#43: A Case for Goth Girls Through the Ages

just in time for spooky season

The Raj family has always been full of goth girls. My sister, with her slick-backed hair and dramatic eyeliner, my mom with her visceral love for crime thrillers and horror novels, and me with my apparently anachronistic love for classic literature, mysticism and magicky things.

But as always, Ammamma reigns over us all.

When we think of ‘the goth girl’, we picture dyed black hair, a fascination with death, and cynical intellectualism. According to whatisgoth.com (yes, that’s a real website), goths are people who find beauty in what most consider dark.

Coincidentally, Ammamma has:

- dyed black hair

- a fascination with death, and

- cynical intellectual habits.

Stripping away the romanticism, she can transform from a sugar-cookie baking grandmother to a woman of fierce stubbornness - often to the detriment of us all. She has always been a girl who dreamed of being a doctor, and when that dream escaped her, spent every minute of her life reading up about every ailment, ache, cure and side effect - her mind racing with possible other theories and co-morbidities that hurtle the body towards death.

At first, I thought this was kind of hilarious and started writing a piece on how she’s the original goth girl in the family.

Then I realised it was true. And that truth held within it, a much larger truth.

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So what is goth?

The word goth itself comes from the surnames of Germanic tribes - the Goths - some of which dealt the Roman Empire a nasty defeat and pushed them off their high horses of power - giving way to medieval European art, culture and ideas. You can watch a cute animated explainer of the topic here if you like:

Finding beauty in what most consider dark:

When it comes to architecture, the Gothic style is characterised by its almost skeletal structure - picture flying buttresses, gargoyle statues, and prominence during the Middle Ages. It was Giorgio Vasari who writes of this style as ‘Gothic’ - throwing it back to the Germanic tribes - with disdain for its obvious ties to the barbarism of the time, also known as the Dark Ages.

However, during the Age of Enlightenment, the Romantics came to defend this previously heralded so-called irrationality, advocating for the importance of story, myth and nature beyond scientific thought.

One of the seminal texts of Gothic literature is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein - which tells the story of a man-made creature come to life. Throughout the text, all he wants is to be loved - but he struggles to find this love in a world that never wanted him in it. This deep sensitivity must coincide with his outward grotesque-ness - because he has power only over one and not the other.

It’s not that there is beauty simply within what most consider dark - it’s that these two must coexist. Which brings me to my next point.

The female body as cyclical time

Women experience time differently than men do. Governed by the workings of our bodies, our hormonal cycles play a huge part in our moods and behaviour. We must live with the dualities of beauty and darkness - because we literally embody it.

It colors our entire lived experience. From PMS, to cravings, to hot flushes - those of us who survive to old age experience much more - bodily - than cis males of the species.

You can read about gendered time and all the ways it influences our lives in this article by Izzi Williams, who writes:

Indeed, throughout history, men have been associated with transcending boundaries and pushing for progress: think technological advances, scientific discoveries and world explorations. Women, on the other hand, are associated with immanence: reproducing the status quo. Gender dualisms have therefore long pervaded how we think about time. In many senses, Chronos’s linear time is easier to understand, monetise and experience, and therefore, has been elevated as the more valuable category of time.

Another interesting piece on the subject is over at The Guardian.

Is it Genius or is it Just Nuance?

In film, this is why nuance gets confused for complexity through the male perspective, while it is relegated to rubbish when coming from the mouth of a woman. Ask any filmbro you know - I guarantee you some of their top film choices will include The Dark Knight, or more recently, Oppenheimer. When a man experiences the intention of noble virtue alongside his own demons, it is a sign of remarkable intelligence - often elevated to an art form. He’s at the peak of human consciousness - to hold and juggle this light and darkness is godlike.

When women do this, it’s another Monday morning.

In this way, men are blown away by their own experience of complexity - and liken it to madness when women display these traits.

Paromita Vohra writes in her 2018 Economic Times article, just around the pinnacle of #MeToo movement in India:

I have understood, at first with anger, then with amusement, that men are not interested in what women have to say. For men, smart women are, at best, trophy listeners, a high-level audience to endorse their interesting image. With hot girls, they just pretend harder. And this is the simple truth. A man who does not see women when he is not interested in sex with them (or in commandeering their abilities to write his script, review his book, comfort him with cooking) is not going to see women when he wants to have sex with them either.

No wonder the goth girl has been such a powerful image for the cultural landscape - the one amongst the many, the alternative thinker, the one unafraid to go astray from the herd. While only a few of us may outwardly identify with the goth community or subculture, the state of being forever outcast from the world into which we are born can definitely bring an undercurrent of countercultural actions to our daily lives.

Has there ever been any other option for the intellectual girl? To be goth is to hold two truths in two palms, an unstoppable force in one and an immovable object in the other - the truth of care and the truth of violence. And my oh my, do we know both.

What to Watch: Gaslight (1944) has re-sparked my love for black and white films. And yes, this is the film from which we get the term 'gaslighting’. It’s a brilliantly made film, and a powerful meditation on how abusive relationships work - plenty of nuance for World War 2 era cinema.

Interesting Updates: There now exists a thing called grief technology. You, Only Virtual is a platform that aims to recreate your interactions with a departed loved one in a way that feels authentic, using AI. I don’t know how to feel about it, but it’s definitely caught my attention.

Spooky Season Reads: This entire list of gothic recommendations.

What I’m Listening To: This performance of Fade Into You by Mazzy Star is occupying my brain 24/7.

Sending you smiles to cover your heart,

Kaav.