Goth(s): Classic or Dud

Yeah, all of the proper goths girls I knew would spend hundreds of dollars on boots or custom leather corsets.

I was never really properly goth in that sense, never had the money or the inclination to dress up like that. I would just wear loads of black, but I really always looked more like an indie boy than a goth girlie.

I dye my hair black, own lots of black clothes and have tattoos but shudder at the term goth. I have matching pin-up girl red nails and lips so hopefully this disqualifies me?

And speaking of literary, Whitby is Gothland because of DRACULA.

Was Dracula from Whitby? I must go home and read my book of Lancashire ghosts and start a New Wave of North West fiction. It'll be ACE! ANd yes I know Whitby aint NWoNW before anyone sez anything. Actually I think I am on a winner here I even haf a catchy new name for my genre!

Samantha, your look sounds like the Betty Pages. Is this so?

Corinne Drewery? *ducks*

You mean like this Dita Von Teese the Betty Page for the 21st Century and don't forget the cherry red lipstick.

Oh, and I hate LA as well so I guess that's explained.

Also New Orleans = Gothtown because of creepiness, humidity, Catholicism, voudoun, Anne Rice and all graves ABOVE GROUND.

Funny, Ned, I was once gonna write a Busby Berkeley style goth review, "Goths-a-poppin'!" Your show sounds better, though.

"I was FUCKED BY THE DEVIL/He sure FUCKED THE SHIT out of me." The Debasement Tapes collection is hilariously wrong as well.

Fret not, Arthur, I like your vision as well. And hey, been to the new Amoeba yet? :-)

Hi Ned, no, I haven't been there. Currently unemployed and relatively broke so I think I'd go mad, darling, simply mad if I set foot in the joint. But we should get together soon and maybe Amoeba's just the place. We can go out to eat at Chan Dara on Cahuenga afterwards.

I was one, back in the day. For a few days out of each week anyway. Because, you see, I'm completely useless with style commitments.

Also, DG's right. Goths are the least snobbish of subculties. Much friendlier than hippies. And they seem to embrace all types: gay, transgendered, handicapped, overweight, anorexic, OLD--anyone can be a goth.

As an Ex-Goth (and not even one of those silly people who say "I wore all black, I listened to Bauhaus, I sat in my room and burned insence and read Rimbaud and thought about death... but I WASN'T a goth, honest!" as if denial and nihilism were an inherant part of goth- hood... oh, wait, they are! Never mind!) I can only give you my take on it. I can't speak for Goth now, or what it's become, I can only say what it was for us, then, back in the 80s.

What many people seem to object to is the po-faced seriousness of it all. Revelling in nihilism and teenage angst and dressing up like a vampire and obsessing about death at the beginning of your life is an inherantly silly thing to be doing. The make-up, the clothes, the mime-washing-a-windshield dancing, all very silly.

But some of us KNEW IT. We laughed at it even as we were doing it. It was a way of coping, a way of dealing with our own adolescent angst, depression, fear, coming into sexual awareness at a time when sex became frightening and could KILL you. It wasn't fear of death, it was fear of immortality, which is a much more frightening thing when you are 18. The thought that you could go on forever in this horrible half child, half adult, undead unalive state was worse than the thought of suicide.

And the look... I touched on this in the first thread I bent towards Bauhaus. It was a deliberate rejection or parody of the excesses of the 80s. The 80s were about gaudy colour, big hair, larger than life, exagerated design, so goths were about nothing but black, even bigger hair, larger than death, exaggerated ugliness. Fashion in the 80s was about peacock celebration of glitz and gaudiness. Goth celebrated ugliness, corruption, death, make-up used to disfigure rather than accentuate sexuality.

It started as a bitter pisstake of New Romantic; the dour, Northern anti-style of proto-Goths like Joy Division meets the art school through the ages German expressionist weirdness of Bauhaus and the Japanese kabuki stylisation of Siouxsie.

I can understand why the goth subculture goes on today, it's just no longer where I'm at. But that doesn't mean I can't still laugh at it. ;-)

Robt. Smith in lippy = sign that genderfucking has ceased to be an absolute good. Garbage's "Androgyny" single = sign of its slide towards being an absolute bad.

Odd sentence structure here, let me help it along here:

"Robert Smith in lipstick = a sign of goodness and truth, and the knowledge that the world is a fine and good place, where bunnies play happily."

Much improved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-84L3kiFyA&feature=player_embedded

I've got a gentle respect for hot weather goths.

That is commitment.

Lucian is a sanguine vampire, not an energy or psi vampire like his mom.

Goths in Brisbane are hilarious/awesome, they walk around with black lace umbrellas to keep the sun off

I've got a gentle respect for hot weather goths

I was just thinking the same thing - especially when i got to this photo.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/ShZzAvehEJI/AAAAAAAAADw/A0zM591PHrs/s1600-h/vampyres_tk_2.jpg

There's a lot of effort gone on there.

Oh I see - no linking, eh?

Well, it's here anyway.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/ShZzAvehEJI/AAAAAAAAADw/A0zM591PHrs/s1600-h/vampyres_tk_2.jpg

See, I have never met ANYONE EVER IN MY LIFE who dresses like that.

Outside, maybe at at stretch, LARPers dressing steampunky at a con or something. But ffs. Nobs.

classic, duh. goth girls = hot

lol, no.

lol, yes!

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/rthomas80us/gothapotamus.jpg

http://www.industrialgothic.com/

GBOTW is still GOING? wow. Couple of my friends were in that years ago, I think.

Well, when I say friend, I mean "horrible cow who assaulted me at a nightclub and is a basket case that I worked with", but whatevs.

incredibly, yes.

Its funny looking at the late 90s images, theyre all fairly down to earth, proper old school girls. The recent stuff is all fetish porn and suicide girl shit.

Goth goth goth

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/29/style/goth.html?_r=0

finger on pulse

- What I admire about that 'gothopotamus' person upthread, and the other person in the photo, is that the look transcends what they've got to work with physically. There's a dark, glamourous ideal that they're going for, and, whether or not that's a good ideal, the devotion to it against all the odds (short fat male w/ eyeliner for example) is surely Classic.

- Mystery and imagination are precious even in their most degraded forms, true/false

- Goth doesn't age well VERSUS why the hell not be 32, pushing your kid in a pram, wearing a black top hat and army boots

The older I get the more I appreciate sullenness and misanthropy.

Goth at the BBC! Sex Gang Children! Lols a plenty and some great music!!!

https://www.morbidanatomy.org/morbid-anatomy-products/black-on-black-a-live-online-illustrated-zoom-lecture-by-leila-taylor-author-of-darkly-black-history-and-americas-gothic-soul

TS: ostro v visi

It's World Goth Day! I made a playlist, mostly obvious stuff but I will ride or die for the Tanya Tucker track belonging in there: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7AngEshubU4FnaeXGm54Cp?si=81988a85b72c423b

massive goth banger!! i think i've played it...5 times this morning. i would totally play this out at the club. if i had a batcave to spin at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5V1c3Hnypw

Basement of your store, it can happen.

look Ned i'm on the ILX!

Hurrah!