I've heard people complain before that most Goths(specifically the girls) tend to be quite weighty; and that makes them unattractive.
Do you think is this true?

I've seen some largish- goth girls, but not that many, and none of them were exactly ugly.

Err, nobody take offense to this, I'm just asking =P Just someone that made a comment that annoyed me in a random IRC channel on undernet.

The 'fat goth chick' thing has been a phenom for many years, ever since goths started wearing corsets, really. It might just be what I've seen, but I think this trend has been swinging back the other way for a couple years now.

I've seen goth girls who are large and loving it, proud about how they were built and know how to dress for their body type as a nice big healthy 'fuck you' to a world that values women dieting down to non-existance.

But I've also seen large goth girls try to pretend that their fat rolls are attractive, dress in PVC pants where the fly is pulled back and the zipper tangs are hanging on for dear life, then start going on to whoever will listen about all the pseudonyms for their extra weight.
ie,
I'm not fat, I'm rubinesque.
I'm not fat, I'm curvy.
I'm not fat, I'm zoftig.
It's not real fat, it's just a little baby fat.
A little weight is healthy (uttered by people who are a good 40 or 50 lbs. overweight)
etc.
It usually takes roughly 15 minutes for these girls to follow up those statements with 'oh, I'm so fat' complaints. These girls usually have horrible self esteem but don't want to do anything about their weight because of x excuse or y excuse, usually boiling down to general laziness.

I say that as long as someone is TRUELY happy with the way they look, live and let live. But I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for people who sit around and complain that they're fat and don't want to put in the effort of amending their eating/exercise habits.

As for the goth scene being overweight, admittedly, we're not the healthiest scene in the world, mainly because our subculture's get togethers don't involve tripping out on E and dancing for 5 hours, getting into raging brawls with the band at gigs, sitting around mainlining heroin, or moshing and headbanging at a concert.

Arm flailing for a 3 minute song before going back to the sidelines is not exercise, folks.

But there are heavier subcultures that ours. The RennFaire/SCA people for example.


~blood rose~

You forgot "I'm not fat, I'm big-boned!"

- trag, "Beefcaaaaaaaaaaaaake"

I'm a big fan of the first type of Fat Goth Chick Blood Rose mentioned, but I agree the second one is a bit Icky.

I've heard them referred to as "Big Gothic Momas" by some very strange(or probably just horny) people.

I don't like the way everyone has to be thin. Not everyone looks good thin! I've seen just as many great looking girls that would look pretty boring thin as ones that would look more unattractive fat.

I like people to come in all shapes in sizes. The only problem is health. I think the first step to beating things like Obesity, is first accepting that what you are isn't disgusting. The main reason people are too "Lazy" to loose weight; is that their weight saps all their confidence, in my opinion. And it's societies fault. The more Society tells them they should be thinner, the harder it's going to be. More pressure means more eating.

A while ago "voluptious" and "buxom" were popular styles; personally my favourite shape is curvy, slightly pudgy, as opposed to stick thin. But now it's all about thin and nothing else. I just hate societies values for attractiveness.

Gah, and don't get me started on make-over programs. Nobody has ever escaped from one of those with long hair.

Yeah, I get pretty opinionated about this stuff =P

Yeah, agreed. Of course, to be fair, most people who have long hair don't have a clue as to how to take care of it and then end up with natty disgusting and dull long hair.


I agree with everything you said in that post as well.




~blood rose~

Hehe, thanks.
Although after talking to a lot of long haired people who've cut it, they say that short hair generally is harder to style, as it requires more product; whereas you just condition long hair and it tends to look alright.
Personally, I find my hair a lot easier to manage as it approaches past-shoulder lenght than it was chin length and below. Most of the time, I just let it go wild, and purposely scrunch it up, for that big messy look I love

Also, short and long look better on different people, which is obvious. I don't think anyone should cut hair to make it "easier to manage", it simply isn't true; and it takes a lot of product to get a pixie cut looking good, generally.

Also, I think short hair doesn't look good on bigger women. Short cuts are for people with great bright well shaped faces; round pudgy faces are brought out far too much.

I absolutely adore girls in my school who are slightly pudgy. But as luck would turn out, the girls who all have it absolutely hate it. And the ones who love their cute little pudges are all taken. Damn bad luck.

Aww. That sucks. I love pudgy girls, so cute. Sometimes I like slenderness better though, but I never like model thin.
A lot of guys prefer pudgy girls, actually. It's a bit of an urban myth that everyone likes skinny.

The hair thing really depends on the type of face, and the type of hair. Personally, I look thinner with short hair than with long hair....well, facially in any case.

Goth style, like any style, can be adapted to any body type if you try. For instance, I am a large male. I am tall, broadshouldered and slightly fat. That's right, not flabby, not husky, not big boned, fat. I have FAT on my body. Big woop. My fatness and the broadness of my frame combined make it so that certain things will not work on me. I won't wear a fishnet shirt....ever. Under any circumstances. ever. Nor do I look good in drag, or PVC. Does this mean I can't be goth? of course not, it just means that I have to adapt my style.

However, what I see all to often in goth and other styles is women (in particular, but men do it too) wearing clothing that clearly doesn't work for their body types. IE overweight women in PVC corsets or boustiers. Ripples of fat poking over the top of a tight fitting garment are not attractive to look at. Overweight men don't look good in tank tops (most men don't, actually. The exception is young toned gay men with almost no body fat and short hair, and even then under specific circumstances). My point, and yes I DO have one, is that the wrong clothes can make an otherwise attractive person look like hell on legs.

I agree with you. The problem is people think they have to follow what everyone else is wearing in order to be considered attractive or with the times. And I don't just mean the mainstream, even within subcultures, which is why you're seeing people who shouldn't be in skin tight PVC wearing it. In truth, you look better if you wear stuff that fits, and this is a point that was already brought up in the thread on What Not To Wear. Some things just look better on some people and not on others. Get creative, check out fashion books. I've seen big women dress in amazingly wonderful clothes that make them attractive.

*laughs*

I'm minded of a comedy sketch by Alan Davies (British comic)...

"I've never heard any guy say, I had the best sex I've ever had last night! She was so thin, I thought she'd snap!...
...I flipped her over, and her shoulder blades were like little chisels coming at me...
...it was like having sex with a toolbox! I've never been so turned on!"

The goth subculture in my experience is like any subculture not based around sport or speed - it contains men and women of all shapes and sizes. For every girl who has rolls of fat spilling over her size-too-small corset, there is a girl who is curvy and attractive, there is a girl who is basically a healthy weight, and there is a stick figure a la Vasquez. I imagine that the general levels of tolerance* displayed within the subculture mean that there are people who feel comfortable socialising despite being overweight, who would otherwise be shunned in other circles. Perhaps this means that there are more overweight people visible in the goth community than other sections of society, basically because they're not assumed to be worthless because they carry a few more kilos.

I think, too, the definition of "overweight" is a little different amongst goths. Because there are no prizes for being the skinniest person in the room, and corsets do nip in recalcitrant waistlines, girls are likely to feel less pressured to starve themselves to death for the sake of "fashion". Goth fashion tends to be far more varied and forgiving than mainstream trends.

On that note, I saw something that horrified me the other day. I was in a (mainstream) fashion store, apparently for adults, and found a size 4 pair of pants on the rack. (That would be equivalent to a US size 2). I turned around and walked out in disgust. I have never seen a healthy adult woman fit into a pair of pants that small!! It's no wonder people have a warped image of fit and fat.

*tolerance toward everything bar rampant stupidity, that is.

Catdraco said all that I would on the matter, but far more delicately and clearly.

And I saw a pair of women's size 1 (US) jeans in the store yesterday. Yet it was impossible to find men's boxers that were medium (32-34 waist). It was almost all XXL (which is well over 40 inch waist size).

Finding smaller mens clothing is becoming harder and harder these days.
I was getting some long selve shirts today at target(hey, their cheap) and there was a grand total of TWO mediums, no smalls and the rest were XL and up.

But on the other hand have you ever tried to find a men's XLT shirt? Very difficult

Catdraco, I'm a size 2 and I'm perfectly healthy. It just so happens that I'm also 5' 1" tall and have very small bones. I have never dieted and I don't exercise excessively--I'm just little.

It's a bad idea to try and judge health by clothing size or weight because neither one takes into account a person's build. The numbers that people should be more worried about are Body Mass Index and where they stand on the Average Height/Weight per age charts.