Gothip Girl

We kennen Jill Kargman allemaal van haar hilarische roman Momzilla’s, over rijke moeders in Manhattan. En nu is ze terug met een nieuwe chicklit. Daar gaat de bruid is een meeslepend, goed geschreven verhaal dat je deze zomer niet mag missen! Speciaal ter gelegenheid van haar nieuwste boek, schreef Jill de column Gothip Girl voor Chicklit.nl.

If I’d grown up in some shiny verdant suburb with rows of pastel Edward Scissorhands houses and Aryan lax-stick-toting jocks, I surely would have been the goth girl. When you grow up in New York City though, it’s such a melting pot of styles that there’s nothing to rebel against, nothing to vamp up for, no picture of perfection to puncture. Forget kaleidoscopic color wheel hues and a John Hughesian image of high school where cheerleaders tote pompoms and lettermen sport contrasting sleeved jackets. In Manhattan I wore neutral central. Read: black. All the time. And so what? Everyone did! I mean for crying out loud, this is the city where people say things like choarcoal gray is the new chocolate brown—that’s how much we love our chic muted palettes.
And then….I left the city for a Connecticut boarding school and the way I was perceived morphed into Angel Of Death. My all-black ensembles and Schott leather motorcycle jacket gave me the juxtaposed aura of the Crypt Keeper, pale skin from years of SPF versus the tanned bikini’d cleaves of my buxom blonde classmates wearing bright red fleece zip-ups or varsity swish-swish suits. Hiding from the wicked sun, I’d tout the valor of palor to dear ears who lubed up with Panama Jack and roasted into Indian Summer months. I remember looking out my dorm room window onto the crisp green quad filled with tanfastic preps playing hackey sack and flirting on spread out tapestries. Holy fucking shit.: I was Wednesday Addams in Barbietown.
It was 1989 and Laura Ashley’s business was still booming. Cabbage roses abounded. It was like a garden had throw up on my classmates. I quickly started calling it Laura Trashly and couldn’t deal with the homogenous nature of my new country clubby manicured surroundings. The school is drop dead gorgeous and now much more diverse than it was, but back then I was co-founder of TJC (Two Jew Club) and also the closest thing the ivy-covered walls had to the resident Goth. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t dye my hair jet black #1 (that came later) and I didn’t have my tattoos (yet, those also were down the pike) but I definitely looked sickly and wan compared to my sun-kissed cohorts.
The halls were like Patagonia had exploded. Birkenstocks were by no means a punchline. I watched as a couple girls who also came from New York moved little by little into long flowy skirt territory as black mini’s were stealthily shoved to the back of the drawer. Then, curiously, at home in the city for Christmas vaycay, not a sign of that bright red pile. Hmmm. There was some serious style-schizophrenia and I wasn’t going to have any of it. So I got used to being a semi-weirdo. I wasn’t some troll outcast in the basement blaring the Cure and hanging with my pet rat or anything—I had friends and was part of the school community—I just always felt a little….off. Not like Canadian off, but outsidery. Naturally it was only later I learned that everyone feels that way in high school. But my uniform of onyx ensembles kept me linked to home, a fashion conduit to the city I loved that somehow said, I ain’t like alla you sneakered peeps. Taylor Swift may’ve been on the bleachers instead of cheer captain, but I was the black and white photograph of girl cut and pasted into her rainbow-hued teenage world. Except that I could be her mother. But some things are timeless and dressing the same as everyone in high school is of them. Particular in a small town where there are fashion “rules.”
But I’ve left the green grass for my beloved gray streets and I’m back for life and will never leave New York until it’s toe-tag time. But when I see kids who are actual Goths, even if it’s still a uniform like Dead Heads or hippies or preps or jocks any other group—I still think it’s cooler, and often braver. Like when they pinned that southern murder on the goth kids only because of their spook factor. Every time I see fashion mags tout the virtues of bright colors (“orange is the new neon pink!”) I want to vom, because naturally those colors would make me look exhumed from the grave. I don’t need to “rev it up!” a notch with a poppy-colored sweater, even if studies show people smile more when they see you. I’m unapologetically boring. There’s nothing wrong with wearing all black all the time. My mom tells me I dress like “a Sicilian Widow.” But better that than the Saturday Night Live “Mom Jeans” sketch with blue and pink tapestry vest, no? Peeps might tout the fashion savvy of countless preened celebs who pay their stylists for just the right “daring” color, but to all the Best Dressed Lists so-called experts I say: I nominate Wednesday Addams. I only wish we could see her in teenage mode, rocking her Gothip Girl look to give lair and Serena a run for their sunscreen.

JIll Kargman

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    Nu is de maat vol! Wanneer Eden haar man, een beroemd kunstenaar, met het zoveelste blondje betrapt, verlaat ze hun loft in downtown New York en vertrekt naar de chique Upper East Side. Jarenlang was ze zijn muze en minnares, maar nu kiest ze voor zichzelf.
    Niet lang daarna krijgt ze een spannende relatie met Chase Lydon, telg uit een vooraanstaande familie – en elf jaar jonger dan Eden. Een schandaal! Maar dan, door een toevallige ontmoeting, komt haar jeugdvriend Wes weer in beeld. Wat is er over van hun jeugdliefde?

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