Please, please do delete this thread if there's already something like this in the forum. Many apologies if there is.



Anywho, being a nosy busy-body, I am very curious to know how YOU began as a babybat. What got you hooked on the fashion/music/aesthetics? When did you discover that black was beautiful and creepy was comely? When did you outright start thinking of yourself as a goth? When did you start thinking of thinking as yourself as a goth?


Do tell!

I had a friend who on the first day of seventh grade came in dressed as a goth. I fell in love with it ever since.

when I was 5 I remember my mom telling me how obsessed I was with looking like mortician Addams and cat woman. She said I especially loved to put on the red lipstick. Also later on I started to become obsessed with Halloween and old cemeteries at 9. I always liked a darker aesthetic. I later found out there is a general word for such things and that word was goth/gothic. Then when I was a teenager I started exploring music.

I started wearing all black in the second grade to look like my oldest brother who was heavily into goth music at the time. He used to wear the most awesome boots ever! That's when it started. It only got worse after.

Ah yeah -- there's a similar topic in the Polls. (not to take away from this one.)

What I wrote there:
Well, looking back, I guess all the "weirdo" ingredients were there. I was raised by my mom & grandparents after Mom left her alcoholic abusive husband (my father). We weren't financially well-off, and Mom has had her share of issues that stressed us as a family, but we got by. Kids at school, as far back as I can remember, used to put me down, call me weird or quiet.

For a while I just wanted to disappear, especially in junior high when the taunting got really severe. I wound up having big anxiety problems. I tried so hard to blend -- trying to look like the other kids. I even got a perm to look like the other girls -- disaster; my hair fell out in clumps!! (Might explain my hair obsession now...)

In high school, I did my best to leave all that behind me. I became more of an individual, and I was finally proud of not being like the others. But in college I really developed as a person: I was able to see the bright and dark aspects of my life and myself, and be happy with the balance of both. My love of angels, *and* Manson? Sure. My affinity for deserted places, bare trees, jewel-tone velvets and black corsets? They're just as much a part of me as my brighter side.

I sometimes worry that I'm not goth enough to post here, but I know that's silly.
I am who I am.

^ I bumped that thread topic up the night this one was posted and was about to leave in this one a link to the "What age..." in the Polls forum, but the more I read this which was in it's opening post:


This isnt about being Goth straight away but maybe starting out as a skater, mosher, metalhead etc. etc.

I thought it different enough to leave up.

^^ It is different enough. Just reminded me of the other one, that's all.

The History of the Synthigoth-

Music wise I got into alt music via gateway bands such as Bowling For Soup and Green Day, from those I bought Kerrang magazine and discovered Rammstein, they led me to Cruxshadows and from there I worked backwards and then around.

Fashion wise- I don't think I was that fashion conscious as a child but when I opened up my eyes to it I was drawn to Alt stylings and then smaller into a more gothic take, I do my research of lots of different fashions and play with a lot of different things- I am a fashion whore, I sleep with all the styles on the side but goth is my main lover. I remember at secondary school there was a goth-ish (more metal/rock once I got to know her) girl in my year and I idolized her! I was a quiet little nerdy kid and she was really cool in her black dungarees and eyeliner, a year or so later I got into her friendship group, got more into rock and metal until i discovered Cruxshadows and delved deeper.

Literature wise- I used to read loads of crime when I was little, 'Point Crimes' they were called and I loved them, I drank them in. And that was my book diet until my English teacher in yr7 read us Dracula from memory *beams* after that I read the book myself and then read the Anne Rice's up until Vivotto or something like that. She then lent me Angela Carter who is now my goddess *swoon* fairytales with the sex and violence put in then given a fetishistic, feminist twist! YUM YUM!

General interest wise-my parents are history and art buffs so I was always encouraged to be interested in those things which I feel fulled me to some extent, I always loved Victorian day at school, where the whole day would be as authentically victorian as possible, our town also had victorian faires at christmas which were great too! Art wise I like gothic visuals but prefer art which means something or has something to say.

I was raised in a fairly alternative environment - my father's a biker, my mother's a hippy, and there were always swords and dragons on the walls (and anywhere else they could put them). I grew up with metal, because I was and still am a total daddy's girl.
I've always been a fairly academic person, and my interest in culture and art began young. I was already 'trained' to a dark aesthetic, so when I began to encounter gothic music and literature, I was hooked.
I've always been a big sci-fi fan, so naturally, I gravitated towards the EBM and Electro-Industrial scene. A darkly futuristic feel is pretty much a guarantee of my love

And, as a final aside, my father seems very appreciative of the music I play. It's nice that I can bring things to the table for us to bond over.

I saw where Porcelain Pirate was going.

My Mother was a hippy and artist in a family of bikers, and my father was a navyman and punk drummer from a family of iron workers and musicians from Ireland. This quizzical union birthed the gorgeous and ridiculously talented creature with a flare for the dark and theatrical, but it's the humbleness that really makes me awesome.

Ok I jest....sort of.

Just from the music and art they played, their style of dress, I started to favor certain types of clothes, certain colors, certain music. By the time I was 12, I liked how nail polish looked on the boys in Exploited, the Damned and on David Bowie; for their album covers were always about. Painted my nails about that time, and my mom walked in and said: "you did that yourself? Not bad for the first time." She was a single mother then because my father passed away, and she supported my art, reading, writing and creativity from a young age. For that I was comfortable and proud of my choices, and at the end of middleschool, I decided keeping my tastes from the cruel eyes of my fellow children wasn't needed anymore. I didn't care what they would say or do, and weened the kids into getting used to how "strange" I'd be over the next few years.

Now that I think about it, there have been moments in high school and afterward when it would hit me that I was different -- not "oh what a rare gem I am"; just realizing different tastes and outlooks. And I've loved those moments. They really feel wonderful.

Thinking back, I think my first sight of a goth was in an episode of Clarissa Explains it All and I liked it.

Middle school. 7th grade acctually. I lived a sheltered life. Wasn't really exposed to much of the goth scene until 10th grade. I just always loved learning about cultures (especially the ancient ones) and history. My music taste always went for classical and the stuff with a harder beat. I loved sci-fi movies and stuff of that nature. And I had a mini library by 7th grade. I started dressing more in black in 7th grade cause I figured, hell if they are going to make fun of me for bieng different (even though I dressed alot like them) I might as well give em something. And the clothes were pretty, really really pretty. I felt more confindent and more like me wearing them. My school didn't have alot of "goth kids" heck, I don't remember any until highschool. Then there was this one girl, a cybergoth. Most amazing person ever. Never talked to her but she was my fashion idol. (then she went scene, how tragic!) started looking it up and then just fell in love with the goth scene!

I'm not a goth, I'm Barbie