Tag: Goth Subculture (Page 3 of 3)

My Favourite Etsy Stores

November 29, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

It’s okay to look good if you’re wandering the wasteland.

If you have read some of my DIY posts you will know that I absolutely love shopping on Etsy. If you buy clothes and accessories on there you are not only supporting independent designers you are guaranteed to not look like a carbon copy of all of the people who prance around in head to toe Killstar. The only issue that you may run into on Etsy are people selling cheap mass produced crap from China. They are easy to spot though because all of them will be selling the same exact products.

With all of that being said here is a list of some Etsy stores that I really like. Since I really love post-apocalyptic and dystopian themed clothes some of these stores focus on that kind of style.

Wasted Couture This shop features handmade post-apocalyptic style clothing and accessories for both cosplay and everyday wear. I have ordered chokers, necklaces and bags from them and everything has been well made. This store is based in Poland and sells items made by different artists in the post-apocalyptic DIY community.

Lucyfirefashion I bought one of my favourite skirts from this site. A lot of the clothes are kind of post-apocalyptic meets goth and metal. Very wearable clothes.

DaquinoHats I ordered a bolero type hat from them and it is the nicest hat I have ever bought. It’s very well made and quite sturdy. I highly recommend them for all of your hat needs.

StudsAndSpikesCom This shop carries tons of different studs and spikes. They even have coloured pyramids which are very cool! If you live in Europe the shipping might be expensive since everything coming from the US tends to be. However, you will receive what you order and not get ripped off.

Screen13Shop Some of the best horror film patches I have ever owned come from this store. If you love horror films this will be a very dangerous store for you to browse because you’ll want a whole lot of them!

darksparkledesigns I have ordered some goth and some post-apocalyptic jewellery from this site and everything is very cool looking and well made. They have a ton of items so it will take you quite a while to choose which ones to buy!

DigitalPharoahUK I purchased a Cyberdyne messenger bag and a Tech Noir t-shirt from here and was actually surprised by the print quality of the products. They carry a bunch of horror and sci-fi film merchandise, some of which I have never seen anywhere else.

WirehedLaboratories They carry a whole lot of film, spooky, etc… pins and stickers. They even have pins of the post-apocalyptic film Hardware which thrilled me to bits because it’s one of my favourite films. If you are looking for something from an obscure post-apocalyptic film you may find it here.

BohoDayAndAge Their jewellery is very inventive and includes actual chainmail pieces. I bought one of their wasteland necklaces made out of aluminium soda can pull-tabs and it is very nifty!

BlasphemyClothing They carry a lot of obscure goth and punk t-shirts, including bands like Samhain and Specimen. They are located in the US so if you are in Europe the shipping will cost a lot. However, the actual prices of the shirts are fairly cheap and the designs are unique.

That is all for now and I hope you have a lot of fun browsing these stores creating your own style. I will make another Etsy store recommendation list in a few months.

The Goth Subculture Has Got To Start Seriously Policing Itself

November 21, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

I’m writing this having lived in three different areas of the US in the past, and witnessing really awful people be given free range to do deplorable shit in the ‘scenes’ of all three of them. I noticed the other week that one of these people is still a promoter and a DJ in one of those cities and I am disgusted but not surprised.

As some of you know I come from the more punk side of things in terms of music and attitude. Meaning that if somebody is an asshole I will loudly point them out and confront them. I don’t care if they are in a band, a DJ, or a promoter because I won’t back down and I don’t actually give a crap about losing goth subculture clout. This has gotten me in ‘trouble’ through the years, but I’m still here listening to the music and supporting those who make the music who aren’t assholes.

An issue that the goth subculture has always had is that of people being very passive aggressive. Instead of voicing their opinions people will whisper behind their hands trying to start behind the scenes drama. When somebody does something really awful, such as being sexually aggressive towards others, people won’t confront them. Instead they’ll say things such as ‘That is just who they are.’. Seriously, I’ve heard that exact phrase used about a scene predator before. Those who say such things are enablers and in my opinion are as guilty as the predator.

If the asshole in question is a DJ, musician or promoter the more likely people in the scene are going to kiss their ass and ignore the crap that they have perpetuated. The case of Andy Deane, from the band Bella Morte, is a really good example of all of this. People ignored the stories about him for years until there were so many women coming forward that the evidence couldn’t be ignored any longer. People who still support this asshole are evidently perfectly okay with women being treated like garbage.

What needs to start happening in the goth subculture is that when people do heinous crap to others they should be automatically kicked out and not welcomed back. This happens very frequently in the punk subculture because people aren’t as afraid to speak their minds. Why are some of the people in the goth subculture so afraid to speak their minds? Because they don’t want to rock the boat and lose their precious ‘scene’ status. ‘Scene’ status is deemed more important in the eyes of some than confronting an abusive person. They worked years to achieve their title of ‘scene queen/king’, to have people grovelling at their feet for admittance to the goth subculture. If they speak up others might not look up to them any longer, and that is a fate worse than death for them.

The goth subculture can sometimes be its worst enemy, but it really doesn’t have to be. If you think maintaining ‘scene’ credibility is more important than calling people out who exhibit really abhorrent behaviour than you are nothing but a scene social climber. I’ll put it this way. If you find out that a person who regularly attends your local goth events raped somebody would you keep silent, or would you be proactive and work on getting that person banned from attending any local goth event? If you think that it’s none of your business then you are part of the problem and not the solution.

Goth Music Is Undead And Here Is A List Of Newer Bands To Prove It

November 13, 2020 / dystopiagal / 3 Comments

I’ve been into goth and punk music for about 35 years, and goth music right now is more vibrant and varied than any other time that I can remember. I’m not saying that the 80’s or 90’s were bad or anything like that, but the sheer amount of really good goth genre music being made right now is very staggering.

There is so much really good music being made right now that it’s very difficult to catch up on every single goth genre band out there making music. I used to DJ deathrock/goth rock about twenty years ago during the time that EBM and synthpop took over just about every goth club. When I was a DJ in Washington D.C. I was one of the only people who didn’t spin EBM or synthpop all night and I got a whole lot of shit for it. Goth music was in a pretty dire situation during those years and the deathrock revival happened during that time as a response to it. However, a lot of those bands were either not really good or over the top to the point of absurdity. There were some decent bands but the movement died out within a few years.

Every once in a while I would seek out newer goth genre bands hoping to hear something more guitar based that spoke to me, but I would always end up ducking my head back into my shell. I started to focus more on the new wave bands that I really liked in the 80’s and that somewhat filled the void. However, within the last few years, I felt like I was stuck in a rut of only listening to older bands. I didn’t want to be THAT person who bitches constantly about all of the newer bands being way worse than the older bands. I guarantee that you will bump into a few of them if you in any way participate in the punk or goth subcultures. I went onto the Reddit goth group and started to try out the bands that people posted, and to my surprise I heard music that was actually really well done and not derivative! My journey into discovering the music of newer bands had begun!

Before I start a list of the newer bands that I like you should know that I lean more heavily into deathrock and goth rock than anything else. Also, I like some darkwave and hybrid type bands. The only subgenre I really don’t care for that much are the wannabe 80’s synth and post-punk bands. I think a portion of them are definitely style over substance, and they try to go for an 80’s sound by using every bell and whistle that different bands used back then. In my opinion it makes some of them sound very similar to one another, when a lot of the original 80’s bands actually sounded very different from one another. Did early U2 sound exactly like Echo And The Bunnymen? No? You get my point. However, I do like some bands that mix the post-punk sound with darkwave. The band names are linked to their Bandcamp pages.

Mystic Priestess A pagan anarcho deathrock band that blends political statements into their songs. The vocals are very well done!

The Creeping Terrors Great political tinged deathrock with some excellent female vocals.

Then Comes Silence This is a hybrid band, a mix of post-punk, goth rock, deathrock and some darkwave.

Nox Novacula Great deathrock. The singer sounds a bit like Grace Slick and I think she is definitely one of the better vocalists in the genre right now.

Detoxi Deathrock with a political bent. I think they may be dropping some music soon, because they released a new song about a week ago.

Horror Vacui A deathrock band out of Italy whose bass playing is pretty stellar.

A Cloud Of Ravens They make some very foreboding goth rock with some tinges of darkwave. Very atmospheric music!

Amaranth Very good goth rock with some cool sounding layered guitar blended with cool darkwave elements.

The Cult Sounds Dark goth rock tinged with some deathrock.

Panic Priest Hybrid band that mixes post-punk with some darkwave.

Black Angel Solid goth rock with some darkwave sprinkled in. Pay attention to the lyrics because they are very well done!

Andi I’m not heavily into the electronic side of things but these couple of songs are very well done and I hope they release more music!

Mary Hybrid band that blends dreampop, darkwave and goth rock. Reminds me of My Bloody Valentine’s album Loveless.

That is a ton of really good music to sift through! I will do a sequel to this post soon because I know that there are some bands I’ve missed. Enjoy!

What The Heck Does The Term ‘Trad Goth’ Mean These Days?

November 10, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

Even statues in cemeteries are pondering this!

I’ve noticed the term ‘trad goth’ being thrown around a lot these days in terms of ‘goth’ fashion. There seems to be a real need by those new to the subculture to put themselves into a named box and not stray from it. This actually makes me sad because they are missing out on having their own personal style. Also, this is tied to the people who feel like they have to spend a lot of money to look like the kind of box they want to jump into. I feel that a lot of this has stuck certain older 80’s ‘dark’ looks into the ‘trad’ box. You also have the ‘vampire’ box, the ‘Victorian’ box, etc… and you shouldn’t ever mix them all up together!

People in the know realise that all of this is ridiculous but there are some people out there who take this very seriously. It’s ironic that jokes about different kinds of ‘goths’ from twenty years ago are now being used as roadmaps to get into the subculture. If you don’t ‘get’ the joke you become the joke.

What the hell does ‘trad goth’ really mean these days? A box filled with torn fishnets and winklepicker boots with no personal style encouraged? Almost every single day I’ll come across somebody online who claims they look ‘trad goth’ because they are wearing black lipstick or a manufactured fishnet top. What these people fail to realise is that back in the 80’s/90’s not everybody in the subculture wore a ton of make-up or even fishnet. 90% of the time back then I wouldn’t even wear lipstick because I smoked and I hated to have to reapply it over and over again in one night. I just couldn’t be bothered. I think the people calling themselves ‘trad-goths’ these days have misconceptions about the era that they are trying really hard to copy.

A ‘trad goth’ to me is somebody who listens to goth music and is connected to it by going to shows, purchasing the music, and by wearing band merch. They support the bands that they listen to, just like what was done back in the 80’s by the fans of the original bands. It just means the person in question still takes the music seriously, instead of just dressing in black and thinking that goth is just a fashion statement. So, you cannot capture the spirit of being a ‘trad goth’ by simply taking a photo of yourself dressed in black while wearing black lipstick. That is not the way it works. Wearing a band shirt, leggings and boots is far more trad goth that wearing a ton of black eyeliner and an entire outfit bought from a ‘dark’ clothing website.

The end.

Why I Have Always Had A Foot In The Punk Subculture

October 10, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

I got into both punk and goth music at around the same time, and there have been years that I looked more ‘goth’ and other years that I looked more ‘punk’. Actually, I should replace the term ‘goth’ with the word ‘alternative’ since before 91 the term ‘goth’ wasn’t used in my area. No matter what I looked like I always still held the same beliefs. I heavily disliked the GOP and the Tories, thought all conservatives were assholes, and that neo-Nazi skinheads sucked and didn’t belong in either of the subcultures.

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area back then. That area has always been known for being very left wing. However, there were some very conservative pockets, most of which were in the East Bay. This included Fremont, which back then, was mostly white and middle/upper middle class. I went to high school there and I would say that at least 80% of the students there during the 1980’s were white. I could literally count the number of African American students with only one hand. No joke. This was in stark contrast to my experience of being a child in San Francisco where most of my friends were Chinese and other people of colour.

Since I openly disliked Reagan I never fit in at all. If you weren’t conservative in the 80’s you got fucked with pretty much on a daily basis. How dare you not like Reagan, that means you’re not American!!! So, since I politically didn’t fit in it wasn’t a huge step for me to start embracing punk and what is now called goth music. I bought Beating A Dead Horse by The Sex Pistols and Specimen’s Batastrophe in 1986, That quickly pointed me into the direction of The Dead Kennedys, 7 Seconds, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Cure, U2, etc… I loved the Pistols, 7 Seconds and The Dead Kennedys because of the political messages and Specimen and Gene Loves Jezebel because the music sounded different and cool.

Thirty years ago I would go to Gilman, a volunteer run punk club that is still around in Berkeley, one night and then a goth/alternative club called The Twilight Zone in Alameda the next. Looking back on it there was maybe a handful of us who would do this so I never felt alone. The punk community embraced this way more than a lot of people in the emerging goth scene. There were quite a few people who called themselves goth back then who looked down their noses at anybody who didn’t dress a certain way. It didn’t matter that you loved goth music, to them everything was about how you dressed. People think there is gatekeeping going on in the subculture right now? It was ten times worse back then. I did my own thing and just ignored them. A lot of them ended up as either meth or heroin addicts so I think I ended up with the better end of the stick.

I didn’t do that much clubbing during the 90’s, I would only go to clubs maybe a couple of times of year, which I actually don’t regret too much because I avoided a massive amount of drama. During that time I saw the original line-up of Danzig and other acts such as Adam Ant so I didn’t miss everything coming out of that decade. After 2000 I moved around a lot and did some DJ work spinning everything from punk to goth, where I encountered a massive amount of sexism. Not that many people stood up and argued against it it back then because I think some people were afraid that their ‘goth’ status would be revoked. This would have never been accepted in the punk subculture. If a band said sexist crap on stage at Gilman they would be banned from playing there. People in the punk subculture would stand up for each other, while in the goth subculture twenty years ago people would work against each other, fighting for status.

Thankfully, it really feels like things have changed. Right now there are quite a few deathrock and goth rock bands who are openly political that question societal norms. I don’t feel that every single band in the goth subculture has to be political, because after all not every single punk band is political. However, along with this new awareness comes a downside. Some people, who are jealous of the success of certain bands, attempt to blacklist them by calling them racist even though there is no real proof of this. It’s petty goth subculture bullshit belittling the term and using it for self absorbed reasons. When I saw it happen to a band recently my punk side came out and I fought like hell against the witch hunters, because it was obvious that it was being lead by musicians/djs who were jealous twats. They expected me to go along with their hive mind mentality and were shook when I didn’t. Sorry kids, but the Subhumans taught me to think for myself. By the way, I have screenshots of all the shit that went down because I know that those twats are going to be the type to deny all of this within a year or two.

Think For Yourself by the Subhumans

I am very, very grateful that I never stopped listening to punk music, even when pressured to by the uber goobers at goth clubs. The music taught me that it is okay to question authority, be it a politician or a ‘leader’ in an online goth community. It also gave me the confidence to speak up when I know a situation is not what it seems. It also taught me that listening to my inner voice is more important than worrying about my social status. In the end I’d rather be able to live with myself than gain imaginary goth points. This is the reason why I have always had a foot in the punk subculture.

An Online Store Selling Painted/Studded Punk/Goth Jackets For Over £300.00? Yep.

October 4, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

While I was innocently browsing Facebook today there was an ad that caught my eye. I normally call ads on there scams and report them, so I clicked onto the link and I was horrified to discover that there is a company charging over £300.00 for ready made denim battle jackets. Yep, that much money for a sewn on back patch, some studs and maybe some chains. I’m not joking, and that isn’t the worst of it. They are charging £666.00 for leather jackets with simple paintings of the Universal Monsters and some light studding.

All of this is basically the commercialization of traditionally DIY pieces of clothing. This kind of crap has been happening forever, but this site really seems to hit all of the sour notes of the most recent trend of wanting to be ‘goth’. A certain percentage of people who are curious about the goth subculture these days automatically think that it’s only about the clothing so they will drop hundreds, if not thousands, on ready made clothing that is advertised as ‘dark’ and ‘goth’. I have nothing against ready made clothes in general, and just about every single person in both the goth and punk subcultures own at least a few pieces. However, charging hundreds of pounds/dollars for a ready made jacket is really obscene because it is the one piece of clothing that has been traditionally DIY.

My peachy-keen post-apocalyptic themed jacket that is close to finished.

Before I go any further, if you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I have been working on my own jacket for months now. Since I have MS I frequently don’t have the energy to do much of anything, so I work on it when I physically feel like I can. If I can make the time to work on one, despite my medical condition, others really have no excuse. It doesn’t matter what you can and can’t paint, when you work on it yourself it becomes a part of who you are. Paint and studs can be found online for very cheap and you’ll end up with your own piece of wearable art.

Here is the link for that site. I am not going to post any photos from their site because I don’t feel like being sued. Get ready to cringe in pain. https://www.fortheflycustoms.com/store?category=JACKETS

I’ve Been Working On A DIY Post-Apocalyptic Themed Pleather Jacket

September 15, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

I quite often like to work on DIY clothing projects. Seeing ready made jackets with nonsensical slogans on them always makes me twitch because it is easy as hell to work on your own jacket. This was originally a pleather jacket that I got off of Killstar for very cheap on clearance. I don’t think they even have it on their site any longer. Some people would probably give me shit for buying the brand, but I wouldn’t be able to get a pleather jacket this solidly constructed for a cheaper price. The ones I’ve seen in stores are made of thinner material and are more expensive.

It is very easy to paint on pleather and leather jackets. The first thing I did was use some deglazer just to get any surface dirt or coating off of the jacket. You actually can probably skip that step, but this was my first time painting on pleather instead of leather so I did things by the book. Next, I bought an Angelus brand leather paint kit. It’s an acrylic type paint that is made to stick to leather/pleather surfaces. Also, I add their brand of 2-Hard adhesive to the paint I am working with, because it bonds the paint to a hard surface even better. I add half paint and half 2-Hard since the hard surface I am working with is hard yet flexible. I have painted on regular leather before without adding an adhesive so you only have to really do that while working with pleather.

I go over the paint several times to make it stand out more. Also, when I want to paint colours I have to put said colours on top of a white surface, because they will not show up on black very well on their own. So, you always have to paint your design starting out with white paint. I used stencils with this jacket, but I probably could have done it by hand. Since my jacket is post-apocalyptic themed I didn’t want it to look perfect, because for me that just wouldn’t look right. So messing up some outlines on it was not a big deal to me.

So get out there and create your own jacket! Put bands, drawings or whatever you like on it; let it be an extension of who you are.

Hip-Hop/Trap Is Not A Form Of Goth Music

September 13, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

Cross Vanilla Ice with Marilyn Manson and this is what happens.

There are a bunch of people right now who think that recent really shit hip-hop/trap bands are goth just because they sing about sad or dark subjects. This is perpetuated by said bands who advertise themselves as ‘goth’ in order to seem ‘dark’ and ‘dangerous’. The funny thing about all of this is the fact that these bands create a falsehood about a subculture because they believe in certain stereotypes about the subculture that are false.

Before I really dig into this I would like it to be known that I am a fan of early hip-hop and rap music. I respect the hell out of bands such as NWA and Public Enemy because they were not afraid to write songs about the issues that affected them and their communities. Hip-hop/rap music grew right alongside punk music, and I think what those two bands accomplished was way more in the spirit of punk that mainstream type pop-punk bands such as Green Day. I am looking forward to Public Enemy’s new album What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down and have pre-ordered it. This is all to say that I do not hate all hip-hop/rap music.

Who are these bands causing these issues? One of the more visible groups of musicians associated with this phenomenon are gothboiclique, who frequently also get labelled as ’emo rap’. It’s all actually a bit confusing because their fans quite often can’t decide to either call them goth or emo. Many think both genres are the same, when in fact we know that they are not. Just because somebody sings about emotional or dark topics doesn’t mean that they are automatically goth or emo. Goth is a form of post-punk that started in the late 70’s while the roots of emo stretch back all the way to the 80’s. They are both guitar oriented types of music, in which some keyboards may or may not make an appearance. It’s not the other way around. They also get described as SoundCloud rap because it is the music platform they mostly appear on. Also, there is another collective group out of Atlanta called The Vampire Cult. How edgy of them.

When called out on all of this they will almost always call you a gatekeeper, because you are calling their identity into question. Most of them are teens who want to desperately belong to a subculture, even if they don’t really know what said subculture is actually about. If one of their favourite musicians call themselves ‘goth’ then they latch onto that because basing their identity on the opinion of a musician is seen as more ‘real’. They even try to look like these musicians, drawing crap on their faces and wearing black hip-hop/rap associated clothing.

As I said in the start of this these musicians who call themselves ‘goth’ are basing their understanding of the goth subculture off of the mainstream stereotypes of the goth subculture. For instance, a lot of them love Marilyn Manson and think that he is a goth who makes goth music. Apparently, from what I have read online, he hung out with some of them and has name dropped them before. I don’t know how true that is but it really sounds plausible. Since the mainstream has always thought that Manson is goth because he’s ‘spooky’ and ‘dark’, these musicians think that if they sing about the same subjects that they should also be considered goth. What they fail to realise is that Marilyn Manson has never been considered a part of the goth subculture by the majority of the people who actually participate in it. He is an abuser of woman and a vile piece of shit on top of all of that.

Another really obvious thing that contributes to this whole miasma of misunderstanding is the image that ‘dark’ clothing companies perpetuate as being how ‘goths’ are supposed to look. The moon, pentagram, pentacle, ankh and general clusterfuck of religious symbols vomited upon clothing and objects is something really easy for these musicians to latch onto. All they have to do is spend some money and they can look ‘dark and ‘spooky’ and be granted automatic entry into the goth subculture. When they try to enter the goth subculture by dressing this way, instead of actually listening to real goth music, they get very defensive and the term ‘gatekeeper’ gets thrown about.

If you are one of the people that I have been describing here is a list of actual goth bands. This is a very diverse list so there is something for just about everybody on it. If you don’t like any of these bands at all then perhaps you should look into a subculture whose music you actually do like, because it makes no sense to call yourself a member of a subculture whose music history you hate.

Christian Death
Lycia
Sex Gang Children
Sonsombre
Pawns
Mystic Priestess
Nox Novacula
Detoxi
Then Comes Silence
Panic Priest
Kentucky Vampires
Scary Black
Horror Vacui
Bauhaus
Love &Rockets
Sisters Of Mercy
Virgin Prunes
The Cure
Mephisto Walz
The Creeping Terrors
London After Midnight
Angels Of Liberty

Mainstream Beauty Ideals Have Wormed Their Way Into The Goth Subculture

September 6, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

Why does this skull have ears? That concerns me more than the blood.

I know that you are probably thinking that this has always been an issue, and you are right because to some degree it has. However, in the last few years in particular, I have noticed more and more concerning images that have been used as an artificial advertisement for the subculture; everything from obvious fake tits to an overuse of Facetune and Photoshop. The goth subculture wasn’t created to fit into the mianstream, it went against what the mainstream thought was beautiful. This change is really concerning and in fact really pisses me off.

First off, let me start this off by saying that you can do whatever the hell you want to do with your body because that is your choice. If you are going to try to start a career as being a model in the goth subculture though you have a resposibilty to present a realistic image of somebody actually in the subculture. Fake tits are normal in the mainstream print modeling world, You know, the half naked photos of chicks with big breasts next to cars and motorcycles. Since that is the case why the hell would anybody think that such an image would be okay to promote the goth subculture? It’s further playing into the ‘big tiddy goth girlfiend’ stereotype that really harms goth women.

An even more disturbing trend than fake body parts are the women who model for dark fashion brands who have their features totally changed with the obvious heavy use of Facetune and Photoshop. Its gotten to the point that you have to look really closely at the photos to see if they are in fact human, rather than a mannequin. Others say that those models have a right to present their aesthetic in any way that they please. If they were just doing art based photo shoots I could agree with that, but they are presenting these fake images of themselves on dark fashion sites that are largely looked at by younger people. These teens and kids naively look at these photos and think that if they wear the same clothes and try to look as pale as possible that they will look like the models. The fact is that they will never naturally look like them.

Last, but not least, the majority of models who appear on the dark clothing sites are young, white, thin and with straight hair. Just like mainstream society you are considered more pretty if you look as non ethnic as possible. As a white woman with naturally curly hair I can’t tell you the number of times that I have been asked by hairdressers if I want my hair straightened the moment I sit down in their chair. The only hairdresser that hasn’t done this is the one I go to now and I love her to pieces. This makes teens with curly hair and darker skin think that they can’t be goth, and there are some racist bitches who state that you have to be white to be goth. The original goth subculture in the 80’s had people of colour and all sorts of people with curly hair, so why the hell should mainstream beauty stereotypes be accepted into the subculture?

When it comes down to it these dark fashion sites, and the models themselves, have a responsibility that they should be taking way more seriously. Some dark fashion sites have been using more people of colour as models for their clothes within the last year due to the barrage of complaints that people rightfully threw their way. This is encouraging, but those goth mannikins still seem to be popular. There should be some sort of industry wide limit when it comes to the use of Facetune and Photoshop. Finally, it seems that more dark fashion companies are now selling plus sized clothing and featuring plus sized models than they were a few years back.

When enough people complain it has been proven that the perpetrators of such crap actually sometimes listen. I’m 100% certain that some of the dark fashion sites are not making very much money right now since many people are now unemployed. Their target audience of teens are no longer getting large allowances to spend on their clothes from their parents. Meaning that all of these issues might naturally sort themselves out really soon.

The Fetishization Of Goth Women Deserves A Painful Death

August 31, 2020 / dystopiagal / 0 Comments

I don’t want to be buried in your goth fetishization cemetery.

If you are a woman in the goth subculture and have any kind of presence in the online goth community you have ran across people who fetishize goth women. Such people, who look at goth women as purely a sex object, are commonly called leg humpers. They are so common that if you claim to have never run into one of them online I am going to automatically think that you are either very naive or in a huge state of denial.

I actually encountered a leg humper on Reddit the other night. A young goth woman, more than likely underage, posted a photo of herself and this leg humper proceeded to tell her that he didn’t mean to come across as a pervert. They always say that kind of thing, which actually automatically makes them a pervert. Then he gave her the opinion that she should never wear a lot of make-up because women who wear a lot of make-up never look good. This is another very common tactic that they use. They want to screw a goth chick, but only if she looks exactly like what their idea of goth is. What is their idea of a goth woman? Good question!

This phenomenon is in no way new. When I was a younger goth/punk chick in the 80’s/90’s I would have totally normal looking guys hit on me. I would always push them away because I could tell immediately that I had nothing in common with them. If they started to talk about goth or punk music that would be a totally different situation, but this type of guy would never head in that direction. They would usually say that I looked nice. It’s a sad state of things in a society when you can’t take a compliment because you know for a fact that it is done for nefarious reasons. They just want to fuck you, to tick a box off on their wish list.

These days the fetishization of goth women is more out in the open because of the internet. A prime example of this is the whole ‘I wanna big tiddy goth girlfriend’ trend that has been going on for the last few years. I’ve done some quick research on this and apparently it started off as a joke meme, and then for whatever reason people started to take it seriously. A goth woman is seen as a rare mythical creature such as the yeti or unicorn, and because of that rareness they become more desirable. Goth women are turned into objects to collect.

If one of these men actually manages to land a goth woman they will quite frequently tell the woman not to look so goth any longer. This is in part because such men are very insecure and don’t want other men to try to steal away the object that they have managed to score. If humans had scent glands like skunks they would rub all over their goth woman so that others would know that she is taken. Also, they are actually embarrassed by being seen with a goth woman. They are very conflicted; goth women are hot, but others think they are freaks and I’m not one myself!

One of the more insidious beliefs about goth women is that they are freaks between the sheets. They must like being tied up and whipped because they are wearing a collar, black lipstick and platform boots. They must! Yes, that are actually some goth women who do enjoy that type of thing, just like some non goth women do. However, not every goth woman is automatically into kink. Wearing black clothes and accessories with buckles and chains doesn’t magically turn a woman into a demonic sex kitten.

The biggest issue that I have ran across online, that just perpetuates this whole mess, are women who aren’t in the goth subculture who dress ‘goth’ in order to make money. They usually take sexy photos of themselves wearing black lipstick and clothes, from such sites as Dollskill, and charge men money to look at yet more half naked photos of themselves. I’m all for people making money how they can, but these chicks tend to openly advertise themselves in online goth communities where they are many underage teenagers. I’ve actually called out women for doing this because I think it’s irresponsible as hell.

I don’t think any of this is going to disappear anytime soon. However, if you are a goth woman and run into a leg humper online please voice your objection to such behaviour. You are not a ‘thing’ or an ‘object’ to collect, and you deserve to be treated with respect just like any other human being.