Just got a photo Christmas card from my brother's family.
My fourteen year-old-niece, who, when I saw her this past summer, swore she was never going to smoke or drink because she'd seen the movie Thirteen and it scared her straight, has gone goth.
Yep. That's right. Goth.
She has dyed her formerly brown hair to that purply-black color that generally leads to bad things. Like dark purple lipstick, loads of black eyeliner, tattoos of Japanese characters that look cool, but in all reality mean "I'm an idiot," and multiple piercings in places most of us would cringe to think of having a needle touch. While she's wearing a very pretty, well-adjusted smile, a normal amount of makeup and a sweater that I'd swipe if we lived in the same town, it's the hair that's completely throwing me. It's black! What the hell?
This is surprising behavior from the girl who literally begged her parents for tickets to a Britney Spears concert for her birthday. As in she wrote a dissertation on why she should be allowed to go and posted it on the kitchen bulletin board, for all and sundry to read and chuckle about. Em didn't give care what other people would think of it: she simply wanted to go thought that if by posting her dissertation for all to read that perhaps she could gain a few allies, well, so be it. She's got chutzpah. Moxie. Whatever you want to call it. I can only surmise that this hair coloring adventure was not Mom and Dad approved. It was probably achieved in a friend's bathroom, under the cover of a slumber party.
Ah, the joys of transitioning from grade school to high school. I'm sure she'll outgrow it, but damn. Em! Your hair is black!? What the heck were you thinking? Aieeeeee.
Of course, this makes me wonder about high school nowadays. Particularly the high school she attends, because it's the same high school where I matriculated. All I can say is that there must not be too many hard-ass nuns left teaching there, because if Sr. Anthony (and yes, that was her name) was alive, well, let's just say my lovely niece would receive a reaming like you wouldn't believe based strictly on the color of her hair.
Posted by Kathy at December 17, 2004 01:40 PMNot saying that it's definitely not something to worry about, but... I went goth for a few years. Still trot it out every now and again because people's reactions are fun. Throughout it, I stayed a nice anglo-catholic girl and really my only majorly bad life choices were made during the one intervening year in the middle of my goth-ness when I was preppy again. Looking around at me and my friends, we either 1) made small yet permanent rebellious choices (tatoos, for example), 2) stayed outwardly perfect and preppy yet did drugs and slept around when nobody was looking, or 3) gave off the impression of being the kind of person who would be 1 or 2, without doing anything that wasn't just cosmetic.
Posted by: Adrianne Truett at December 17, 2004 06:55 PM