Different Book Covers

Well, enough about me…on with the defending of the Goths…

So I want to start by saying as a teacher, I have taught several amazingly insightful goth kids. A few, emotionally disturbed kids who were goth, and a few average kids in need of some attention wearing very poorly done black eyeliner. Just because I was goth and I want to defend the value in being goth does not mean I am not aware that a few fruit bats make it into the mix. But in every subset of culture you have that.

Break down any group of people, jocks, nerds, stay at home moms, ninjas, whatever…you are going to have over-achievers, average types, disturbed and deranged types. Goth is no different. However, what is different is that people, on average, don’t look at a group of normally dressed, young, white high school kids and assume they are disturbed. When most people see a group of goth kids, people start to assume those kids are on drugs, having sex, violent. I must say, the “normal” kids are just as guilty of all these behaviors you just don’t notice it cause they aren’t checking out the boundaries of creative fashion. It is no different really than when people look at a group of young, black kids and assume they are going to beat you up and steal your wallet. When they are likely just on their way to school, worried about a test in first period.

I think it is more acceptable to discriminate against goth kids, cause well, they are asking for it right? Let’s face facts, most goth kids whether on purpose or accidentally, draw attention to themselves with their appearance. Some go to extremes; some just have some black jeans and t-shirts (maybe they are just color blind and all black is easy). Either way, I think a lot of society assumes these kids are “looking for it”, asking to be picked on . However, what is really happening is a sort of identification ritual. First, they put on these clothes because they are attracted to that aesthetic, not to piss people off. I doubt any kid goes to their closet and says, "hummm, what can I put on today that is going to make people hate me more?". If they really wanted to make people question their appearance, I might ask why they don’t just put on a clown suit or for that matter where a toga. They like the way it looks because there is a creative aspect to the dress (cause as a rule of thumb, goths are creative). Now, once they have donned the apparel, it is easy to spot others like you. There is sort of an “I’m an individual just like everyone else” to this. These people want to express themselves as different from mainstream, but they still want to have a community. Apperance makes this easy.

Again, every subset of culture does this. You can identify people who might think like you, be in your economic group, and so on based on their appearance. Goth is no different; they are just wearing more make up and more black than some other people. So they set themselves apart in order to find each other more easily. And to feel creative.

Truth is, we all judge the book by the cover…we just may all like different covers. It would be boring if all books had the same cover. Also, books with similar covers may have totally different stories.