It is a truth recognized throughout history. What you wear determines what people think of you. Even Shakespeare said "For the apparel oft proclaims the man." Therefore, people, especially youth, in today's society choose what they wear very carefully, in accordance with what they want to tell the people around them. There are many popular subcultures today with a distinct style of clothing. This paper will be concentrating on those known as Goths, Punks and Ska-heads, Preps (or Jocks) and Posers.
The first group up for investigation is known as Goths. Goth is short for Gothic, and members of this subculture typically wear black and blood-red colored clothes. These clothes are often made of leather, lace, and fishnet, and are adorned with spikes, studs, or other shiny metal objects. Sometimes metallic, black, or otherwise dark-colored makeup is worn by both the male and female counterparts to this clique. Some go so far as to invest in permanent body modifications, sometimes with things as tame as a tattoo or body piercing, other times with more extreme modifications, such as tongue or lip splitting, vampire teeth implants, or full body tattoos. All of these physical attributes are merely a way of telling the society around them that Goths find life to be a rather dreary and dark experience. The shiny metal objects set onto a dark cloth are meant to symbolize the few bright aspects of life, and how even these can be cold, unforgiving, and sometimes even painful. All too!.
often, however, certain other aspects of Gothicism become associated with any or all of the appearance of such clothes, or body modifications. Some of these other aspects aren't necessarily condoned by all Goths, however, and therefore Gothicism is wrongly viewed as evil no matter what. A couple of these other Gothic ideas include things like blood-drinking, and Satanism. The blood-drinking is never considered anything more than a ritual designed to let the participants feel more closely associated with vampirism, which is held in high regards among nearly all Goths.
