I’ve always felt like Edward Scissorhands in a pastel suburbia underneath it all, I admitted to myself. While I was at it, I accepted that I’ve also always loved Halloween more than Christmas. I’ve been a vampire for 12 years in a row… one costume this entire time; there must be significance. Soon I started decorating Christmas cards with pumpkins and Valentine’s cards with blood splash stickers and the rest is history; My happy place is in the macabre. The dark side feels cozy. I love graveyards and bats and the gore in MacBeth.
While the Sisters of Mercy were singing to me about Neverland, I was busy doing everything possible to get that beautiful, deathly pale skin tone. I spent hours bathing in milk and Epsom salts, used SPF 55 even in the winter, and experimented with different homemade and store bought skin lighteners. After years of this, I’ve come to realize that it’s just not going to happen for me. A few minutes in the sun and all my time trying to achieve Elvira’s luminous glow gets wasted. It occurred to me, Why can’t I just be a tan goth?
***
Before we dive into my internal conversation where I answer my own question – let’s examine Goth culture for a moment. Goth as a musical subgenre sparked in the late 70s, early 80s, right behind Punk, but the fashion part goes way back to the 3rd and 4th centuries. There were the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. I learned from a fashion textile class that these Germanic nomadic people were collectively known as ‘goths.’ These people traveled so much that they carried their wealth on their persons, in the form of fancy cloak clasps and jewels. Their clothing signified that although they were nomadic, they weren’t scavengers. Procupious wrote of 6th century Goths that they, “all have white bodies and pale hair, and are tall and handsome to look upon.”
Fast forward to today, and we see a lot of Victorian era influence on many branches of the goth culture. Wealth in those days meant not having to labor out in the sun. Perhaps since then, it’s been drilled into our collective mind that the mysterious ghostly pale belongs to those with lavish lifestyles. Indeed, if you’ve gazed on a pale body, it is awe inspiring and beautiful – but if you look closely at the subculture as a whole, you’ll find that being a Goth goes far deeper than appearance and skin tone. It’s less about restriction and fitting into a mold and more about absolute freedom from societal normalities and expectations. It’s a culture that celebrates having the liberty to be your very own particular brand of strange and unusual.
I asked Ash Pritchard, a Marshall student who paved the way for goths on our campus, about my conundrum, and this is his eloquent response that helped me feel more confident in my skin, just the way it is:
“To me, goth has always been about artistic self-expression. It’s about appreciating the darker side of life, music, and a sense of style many of its adherents have their own unique spin on. A deathly pallor has become associated with the subculture, but no one should be expected to adhere to pasty white. The concept of a “tan goth” has never really been a thing to me. It’s always been just “goth.” Goths of all shades and sizes are just as goth as anyone else in the scene.
The diversity of our subculture is something to be celebrated and cherished. Sure, goths of other races have their own unique experiences and that should be viewed through a lens with equity. As a stereotypically pasty goth, I don’t totally understand those experiences and I won’t pretend to, but all I know is that goth is beautiful in every shade. If someone wants to act like an elitist about someone’s hue then I have no respect for them. While the public has a classic image of goth burnt into its collective psyche, we should never feel restricted into adhering to it. Be creative! Be yourself!”
Ash and I’s conversation led us to seeing how people all around the globe embrace the darkness no matter their skin tone. Who knew that Kenyans in East Africa have created a scene and that there are goths thriving in the Amazon Jungle? That’s right, there are goths creeping in the jungle.
So, to answer my question, “Why can’t I just be a tan goth?” Well… I can. And so can you. I can enjoy leisurely sunbathing while my bat friends are asleep in their cave, because I’m a human, and we are all complex creatures full of eccentricities and contradictions. There’s no reason for me to force the melanin out of my pores in the name of any aesthetic standard, just as there’s no reason for me to follow any one path. Goth is about becoming who you are. It’s not about forcing you into a narrow box, but taking you out and freeing you.
***
“I just was drawn to all strange creatures and the strange, exotic worlds in which they lived,” writes Voltaire in his book Paint It Black. I think, in a sense, we are all strange people with the ability to create our own exotic worlds – and it’s time we embrace ourselves just as we are.
