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I am an active enthusiast of counterculture fashion. I first discovered the emo counterculture as a young tween and I became obsessed with heavy eyeliner, vampires, and My Chemical Romance. I have continued to be an active participant in countercultures ever since, ranging from casual goth to space grunge and everything in between those two extremes. This means going through an array of different hair colors, glitter makeup, an obsession with aliens, black shiny boots, and many black dresses. I enjoy countercultures as a whole due to the fact that all things artistic and unusual have a special place in my heart. Therefore, my participation in counterculture fashion has persisted since my tween years.

From this participation, I have come to the realization that most countercultures follow a similar formula of rebelling against the status quo and choosing to express this rebellion through various facets of artistic expression ranging from fashion to music. Meaning, they go against the social norms by expressing weirdness as much as possible. For example: space grunge fashion is popular for being colorful, tacky, and calling on inspiration from a fascination with outerspace and tacky 1990’s clothing. This counters the purposely elegance of dominant culture which is tasteful in its execution. Space grunge on the other hand is purposely tacky and loud. By using fashion as a statement against the status quo, many countercultures attempt at initiating dialogue against dominant culture.

Yet, participating in countercultures while existing inside a fat, hairy, and brown femme-presenting body is an experience that is completely different to participating in countercultures while existing in a body that fits within European standards of beauty.

That is, countercultures often claim to rebel against the status quo while still uplifting it by centering thin, white, and affluent bodies as the epitome of beauty within the countercultures themselves, much like the dominant culture they claim to be rebelling against.

This is a commonality amongst all countercultures I have been a part of as well as most countercultures throughout history, even those with more prominent political stances in their foreground such as punk, riot grrl, and the hippie movement. Though claiming to go against the dominant culture, the people participating in these countercultures are actively uplifting it and are simply creating a facet that is slightly more weird and artistic but equally racist, classist, fatphobic, and ableist.

Navigating counterculture spaces in a marginalized body demands the same amount of emotional labor that navigating the dominant culture demands.

On one hand, countercultures offer a sense of community that isn’t present in the dominant culture and which can also offer a sense of companionship and bonding through weird fashion and art. Yet, countercultures also exploit marginalized people for the sake of art, bastardizing important cultural symbols for aesthetic and fashion, creating unsafe spaces for people of color who are trying to make their way through these countercultures. An example of this is the way that the bindi (the red dot worn on the center of the forehead) has been appropriated by many countercultures including space grunge, indie, etc. By taking the bindi and using it as fashion accessory that does not have anything to do with its original tradition of Hindu and Jain women, it removes the cultural relevance and corrupts its meaning.

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Besides culturally appropriating symbols and fashion from marginalized communities, countercultures also make it close to impossible for fat bodied people to participate in the fashion by mainly catering clothing to thin bodies. Many places or online shops that sell plus size counterculture fashion are also usually very few and also more expensive than your average outlet, making it so that fat bodied folk are only allowed to participate in counterculture fashion if they are affluent.

As a brown fat person who has spent half of their life participating in counterculture fashion, both of these issues personally affect me. From navigating these spaces while white folk in countercultures use Mexican symbols such as those for Day of the Dead as fashion to trying to keep up with fashion trends but never having enough money to buy from the limited amount of clothing available to me, these are simply some of the external microaggressions I have had to deal with in counterculture spaces.

Existing inside a marginalized body while trying to navigate these spaces leads to a sense of exclusion, much like the one felt when navigating the dominant culture. Counterculture spaces are not revolutionary and rebellious if their central community is tailored for affluent, white, thin, and ablebodied people.

Countercultures with mediocre revolutions are a way to detach oneself from the burden of the dominant society without having to put much thought, time, or effort into analyzing why there is dissatisfaction with the dominant culture in the first place. By doing this, white folk participating in countercultures can keep the comforts and privileges available to them in western society while claiming to be against them.

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I am not arguing that everyone who participates in countercultures do not analyze their problematic qualities, I am arguing that countercultures have historically been catered to white folk who have only wanted to go against the mediocrity of the dominant white culture without creating inclusive spaces for marginalized bodies, which would actually make countercultures historically rebellious against the dominant society instead of pretending to be.

Myself, as an active participant in countercultures, choose to continue to be a part of them despite their problematic qualities because it increases the chances of also meeting and building relationships with other weird brown and black folk who also feel a sense of exclusion within the dominant society as well as the mainly-white countercultures which usually end up being our only option to minorly immerse ourselves in a culture that somewhat deviates from the dominant society as a whole.

As marginalized folk navigating countercultures instead of the dominant society, the creation of safe spaces within these countercultures is also crucial. Online spaces such as the Facebook pages “Sad girls y que” or “Afropunk” allow such safe spaces for weird brown and black folk who understand the whiteness of counterculture as a whole and who also feel othered in those spaces.

Yet, it is a reality that these spaces will continue to uplift whiteness as its default unless enough people challenge this notion. Unless it is intentionally done to counter capitalistic white patriarchy while understanding that marginalized bodies are the ones that experience a pushback from dominant society the most.

[Feature Image: A black and white image of an individual sitting in a dark room facing the camera with a look of discontent. They are wearing hoop earrings with hair pulled back into a bun. Source: Flickr.com/ Russell Mondy