; a combination of a couple of things I think. The music that I listen to influenced my mind set and personality, and subsequently, how I dressed. I used to only listen to two bands: H.I.M. and Evanescence. I know they’re not Goth bands, but especially Evanescence had a darker image than mainstream bands. Also since I was young I was always pretty into TV shows like Charmed and Ghost Whisperer and stuff like that, things that involved a slightly darker take on things. I remember one episode of Ghost Whisperer, there was this Wiccan girl who dressed in Gothic attire, and I remember being really interested in this character. That was probably the tipping point. I then became very interested in Wicca, and I also found myself looking into Satanism, which I did a lot of research on. At the same time, I was looking into the Gothic subculture, where it came from etc., started listening to the music, and gradually I started changing my wardrobe. Not the best Goth story, but that’s how it happened xD
2. I think it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? We listen to different music, we wear a completely different wardrobe… Goths tend to have slightly different mind-sets also, which means that it’s not difficult to try and get along with other Goths. As for the fashion, we are the complete opposite to whatever ‘mainstream’ represents. We aren’t sheep who follow trends, we make our own style, give our own personal spins on things, dress exactly how we want to dress, not how others tell us we should dress. We do things our own way :)
3. I like to think that the whole ‘depressed and obsessed with death’ thing is a bit of a running joke within the subculture. It’s fun to be ironic sometimes, so I don’t think we even try resist it. I personally joke about it a lot, I’ll make stern comments with a dead-serious face and then laugh out of it. If you try too hard to resist it and get really defensive about something, especially about being depressed and all that, then the negativeness that you’re putting out there doesn’t help at all, in fact, it pretty much arguing the case that you’re a miserable cunt with no happy outlook on life. If you joke about it and laugh, then you are showing that you can be light-hearted and can take jokes etc. So to sum up: we really don’t resist it, in fact, we embrace it!
4. Well if you look at the majority of Goths, they are usually white, but that’s not to say that Goths can only be white. I’m Persian, so I’m proof that other races are in the scene, and I have seen a lot of Goths on Tumblr especially that are ‘ethnic’, I suppose you could say. And as for gender, I don’t think that there is much difference in the number of men and women in the subculture… I suppose there is the typical view of the ‘hot goth chicks’, but if you find a group of Goths in the scene of a particular area, there will be just as many men as women. I think that society is slightly harsher on male Goths, because it is more unusual for a guy to grow his hair long and wear make-up and beautiful Victorian dress shirts. But then again, society doesn’t really like any of us xD
I’m sorry that I couldn’t go into much detail about the subculture and scenes as I have never been in a scene myself… I’m a ‘lone Goth’. But I would really like to hear what other people have to say about these questions. I’ll make a separate post about this.
Thank you :)
Submitted by filthyvictorianmademoiselle:
Model: Mademoiselle Karma
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mademoisellekarmamodel
Hair & Make-up: Mademoiselle Karma
Photographer: BrainDrain Photography
Submitted by filthyvictorianmademoiselle:
Model: Mademoiselle Karma
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mademoisellekarmamodel
Hair & Make-up: Mademoiselle Karma
Photographer: BrainDrain Photography
I got into Gothic fashion about 4 years ago. It was quite a slow transition, which is a good thing I think. It gave people close to me a chance to adjust, which can be difficult, especially parents.
