Clothes Make the Man: A Discussion of Symbolism in Clothing

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

Our next subculture is actually two: Punk and Ska are two radically different cultures, and yet there is a lot that they both have in common. It may even be said that Punk can be subdivided again into regular Punks and a special subset known as “Nazi punks.” These Nazi punks are nothing more than skin-headed KKK members who happen to have better grammatical skills and don’t wear white robes. Therefore, I will not talk about them anymore. As for Punks and Ska-heads, peace is the overall goal. The variance occurs where punks understand that peace without an outlet for violence is impossible, and Ska-heads do not. (This is to say that Punks will participate in a mosh pit while a Ska-head would quietly dance instead.) The punk subculture typically wears second-hand clothing modified with pins, patches, zippers, and still more spikes, studs, safety-pins, and other metal bits and pieces. This is because when the Punk subculture originated in the late 1970’s, it’s first members were bands who had no money, were not sponsored by a major record company, and therefore could only afford second-hand clothes. The plethora of accessories that punks have to choose from exists only for the punk himself to enjoy. Usually patches will be symbols of a particular band, or a picture that quickly and easily represents an idea that the punk agrees with. An example is a picture of a swastika with a red circle and bar (like those seen on “No Smoking” signs) over it. This therefore means that the punk does not agree with Nazi-ism, racism, etc. Now then, Ska-heads are a completely different story. Their general ideas are that everyone can get along if they just stop worrying about such silly things as race, religion, and gender. Ska-heads of all shapes, sizes, and colors are brought together by their music. Any kind of clothing categorized as Punk is allowed, so long as the patches and pins have Ska bands instead of Punk bands. The style is generally a little brighter, with more shapes and colors in it, but this is only due to Ska philosophy’s lack of violence, and emphasis on living life for the sheer fun of it. Popular patterns in both subcultures include large-square

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