Behold, minions, my quick-and-dirty roundup of all of the latest Goth news and headlines from the last few weeks, condensed into one simple blog post for your delectation.
Listening to depressing music good for mental health, says Guardian
The Guardian published this article a couple of weeks ago, telling the world that listening to depressing (read: Goth) music is good for your mental health; with some caveats.
Basically, the deeper story that lies beneath explains that it’s not so much a case of listening to cut-your-wrists tunes in itself that can be good for your inner happiness, but more that if you are depressed, unhappy or otherwise on a downer, heeding your mood, exploring it and allowing yourself to feel all of the feels is a necessary part of sorting yourself out, and the appropriate soundtrack to do this to can help.
After all, nobody who tells you to “smile, it might never happen!” ever did a lot for your general mood when you were feeling pissed off, did they.
Goth teens “at increased risk of self-harm and depression”, says NHS
You can totes believe that I’m never going to direct traffic to the Daily Mail’s website for any reason, but according to their rather sensationalist quote on this NHS choices page from late August, “Goths are three times more likely to be depressed than other teenagers, with 37% admitting to self-harming,”
This statistic came, in its turn, from the results of a study of 2,000 teenagers, which aimed to establish whether or not self-identifying as a Goth at the age of 15 led to a higher likelihood of depression and self-harm at the age of 18. Bad news-it does.
But again, let’s cut away some of the bullshit for a minute and get real up in here; if a young teenager is attracted to the Goth culture in the first place, surely this is a possible symptom of the path that they’re going down rather than the cause of it? Make your own judgement!
“Being a Goth helped me to fit in at school”, says BBC Newsbeat
Good work BBC, for actually talking to a Goth! Did you catch one from the wild, or is this part of a new breeding programme?
23 year old Goth girl Laura told the BBC that she consciously made the decision to go the Goth route when she was in high school, as the Goth crowd there were basically good people who turned her on to musical offerings such as My Chemical Romance and the Cure, which helped her to understand more clearly the things that were going on in her head at the time.
Again, more a case of gravitating towards Goth than being “turned” by some form of peer pressure, because we’re totes not actually vampires IRL. Sorry.
Kim and Kourney Kardashian Go Goth
Kim and Kourney Kardashian Ko Koth. Kim and Kourney Ko Koth. Sorry, I can’t help myself… Anyway, on a lighter note, People Magazine (I know, I know, and there was me being all shirty about the Daily Fail…) brought us some pictures in the middle of September of Kim and Kourtney “playing dress-up,” with purple lipstick and black wigs. How… Precious.
