Full Moon (Zodiac Series): Gothic splendor

It's Friday, and as is typically the case during Leo season because of the explosion of holiday, anniversary, and birthday celebrations combined in this household, I do have to keep this post on the brief side — especially in a year like this when so many of the festivities are landing on or close to Fridays. Nonetheless, hello.

My thoughts for the week are aligned with the spectacle of Leo for this year's zodiac series, and also with one of my less-visited themes for the Full Moon, which is the matter of art and beauty. There seems no better opportunity for me to reflect on one of the chief aesthetic considerations in my Leonine day to day life, as I'm an unabashed goth to the point that I consider it a nearly equally relevant gender descriptor for myself as witch.

While I don't have the time or knowledge base to write up an adequate treatise on the history and overall societal significance of modern gothic fashion, I would like to offer a few closely focused thoughts on why despite the myriad reasons (mostly imposed by others) I could "grow out" of this aesthetic habit, I am steadfastly committed to not doing so. To present as goth is not only a gloriously creative fashion choice but also a legitimate act of rebellion and trauma healing. I think it can even become a distinct form of magic.

I. Elevating darkness

Goth has the reputation of melancholy and melodrama. In mainstream culture this is spoken of pathologically: it's a bad thing to be sad, and people who show their sadness openly must be performing it for attention. The goth is expected to get over their indulgent, immature phase in the same way that someone with depression is expected to spontaneously become un-depressed. The goth is known to be humorless to the point of parody; the choice to wear nothing but black invites constant half-mocking commentary when color actually appears in the wardrobe. Most of all, the goth is most likely imagined as a volatile teenage girl, whose emotions are notoriously understood not to be taken seriously and thus when she is so very serious as to present goth this is taken as a source of ironic amusement.

But of course, these attitudes reveal many problems with the culture we live in. Sadness is a worthwhile and powerful emotion; through allowing sadness in ourselves, we will process and endure grief and trauma far better than if we shut the sadness away. There can always come a time when someone feels sadness for the wrong reasons — perceiving some turn of events as "unfair" when this is only their ego speaking, for example — but simply choosing not to feel sadness at all will not help someone learn such distinctions. Likewise, there can always come a time when someone is trapped in sadness because they are unready to feel anything else — and this requires therapeutic work — but avoiding the feeling will not help someone progress to constructive integration. It's even all right to be depressed. It's a rather appropriate reaction to many aspects of the world we live in. We may wish to take some action in order to prevent that depression from dominating all the time, but we do not need to treat the depression as a moral failing.

Goth proudly recognizes these things. Yet then I would also go so far as to say it's also a grave misconception that gothic fashion centers reductively around sadness at all. Though the word I would choose instead may sound like exactly the sort of thing that a cliché goth would say, goth centers and elevates darkness.

Goth is the walking memento mori. Goth speaks for the night because we cannot live in a world with only day. Goth speaks for the winter because we cannot live in a world with only summer. Goth suggests that words like black do not have to represent evil.[1] Goth reacts against capitalism's toxic positivity and infinite growth ethos, demanding periodic negativity, collapse, death-as-regeneration.

II. Monstrous feminine

Goths are not exclusively women, but female goths are the most culturally visible and some of the best established "goth icons" (e.g. Vampira, Elvira) have also been women. While some equating of goth fashion with teenage girls is sheer misogyny, I would venture that the stereotype does derive from reality, and this begs the question of why.

In my own experience, the answer is very simply that goth is its own gender or at least a gender modulator, allowing people who are perceived as women (whether or not they identify as women) to openly reject certain gender expectations without being required to adopt a male identity[2] or even rule out some feminine traits and even the identification with woman itself.

Goth is a revolt against the rule that women must not be fearsome, and the rule that women must be smiling, and the rule that women must be bright as flowers to attract the male gaze. (Goth is, in turn, a revolt against the rule that men must not be alluringly beautiful.) The goth who is or is seen as female can still potentially wear makeup, dresses or skirts, jewelry, and certain fabrics or footwear that are regarded as feminine, while this person may also still bare plenty of skin that leaves their anatomy unambiguous. Furthermore, there are endless distinct interpretations of goth that could result in looks that run anywhere from the truly viciously hard-edged to the delicate and frilly, all without being subject to any specific mainstream fashion trends. But any of these choices are more plainly made on their own terms, accompanied by some hint of I didn't do this for you — or that if the attire were put on to be looked at, it wasn't necessarily meant to be touched.

I have long tended to dress goth in public as a defense mechanism and gender statement, intertwined. I don't wish to be left alone by absolutely everyone, since I'm not intimidated by casual conversations with most strangers and I would also prefer not to feel atomized among my neighbors; but I strongly resent the kind of man who thinks he's entitled to my personal space or my time without even asking me, and who may plausibly be making small talk as a token friendly gesture but can't seem to avoid eyeing me like a cut of meat or throwing in a lot of superfluous sweethearts. If I'm wearing all black that includes my lipstick, some amount of leather or a large hood, the right pair of boots, and a proliferation of spikes, studs, skulls, or anything silver, steel, or pewter in a morbid design, I've found for years that I don't have too many of that particular kind of man approach me on, say, public transit. I form too much of the monstrous feminine for them to try.

This does merit a necessary aside: ironically, some men seem to regard goths as the sexiest, most desirable of all. I think their reasoning varies. In some cases it may be that they crave precisely whomever seems unattainable, in other cases they crave taking a risk with someone "dangerous," and I've also found that sometimes certain goth outfits of mine are interpreted as inherent sexual overtures like any other revealing garments[3], which just proves that even covering oneself with spikes is no guarantee that someone won't try reaching past the porcupine's quills to whatever soft underbelly they imagine is beneath. However, while I can find these situations frustrating, I will admit that they aren't enough to dissuade me from my overall fashion strategy — because in addition to the people of other genders who can both find a goth look appealing and express their desire in a (generally) respectful manner, occasionally I even find the occasional fellow who matches that description. I did marry one.

III. Glamour

So the goth speaks for the dark, and the goth ungenders the genders. I have said it is also magic, and here is what I mean.

All gender and all fashion can be equated after a certain point with drag.[4] Drag itself performs magic, the casting of a glamour. Thus whether considered as gender, as fashion, or both, goth is one sort of glamour that some of us cast in our day to day lives.

To what end? What precisely does the glamour project, and why does that matter?

For me at least, the glamour of goth is nearly synonymous with playing the role of a witch, but it takes on other dimensions such as that of demoness, sacrifice, dominant and submissive both together. In balancing the steel with the velvet, in injecting the funereal into everyday life, goth becomes a powerfully liminal drag, the better to guide us boundary-walkers and crossroads-dwellers.

I wear black because it is no color, and because it is all of them.

[1] Racism unfortunately persists among some goths, furthered by the notion that all goths should have death-pale skin. But I have been heartened by the gradually increasing understanding that black is the real operative color here, which has aptly created the slogan "so goth I was born Black."

[2] Obviously as I've made clear throughout this newsletter I'm very supportive of trans men and I embrace the fact that I used to be one; here I'm not talking about actual transmasculinity but rather the survival mechanisms that otherwise-cis women throughout history have used to avoid certain kinds of treatment or live the lives they would prefer.

[3] They don't even need to be revealing, to be frank, but let's just say I've had more than one experience being treated like a street sex worker. While I hold massive respect for that profession, I've never engaged in it.

[4] For anything else on that point, we can refer to Judith Butler.

Thank you for spending this abbreviated time together for the week. I will have a much more substantial post next Friday, because I will be evaluating the 16 year healing journey that's followed one of my core traumas, which was partner abuse. And for the post after that, I'm taking a closer look at the pan-Mediterranean esoteric tradition.