Teen Gothic

i feel like there's a stereotype around goth that all goths must be super miserable or smthn, but getting involved in the subculture has been helpful immensely for me. it acts not only as community, but also spending time discovering new music and creating my own music is a great outlet for any general frustrations. plus, as a trans and just generally gender nonconforming individual, i can be freely expressive with my appearance without getting judged for it, at least not within the community. it's also made me not feel as much of a need to mask symptoms of autism, since this subculture is much more accepting of autism and autistic traits than the general populus

tldr i love being goth and am just overall thankful for this subculture and every other person in it

I'm new to the scene, but have my own theories as to why we like the ankh – and any form of Ancient Egyptian iconography in general – so much.

First, there's the fact that Ancient Egyptians seemed to be much more lax surrounding the topic of death. There's definitely an air of openness and acceptance towards it, especially when you look at gods such as Anubis, or the entire mummification process. Canopic jars, elaborate tombs, storing away one's belongings for use in the afterlife, etc. It's a stark contrast to Western culture and our ideas surrounding death here, where there's a lot of fear and taboo attached to it. I'm guessing it's somewhat similar in Britain where Goth originates?

Second, we have the fact that Goth subculture and music is more open and accepting towards death, which can be seen in song lyrics/names, band names, album art, taking inspiration from Victorian mourning fashion, and terms like "deathrock/deathrocker".

Siouxsie Sioux drew heavy inspiration from Ancient Egyptian culture when it comes to her iconic eyeshadow look. She even dressed up as Bast, the Ancient Egyptian goddess of cats, once. Then you have Cleopatra records, which uses the Eye of Horus in their logo.

What are your thoughts? I thought this would be a fun topic to explore, and a good opportunity to learn about goth history from those more knowledgable than me. 🙂

Before I started listening to and became thoroughly familiar with Goth, I had zero clue what it sounded like and thought maybe it was either really loud and clangy almost similar to metal, or that it was still loud but quasi dancey like Industrial, and people danced to it at “dark raves” or underground nightclubs and such. And then I discovered it and I thought wow this is hella good music, no matter what subgenre it is. And that’s the other thing I like about goth, is that there’s quite the number of subgenres and they can sound very different from one another and yet we can still identify that minor chord or that distinct tone of dread that makes them all similar to each other. What about you guys? Did you already have an idea what goth music was like before you got to listen to it?