Hi-5: Celebrity Goths

Evan Rachel Wood

Why not start off with the most unconventional entry on the list? One wouldn’t think to classify Evan Rachel Wood as a goth: she’s got the blonde, All-American Girl look going on, and she goes by her full, three-part name (whereas many goth women tend to go by one-word pseudonyms like “Lilith” or “Cambria”).

Hell, even examining the girl’s film career results in very little gothitude. One stereotypically counterculture character in Running With Scissors notwithstanding, Wood seems to portray generally “normal” roles.

However – and this is a big however – one need only examine her choice in men to know that, deep, deep down, Wood is a princess of the night. A few months ago, Wood started dating Marilyn Manson, and recent rumors suggest that the pair might even get married. Inaccurate rumors of pedophilia aside (Manson is literally twice Wood’s age), “have you ever dated Marilyn Manson” might as well be on the top of the “Are You A Goth” questionnaire, followed immediately by “is your skin the color of: chalk/milk/stucco (circle one)”. Marilyn Manson is a somewhat decent guy – there’s nothing particularly wrong with dating him, aside from the fact that it prevents you dating men who aren’t Marilyn Manson – but it stands to reason that if you exchange bodily fluids, you must have a little bit of goth in you.

Literally.

Liz Vicious

You know what’s really hard? Typing “Liz Vicious” into Google image search and finding a picture that isn’t at least 75% comprised of vajayjay.

Given the fact that Vicious is a porn star, she embodies a very specific subculture within the Goth society: the Gothslut. She, of course, makes a living out of it, but she also personifies that one chick everybody knew in high school who, for all her fishnets and mascara and black fingernails, would be more than willing to do the deed with anyone, should they take her to a late-night screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and not insult The Cure.

In the realm of porn stars, Vicious is one of the more popular Goth actresses. I say “popular” loosely, because the whole goth craze hasn’t really caught on with mainstream porn (outside of occasionally dressing more popular actresses in faux-goth attire for one or two photoshoots, anyway). Still, though: she’s here, she’s goth, and she spends a great majority of her time on the Internet buck-ass naked.

Go ahead and do a Google search; I’ll wait.

Dita von Teese

Look, it’s Marilyn Manson girlfriend number two – or should I say, wife. Dita Von Teese was married to Manson for about a year, but filed from divorce for him when he started quasi-dating – wait for it – Evan Rachel Wood. On second thought, maybe Marilyn Manson is kind of a douchebag.

Anyway, Von Teese is considered one of the biggest burlesque models working in America today. It’s widely considered (and by “widely,” I mean “Wikipedia says so”) that Von Teese helped instigate the modern burlesque revival in the mainstream modeling scene. Yeah, I didn’t know there had been a revival, either.

From her dyed black hair (it’s naturally blonde) to her classic build, Von Teese is the spitting image of Bettie Page, or any other sexy burlesque model of the time. In the 1940’s, Von Teese would have been considered a popular underground sex symbol: today, she toes the line between underground and mainstream, but her intentionally retro style and damn near black-and-white body do make her something of a neo-goth. Her personality doesn’t necessarily suggest this (Manson notwithstanding), but it’s impossible to say that the same men who find Goth chicks attractive wouldn’t also find Von Teese pretty damn hot.

Asia Argento

A pretty talented chick in her own right, Asia Argento (daughter of horror legend Dario Argento) has directed and written a few films of her own, in addition to starring in everything from arthouse fare to American horror schlock (Land of the Dead).

The Italian beauty combines the body of a model with the attitude of an artist and the face of a very attractive goth who may or may not have had a heroin addiction in the past.

It’s almost erroneous to pigeonhole her into the simple “goth” stereotype, but it fits in many ways – she writes poetry, she has several tattoos (including an enormous angel on her crotch), and she writes films with titles like “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.” If the goth shoe fits, wear it, have a great deal of sex with it, and then ask it to speak Italian to you while you drift to sleep.

Rose McGowan

Perhaps the queen of quasi-mainstream goth chicks, Rose McGowan earned the number one spot pretty damn easily. In addition to having dated Marilyn Manson for a hell of a long time (hardly a surprise at this point in the list), the woman also starred in a TV show about goddamned witches, not to mention her appearance in one of the most nihilistic, goth-centric American films of the 1990’s (The Doom Generation – look out for the scene where a guy jerks off whilst watching two people have sex, and then licks the semen off his hand).

Additionally, McGowan’s home life seems like the sort of thing most Goths wish they could have lived through, just so they’d have an excuse to be miserable all the time. Without getting into lengthy specifics, consider the fact that Rose McGowan only did Bio-Dome to pay for her drug-addicted brother’s legal fees.

Beyond her personality, McGowan simply looks like the ideal Goth woman: she has a great body, black hair, insanely pale skin, and a face that makes one think that a plastic surgeon removed McGowan’s original face, replaced it with a makeshift model made up of Marilyn Monroe’s features, gave it a butt-chin, then smashed it with a tenderizing mallet a few times before reforming the whole thing. McGowan is one of those actresses who can look insanely hot given the right circumstances (Grindhouse), or slightly demonic in the wrong ones (the premiere for Grindhouse).  Plastic surgery does that to you.