2008-03-15 - 5:43 p.m.
Fuck you, Goth kids.
I was there for your resurgence in the nineties. I defended and befriended you in high school. Fuck you Goth kids.
For you have begun a slippery slope in culture that will end in tears. Fuck you Goth kids. Fuck you ravers and clubbers. Fuck your hair and make up and glow sticks. Fuck your Hot Topic. For you know not what you have wrought. Fuck you with your own spiked belts.
What was your betrayal? What was your sin? You got appropriated by mass culture. You had to know it was coming. Your spikes and wide white belts with the grommets. Your gelled spiky hair. And your fucking make up. It all got appropriated. It became hip. Fashionable. Which I can forgive. It was inevitable. Eventually everything underground goes mainstream. Eventually everything underground gets stripped of it's outer layers, the unimportant ear marks and physical quirks, and turned into pop culture. The safely non-salient aspects of any underground culture get appropriated for mass culture so that the movement itself is made populace safe and meaningless. We steal your outer layers, the bits that don't matter, so we can steal your soul and your thunder. That is to be expected.
But you know not what you've wrought. Not this time. Fuck you, Goth kids.
You see, you've finally given the mainstream machine a new, real, weapon. You've given them something horrid, and game changing. Like the scientist that first split the atom. Sure, all science gets used for war eventually. But some discoveries are worse than others, no matter how benign or important in initial intent.
You gave them an excuse to sell women's products to men. You've opened the door, finally, after centuries, to let the corporate machine sell arm loads of useless cosmetics to men. That was one of our sex's greatest advantages. We were expected to maintain a certain degree of order in our hair and odor and skin cleanliness and that was all. Try and keep your hair in control. Don't stink. Don't be dirty. That's all a man needed. Shaving cream. Soap. Tooth brush. Razor. Comb. Done. Sure, styles came and went. There were extras here and there. But none were ever more than a suggestion.
But that time may be drawing to a close. And it's your fault. Fuck you Goth kids.
Guyliner. That's the nail in the coffin. The hair gel and the guyliner. By introducing these things into our culture, by allowing the machine to integrate these components, you have opened the door to male cosmetics. The cosmetics industry, for YEARS, has been stymied by the fact that they really only had half the population as a demographic. You assholes gave them the other half. If this fad continues to catch on, then the cosmetic industry gets to really PUSH this shit on us. It may be not only acceptable for guys to wear cosmetics. It may be ENCOURAGED.
Now bear in mind, my objections have nothing to do with gender identity. This is not some rant on morality, or men behaving like men or any of that narrow minded, misogynistic shit. My objection is strictly cultural and economic. What I dread is society allowing men to be treated with the same shabby contempt as women. They'll stab us in the self esteem, slash at our self image, until we desperately come crawling to them to make us "beautiful." Just like women. They'll foist hundreds of dollars of make up and skin cremes and cleansers and hair care products we DON'T need, and got along without, famously, for centuries. Just like women. GM. Maxim. Et al. They will finish their transformation into becoming LITERAL versions of Cosmo for men. They'll bring the full brunt of image bashing and brainwashing to bear on men. Just like women. It'll be the biggest blow to sexual equality in the history of the specie. Because instead of raising women up, we'll be dragging men down. Equality via contempt. They'll tell men what they need to be with the same horrid efficiency and awful certainty that they do women.
Women lament! Just as you were starting to gain ground in the image war, this new threat looms. As I said, this will be no win for you. Sure you may take a perverse satisfaction of the poetic just ice in the situation, but know that the standard you were able to apply to your own emancipation will dissipate. If they treat men as poorly as women, then you can have no complaint. The sheepish masses will bleat and bah together on the brainwashed path to inculcated zombiedom.
Fuck you Goth kids. This is your doing. This is your hair gel. Your guyliner. Your man makeup. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? You've put these weapons in the field of the culture war with no respect for how they might be used for evil if fallen into the wrong hands. Reap the whirlwind you bastards.
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