by Harper Gallagher

Created on: July 10, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2008

It's not easy being green or in this case being the outsider and that is probably one of the best words to use to describe a gothic or punk beauty. Outsider. The Outsider. She or even he is part of main stream culture now watch almost any action movie with a female lead in the last five years and she'll be there. The vampire, the slayer, the freedom fighter, the forbidding love, the dominatrix.

She's there visible, in your face. She's on your sons or daughters wall in a poster, pinned up in her corset, her PVC, her leathers. She's on the television singing her latest hit, staking a vamp, explaining why she is to be obeyed by others to some criminologist.

She is played by Kate Beckinsale or Rachel Weisz or some other raving beauty with darkened eyes and pouting lips. She's a real person like Dita Von Teese, Amy Lee, Brody Dalle or long before them Siouxsie Sioux.

She is intimidating, exotic, delicious, beautiful. But most of all she's not there in the room with you, on the street walking towards you, in the restaurant serving you. You lust after her, want her, think about what it would be like to kiss her, to hold, to be hers or even to be her. But again she isn't there, she's on the screen a load of pixels. You won't be her because you're too scared of what the neighbors, your friends and you family would think.

She's real yes, but she isn't really real. She lives in a pocket universe and only once in a very great while you see one of her kind walking the streets in the city. Probably alone, definitely looking out of place. She stands out from the crowd and she holds your attention until she vanishes around a corner. She's not real.

But she is. Very much so and she probably is scared but unwilling to admit it.

People who live a Gothic lifestyle come into it at almost any stage of life. For many it's as teens and young adults. For others joining in with this small crowd comes after a life altering period in their lives and is another expression of that change in them. So Goths come in every age group and it stands to reason that they come from every possible background, every possible religion. They also often enough come from places which only exist so people have somewhere to be from.

Small towns with the usual small town way of viewing things. Especially the small town way of viewing anyone who doesn't hold to the status quo. These goldfish bowl places are where ultimately most of us come from. Even in this day and age most people do not come from cities. We

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