The global goth community has banded together after a woman was told to remove her dramatic makeup before boarding the subway in Guangzhou, China, apparently for fear of distressing other passengers. The response? Thousands of goths posted photos on the Chinese social media site Weibo of themselves with wild hair and blacked-out eyes in protest – and it soon spread to Twitter.
Goth has always been penalised, not for the fashion, but for what it represents: freedom, rebellion, perceived poor health, emotional difference. In the 80s, conservatives in the US worried that heavy metal was inspiring satanism, sexual activity, aggression and anger in its fans; Marilyn Manson and goth culture was wrongly linked to the 1999 Columbine shootings. In the 00s, the Daily Mail attacked emo as “a dangerous teenage cult”, linking young girls self-harming with their listening to My Chemical Romance and wearing black.
I was never a goth, but I was an emo teenager and remember the fashion always being seen as signifying something problematic when it was more about belonging and identity. Being punished for your part in a subculture tragically made headlines with the death of Sophie Lancaster, who was murdered in 2007 for being goth. Years later, as a result, police forces expanded their definition of hate crimes to include subcultures.
But with the rise of the internet, subcultures have almost vanished. Fragments of previous scenes’ style are now popular as accessories, with crucifix necklaces or thick eyeliner belonging to no one and one-time subcultural staples such as Fred Perry or Dr Martens becoming global brands. Anything goes fashion-wise, and culture is a genre-free soup. But still goth culture regenerates, seemingly against all odds.
It may be that goth is timeless because it was never fully accepted as cool – what, then, could be threatening about exaggerated makeup? Whether this goth’s experience on the Guangzhou subway was an attack on the subculture or a one-off misunderstanding, the response of the community en masse shows there is still a feeling of being an outsider and a need to defend the right to shock – this time online, where everyone can see.
