My embarassing teenage goth/alternative phase

Hello all ye who have once again stumbled upon my terrible, sparsely updated blog. You're going to be glad (or regretful?) of coming across today's post, though, for I am about to show you some horrific photos of my first dabbles into gothic fashion as a teenager. Buckle up, this is about to get real embarassing.

So, a little backstory first;    I didn't get into "real goth" culture or fashion until the end of highschool. My first steps into the Dark World were through visual kei and cyber goth, embarassingly enough. Since I had long prior been a metalhead, I had discovered Dir en Grey, who were going to play a show with Apocalyptica, and lets just say I got a little obsessed (as in, every Facebook profile picture I had for a while was a screenshot of some Dir en Grey music video, with some "totally random" caption and lots of XD emoji). In terms of other bands with notable goth aesthetics, I'd also been into Rammstein, HIM and The Rasmus for a long time, and most of my clothing through middle school to early highschool was comprised of hand-made band t-shirts, since I had no idea where to find real ones. There used to be waaaaay more photos of me from this time that existed on the internet, but in the last few years I regretfully found and deleted a lot of them.

PRE-GOTH hair

Possibly the earliest computer selfie of me, aged 13(?)
sporting some horrible black eyeliner,
a "self portrait" from around the same time, depicting my daily wear; a HIM tshirt,
plaid skirt, tights, and black leather boots

Me, on the left. Aged 14?? (Younger brother in middle, best friend on right)

I'd also long been into anime & manga and frequently bought Shoujo Beat magazine and Gothic Lolita, back when those were still a thing that existed. Through those magazines, I coveted the advertisement pages for platform shoes that I would never be able to afford, and I'm pretty sure I even saw an early ad for Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, from which I finally own some perfume! I loved Mana-Sama, Malice Mizer and Moi-dix-Mois, and in my spare time, started collecting clothing from thrift stores as well as colour contact lenses and wigs, that I could use to essentially play "dress-up" at home, since I would never have the guts to wear any of it outside the house.

For your viewing pleasure, I present to you the first embarrassing images, the result of that dive into Visual Kei fashion...

Oh, dear lord. 

     Interestingly, looking back at these images, I'm realizing what a complicated mess of gender this was; an at-the-time 'cis' identifying female dressing as a guy dressing as a woman? / future trans-nonbinary dressing as a guy dressing as a woman. BASICALLY, the whole thing feels like drag to me, and I remember it feeling that way at that time too ; anything about dressing up in a feminine manner felt always odd... (NOW WE KNOW WHY).   (Also, that is a wig, not my real hair)

    Within that same time period, I discovered..... CYBER GOTH!! Sweet Satan, I was again obsessed to the point of posting horrible cyber goth memes constantly on the interwebz, I was listening religiously to the likes of Eisenfunk, Centhron, Suicide Commando, Combichrist, and especially Zombie Girl, who I had a particular affinity for. I watched the music videos on repeat and showed all my friends.

An actual drawing I made, aged 15??
I am so mortified 

Not even going to mention how TERRIBLE this is
in terms of being obsessive over a very disturbing body type
(There was a time when I was very obsessed with extremely malnurished bodies, yikes)

 I flipped my shit when I attended an anime con and found a vendor selling various cyber-goth fashion items... leading to these next (horribly incriminating) photos;

        Baby's first cybergoth gas mask! I'm pretty sure I still have it tucked away somewhere, a souvenir for sentimental value, or if ever I need to survive a gas attack? (JK I'd definitely still die). Note the two different contact lenses; I think I'd probably started getting a bit into Marilyn Manson at this point, so that was probably influence from him...  I also started wearing contact lenses to school, and presenting in a significantly more androgynous way! (Way to go, babyqueer me!)

Actually not an embarassing photo at all

           I slowly moved out of the Cyber Goth fashion, and instead found myself enchanted with another goth subculture that was gaining a lot of momentum at the time; Steampunk (dun dun DUN!)
       Since the fashion for steampunk was VERY expensive, I only managed to collect a few accessories, but I wore them frequently, even to school. I also grew a queer mullet!

Oh lord this is THE WORST thing I have ever seen.

I also still have these beautiful hand-made leather steampunk goggles, which feature a bat-wing design on the side.
Terrible red shirt, though. 

        Honestly, you better believe that my social media was just a huge terrible shit-storm of memes/internet culture, obsessive posts about specific bands, and these terrible selfies.
   
As my queer identity started to grow a bigger part of my life, I went through a 1977-queer punk phase, (And also admittedly, a very intense and long Tegan and Sara obsession) which was significantly less goth than my previous fashion endeavors, but still cool (Plus, one must know the precursors and influences of Goth music to truly appreciate Goth!) ;

Aged 16. Interests: Playing bass & guitar, The Talking Heads, Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Birthday Party/Nick Cave,
The Buzzcocks. Fake Glasses. 

What a girl wants, what a girl needs

I was really into Nick Cave and also The Jesus & Mary Chain, and got really into the idea of having that big curly unruly hair, and being pretty boy-ish.

Having unruly hair didnt work out a lot of the time since I'm a WHITE BOY and
 had no idea about back-combing at the time. 

Makeup based on Rob Zombie's "Lords of Salem"

 The punk phase finally ended when I was dragged back into the darkness once again by Marilyn Manson, and I discovered Skinny Puppy (through my dad!) and Grimes (who had just become popular). I also was very obsessed with Portishead, and the kind of melancholic image created by Beth Gibbons with her long hair in her face, slouchy posture, and simple black pull-over sweatshirts, which actually influence my current style, now that I have long hair.

 By chance I came upon a Skinny Puppy t-shirt in some head shop and it became my everyday uniform; Skinny Puppy t-shirt over a button-down collar shirt, every day!!

   I think I'd also discovered Siouxsie and the Banshees around then, and decided it was O.K. to have bleach-blond hair and be goth, since the Banshees all had bleached hair.

That was near the end of my highschool years, so these pictures are the last for this post, since they are the last to fit within the timespan of "teenager" ... These are even worse than the last few pictures...

Right after highschool I did an exchange to Saguenay, Quebec, and CLEARLY had NO idea how to makeup.
That is 100% Definietly NOT lipstick that I used on my lips.
Same Skinny Puppy shirt as always .

Post- Highschool Graduation (Aged 17 or 18 here) , I took a year off to work,
then moved to Montreal. Here was my SUPER CRINGE-WORTHY sad, pastel goth phase....
AGAIN, same Skinny Puppy shirt 4ever!! 

Then I moved to montreal and THANKFULLY learned how to makeup better...  and also finally had an actual IRL goth community to interact with and goth & metalhead friends! And if you're one of those friends reading this, THANK YOU and I hope you enjoyed these embarassing photos of my teen years...  They've certainly been an interesting look at my progression of gothic fashion, but also I strongly feel that they depict my progression in presenting myself as an agender person. My style is definitely different than most goths, and I think this is because I'd always been trying to balance my dual identities as someone dark-alternative, and someone queer, by trying to mix the popular fashion of both worlds. I'd always felt like I could never look not-female, because everyone was constantly misgendering me, at school, at home, in the workplace, etc. But looking back at these photos now, I feel like I have actually always looked relatively androgynous, and I wish I could go back in time and console my younger self (and also beat up everyone who misgendered me.) 

If you have funny pictures or stories of your blossoming goth / queer teenage self, please comment them below!

Thanks for reading this super embarassing time-capsule post!
As always, your dark fiend friend

TheAgenderAgelessOne