Ye Olde Babybat Pictures!

I can't believe I am actually publishing these on the public internet...

Yes, glowering at the camera made me SO much more Goth... 

These are so old that they might as well be out of the Ark! These are all terrible selfies taken eons ago, when I was a teenage babybat. These are from the start of my second attempt at Goth, so at least they are not as bad as the photographs from when I was a Goth the first time around would have been, had any been taken. Please forgive the absolute lack of photographic skill, and be reassured that I have improved since then (even if I insist on using the built-in computer camera on occasions).I am posting these here to show that even older Goths were once babybats. I did not get it 'right' straight away, and I had to learn what good makeup was (hint: not this!) and that looking sullen in all my photographs was not 'more Goth' and did nothing to make me look more serious, if anything, it made me look more ridiculous. 

So serious, but sparkly!

 Goth, as a visual aesthetic and fashion style, takes considerable time to learn. You can learn about the music a lot quicker than you can acquire the makeup, fashion and style skills. In these pictures I had learnt how to line my eyes, and put white on my lower waterline to make my eyes appear bigger, but my mascara is patchy, barely there and generally awful, and those dots...  just why did I think them a good idea? I hadn't learnt to blend properly, so there are sudden and distinct transitions of colour across my eyelids, not that those colours in that arrangement would blend in a manner aesthetically pleasing to me, anyway. 

I used to dye my hair black (but have since become sensitive to black dye), which is one thing I miss. I have black wigs now, but it is not the same. Before people suggest using henna and indigo, I have tried this more than once, and have only managed to darken my hair slightly, and not to black. I still have that stripy red and black blouse, but the red has faded and black is now a dark charcoal. 

Woe is me, my dots are not symmetrical.

I also used to have terrible, terrible skin. I had bad acne, dry patches, and oily patches. These things cleared up over time, and usually do. I do not suggest using lots of foundation or thick makeup if you have these usual teenage skin complaints; they only made the acne worse with me, and did little to disguise the underlying rough texture of my face. A good diet with a good intake of water helps. I don't have a  fancy regime of products, I just eat my greens and drink lots of water and fruit juice, and wash my face with warm water. 

Anyway, babybats and younger Goths, do not despair, and keep practising. Your future older self may look back on pictures of your current self and sigh, but it is these early years of being Goth during which you experiment and find what you like, what you are good at, and what works. Older Goths, do not mock the younger and newer Goths for their lack of makeup skills and poor choices of clothes (and erroneous music categorisations, arguments over Marilyn Manson and other such newbie faux-pas), because everyone was new once, even if they were new at the same time as the subculture was new (I wasn't, by the way, I'm too young to have been an '80s Goth, even if I am old enough to remember bits of the '80s.)