When is too early to wear corset and stilettoes? To use makeup and dye your hair? To get acrylic nails? Many of the younger goths ask themselves this, and it is a good question with an even better answer. There is no "too early"! Every age is the right age, it is not to worry.
Let's taker a simple example. You are twelve years old and in sixth grade, and you start to experiment with makeup. It may not look the best at first, but expectations for a twelve-year-old are usually relatively low, and you will have plenty of time to practice until you finally find something you like. Fast forward, you are seventeen. You already know what you want your makeup to look like, and you can make it that way, as opposed to those of us who force ourselves to wait until fifteen, seventeen or even our twenties just to start. At that age, everybody including yourself will have a higher expectations, and looking like a "babybat" or "mall-goth" could make others think badly of you, or even of the goth subculture itself. Heard "oh, all goths are immature wanabes"? By starting to look goth at an earlier age, you will not only get lots of practice and find your own style, but also be able to break that stereotype by looking better then other people your age.
C'est-a-dire, of cource, if you only discovered the subculture at an older age, this is perfectly fine too. It will simply be a bit more challenging, and you will probably need to be more careful. Don't wait anymore. Don't wait yntil you get thinner, or older, or your hair grows out, or anything, because this never helps. If you are in a stage of your life when you don't have much coinfidence, hiding who you are only mekes it worse. Knowing who you are and actually working on the parts of yourself that you want to improve is the first step to becoming more coinfident, and dressing in a style that you like is a good beginning of that.
I like to think of a subculture as a hobby, and you can think of it that way too. For example, your hobby is to collect postage stamps. The earlier you begin, the bigger your collection will be, and the more you will know about how to get the stamps that you are looking for and to organize your collection. The same thing, really, goes for goth as well.
Let's taker a simple example. You are twelve years old and in sixth grade, and you start to experiment with makeup. It may not look the best at first, but expectations for a twelve-year-old are usually relatively low, and you will have plenty of time to practice until you finally find something you like. Fast forward, you are seventeen. You already know what you want your makeup to look like, and you can make it that way, as opposed to those of us who force ourselves to wait until fifteen, seventeen or even our twenties just to start. At that age, everybody including yourself will have a higher expectations, and looking like a "babybat" or "mall-goth" could make others think badly of you, or even of the goth subculture itself. Heard "oh, all goths are immature wanabes"? By starting to look goth at an earlier age, you will not only get lots of practice and find your own style, but also be able to break that stereotype by looking better then other people your age.
C'est-a-dire, of cource, if you only discovered the subculture at an older age, this is perfectly fine too. It will simply be a bit more challenging, and you will probably need to be more careful. Don't wait anymore. Don't wait yntil you get thinner, or older, or your hair grows out, or anything, because this never helps. If you are in a stage of your life when you don't have much coinfidence, hiding who you are only mekes it worse. Knowing who you are and actually working on the parts of yourself that you want to improve is the first step to becoming more coinfident, and dressing in a style that you like is a good beginning of that.
I like to think of a subculture as a hobby, and you can think of it that way too. For example, your hobby is to collect postage stamps. The earlier you begin, the bigger your collection will be, and the more you will know about how to get the stamps that you are looking for and to organize your collection. The same thing, really, goes for goth as well.
| She may have yet to find the best style for herself, but I admire her efforts to be herself and express who she is no matter what her age. |
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