A concerned mother called into our radio program this week to express her concerns about Bubble Goth – a pop music style and culture popular among teens that is dark, hyper-sexualized and downright creepy.
For those who never heard of Bubble Goth, this is the creation of a 26 year-old Estonian native named Kerli Koiv. She grew up in a household plagued by domestic violence and engaged in the writing of mini books and poems to cope with the situation. She claims that she always wanted to be a rock star and seized upon an opportunity to launch her dream when she managed to enter a major Estonian talent contest by lying about her age. She won the contest and a recording contract which launched her into the music world where she eventually made her mark with a genre called transcendental electronic music. In her tunes, she aims to “make the beautiful, creepy and the creepy, beautiful.”
During a particularly dark time in her life, she published her Love is Dead album which had a dark edgy style that quickly branded her as “Goth”. A critic described her style as “bubblegum Goth”, a name she instantly liked and claimed for her own. This explains her tendency to carry around a teddy bear that wears a gas mask and to incorporate bullet belts and corsets in her Lady Gaga-ish and hyper-sexualized dress. Her bleached white hair is often streaked with the same pastel colors she prefers to wear rather than the typical Goth-ish black.
Girls who think Bubble Goth is their thing are encouraged to dress in pale pastels like she does, to listen to music with dark or morbid themes, to find ways to “make cute things more morbid” and “to be eccentric.”
Fans are referred to as Moon Children who are encouraged to sport three dots on their forehead which stand for Kerli’s motives of integrity, love and unity. She claims this “assembly” is for people who “feel too much and find it hard to exist in this world, so that they wouldn’t think they’re crazy.” She originally meant for it to be a “gathering for Indigo kids – a New Age idea that certain children were born with special, supernatural abilities – but it eventually morphed into Moon Children.
A big supporter of LGBT “rights”, Kerli’s hit music video Zero Gravity is peppered with lesbian sexual innuendo.
She claims not to belong to any religion, to believe in reincarnation and to be “obsessed with fairies”. Angels and demons are “reflections” of one’s “inner light” and “inner darkness”. Even more alarming is the fact that her Moon Children fans made her a set of tarot cards as a gift and seem to have a penchant for ghoulish trinkets.
There are also online free tarot reading sites that provide you with daily free readings on your zodiac signs.
Kerli Koiv has had a hard life, to be sure, and her intentions may be good, but where is her dark style going to lead our daughters?
Do we really want them listening to songs with lyrics such as: “Mama you’re a liar . . . Mama you were so wrong . . . And I don’t wanna be like you, I hate the things you do” or watching her “bump and grind” against other women in her videos?
While she encourages her followers to “be the best they can be”, is this “culture code” for accepting immoral behavior and tossing out the Truth for New Age ideas?
Because the Goth subculture has links to the dark arts, daughters who start with Bubble Goth might decide to embrace more grownup forms of the movement which can get dangerous, as this blog explains. But even if this doesn’t happen, parents are wise to discourage their girls from becoming “Moon Children” who think being the best they can be means to dress like Lady Gaga, to kiss girls, and “be eccentric.”
