When I see “goth girls” on FediNSFW and elsewhere, it’s not what I remember growing up.

Today’s goth girls are basically princesses who wear black and lean into BDSM. Sometimes they wear gothic-style makeup.

When I was a teenager, goth girls wore baggy jeans and sweaters. You couldn’t tell if they were thick or thin, flat or busty. They sometimes wore goth makeup (pretty much just when going out) and listened to a lot of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and Type O Negative and stuff like that. Maybe some Tool. Their jeans and wrists were adorned with studs and chains, and if they didn’t have brown or black hair, they’d dye it black. Black fingernails, too.

What really set them apart from the goth girls of today was, they didn’t care what you thought about breasts or other skin. They also wore long sleeves, because a lot of them were also cutters — or they wanted you to think they cut. (Cutters, for those who aren’t familiar, are people — mostly teen girls — who cut their skin for thrills. It’s not a suicidal thing. They break the skin but they don’t go for arteries.) A lot of them identified as bisexual. Fashion wise, they basically rejected fashion outright.

They weren’t shy about their sexuality, they just didn’t flaunt it, and had different feelings about girls who did. Either they thought that was all there was to that girl, like she wasn’t smart or skilled enough to do anything real, so she’d show her body hoping to land a sugar daddy. Or they thought skin was something that should just be shared privately. Or they thought they were above the whole thing. Like if you’re hanging out and you ask her if she wants to make out, unless she’s seeing someone (or has hooked up recently and is waiting to see if it becomes a thing) and she doesn’t dislike you, you might get lucky. It’s not that goth girls were easy. They just see the jocks pursuing the preppy girls and the preppy girls playing hard to get and think that’s such a waste of time, when girls want it as much as guys do, but if a girl says she wants it she’s a “slut” or a “whore.” But they’re not going to play hard to get. If there’s some attraction there and you (the guy) make a move, it’s on.

I’ve never been so bold, but I’ve seen guys walk up to girls like this at parties and just straight up ask them, and get what they ask for. Like “hey can I feel your tits,” and she just kinda shrugs and says “sure, it’s just skin and fat,” and next thing you know, they’re feeling each other all up on the couch. Another guy came right out and told a girl he wanted to finger her, and she said something offhandedly like “sure, save me the trouble of doing it myself,” next thing you know they’re in the corner kissing, with his hand in her jeans two knuckles deep.

Not to say not all of them gave it up at the drop of a hat. I remember my brother asked a goth girl for sex one time. They were in middle school. She told him she’s waiting until she graduates college for sex, because even with protection, she doesn’t want to get pregnant because she doesn’t believe in abortion. You’d expect an answer like that to come from a good Christian girl, but this girl was as goth as they come. She just wasn’t into the sexual liberation aspect of it. So it wasn’t all of them. Probably wasn’t even most of them. I figure a lot of them didn’t go out at all, being as that they rejected social connections.

All that to say that while I’m not disappointed when I see “goth girls” on this instance and it’s just a princess in black with a bit of eye shadow… it’s more that I miss the goth girls from 30 years ago. (And yes, I realise Marilyn Manson has since been canceled for SA allegations that surprise no one (and to which he’s said “I’m Marilyn Manson, what the fuck did you expect?”), but I mention him for context as he was huge back then, and I’d say having at least a basic knowledge of Antichrist Superstar and/or Portrait of an American Family was a bare prerequisite to speaking to these girls in the first place. Like I’d say “yeah I don’t really like Manson but Man That You Fear is a good song regardless of what you’re into” and they’d be like “cool, I can respect that.”)