Gothic subculture has been in existence since the early 1980s, when the Goth music scene sprang up in the North of England out of the dying punk scene. Against the odds, it has persisted for what is now nearly thirty years, in the face of occasionally hostile and often mocking treatment in the media and in society. There is a feeling that Goth is a movement whose time has now come, especially in the wake of the “Nu-metal” scene which had a large following on both sides of the Atlantic at the start of the century.

Along with black clothes, hair and make-up and often artificially pale faces, along with a predominance of leather, gothic fashion includes tattoos – and these tattoos, interestingly, are a part of gothic fashion which has made the jump to the mainstream before any other. Stars such as Eminem and David Beckham have been known to rock a gothic tattoo, although there are as yet no reports claiming that they’re whiting up and listening to My Dying Bride.

What constitutes a gothic tattoo? Well, in this day and age, it’s pretty much whatever the media decides is a gothic tattoo, apparently. But the main uniting factors include elements of religious and fantasy imagery, faeries and angels being particularly popular. As an armband tattoo, a representation of a thorned rose vine is the most popular, which has echoes of the crown of thorns forced onto Jesus’ head as he was crucified.

The crucifix itself plays a large part in gothic tattoo imagery – in a lot of cases an ironic appropriation of a broadly Christian image by people who have little time for Christianity itself.

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