The dark-haired bad girl in literature and culture goes back at least as far as the nineteenth century. Leslie Fiedler wrote about her in his book Love and Death in the American Novel (1961; 1966). The goth girl, or Goth Girl, of the late twentieth century came along after he wrote, but my guess is that the Goth Girl is a variation on the dark-haired bad girl. (1)
In contrast to the dark-haired bad girl is the blonde or fair-haired good girl, who is pure and innocent, the love interest or the object of desire. She is often a damsel in distress and in need of being rescued. One obvious example of the dark-haired/fair-haired dichotomy is in Superman Returns, from 2006. Lois Lane is and always has been dark-haired, but in Superman Returns, she was made into a blonde, played by Kate Bosworth. That decision on the part of the moviemakers seems to have been self-conscious. It amounts to a kind of cultural appropriation. On the other side of the conflict is the dark-haired consort of Lex Luthor, played by the more attractive (in my opinion) Parker Posey. (2) She's bad, but she ends up turning good, or not-so-bad. That doesn't save the movie from an attack of blondeness, and skinny blondeness at that. Like you, I wonder why moviemakers can't just leave things alone.
Before beginning this series, I read about the possible origins of the Goth Girl. I came up with some of my own possible origins to go along with what I read. I'll start with silent movie actresses.
That's Theda Bara (1885-1955) as Cleopatra, from a lost film of the same name from 1917. Note the heavy black eye makeup, which has become an identifying feature of the Goth Girl. Note the hands to the head pose, too, as in the Batwoman cover of Weird Tales. I wonder if this picture could have been an inspiration for Margaret Brundage. Maybe she traded a Snakewoman or Aspwoman for a Batwoman.
I also wondered whether Theda Bara could have followed the example of Mata Hari (1876-1917), who was shot by a firing squad in the same year that Cleopatra was released. (Not that Theda Bara followed her example by being shot, because she never was. You know what I'm trying to say.) Here she is in her Eastern costume:
Mata Hari was also a performer, also with an Oriental look. (She had lived in the Dutch East Indies before returning to Europe.) I don't associate Arabism or Orientalism with Gothicism at all. I'm not sure that Mata Hari, Theda Bara (her name can be taken as an anagram of "Arab Death"), or any other Eastern-inspired woman, look, style, or culture is a source for twentieth-century Gothics. Gothics are wholly and distinctly Western. I don't think it makes any sense to talk about an Eastern or Oriental Gothic.
I'll mention two other dark-haired silent movie actresses who sometimes played bad girls. They were:
Pola Negri (1897-1987) and:
Louise Brooks (1906-1985).
One source puts forth Bettie Page (1923-2008) as a possible influence on the Goth Girl look. I'm not so sure about that, although she was certainly an influence on the current Rockabilly style. Here I might pose a question: is pornography, at least of a certain type, a Gothic form?
The Bettie Page-style, the Rockabilly style, the 1950s Bad Girl or Beat style, the 1940s and '50s Apache Dance style, and the 1940s and '50s French Resistance and French Existentialist look all seem to go together. All seem to reinforce each other. But I'm not sure they have a lot to do with the Goth Girl look. Maybe Siouxsie Sioux really was its originator.
Bettie Page famously wore bangs. The story is that a photographer suggested that she wear them to keep the photographer's lights from reflecting off of her high forehead. There doesn't seem to be any connection at all between Bettie Page and another woman who, less famously, wore bangs. I'm pretty sure she can be called a Goth Girl:
That's Jean Brooks (1915-1963) as the dark-haired bad girl/early Goth Girl (?) Jacqueline Gibson in The Seventh Victim, from 1943. Kim Hunter, on the right, played her good-girl younger sister. The film was produced by Val Lewton (1904-1951), who was a teller of weird tales. He wrote "The Bagheeta," which was published in the July 1930 issue of Weird Tales.
I wondered last time about the possibility of an urban girl-meets-house-type Gothic Romance. Well, The Seventh Victim is an urban Gothic involving a cult of middle-class devil worshippers in New York City. (Cults are popular among the real-world middle class.) Other urban Gothics include Rosemary's Baby (1968), from Ira Levin's novel; The Exorcist (1973), from William Peter Blatty's novel; and The Sentinel (1977), from Jeffrey Konvitz's novel. Although I have not read this book, I think The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall by George Lippard (1845) was an early American urban Gothic. There are no doubt many, many more. (3)
Jacqueline Gibson has a certain look. If she was an early Goth Girl, where did she get it? I'm not sure about that one, either, but I will write next about an indisputable Goth Girl who first showed up in American culture in the 1930s.
Notes
(1) In thinking about the dark-haired bad girls of culture, I considered Lilith and Morgan le Fay. Lilith is sometimes depicted as having golden hair, but she is also thought of as having dark hair. Her hair, whatever its color, is important in her power. Lilith is also thought of as a strangler of babies. That goes to a current real-life case in the United States. The strangler in that case has dark hair. She seems to have come under a demonic influence. Her followers are certainly under a demonic influence. They seem to have their own cult. As for Morgan le Fay, she may be depicted with brown hair, but in Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, she has dark, if not black, hair.
(2) If you want, you can make something of the characters' names, too. Lois Lane's surname is monosyllabic and from the British Isles, in other words, from "here." Kitty Kowalski's surname is polysyllabic and Slavic, in other words, from "there." Lois Lane's consonants are soft. They are repeated in la-la and lullaby. Kitty Kowalski's are hard. They are repeated for example in Kallikak or Ku Klux Klan. (There was a TV show called The Kallikaks. If I remember right, one of the justifications for that show is that the K sound is supposed to be funny.) Lois shares her initials with Lex Luthor, the nemesis of the man with whom she is in love. Superman--Kal-El--shares his with Kitty. His name is from the Hebrew. Lois' name is biblical and is in the New Testament. Lois may be a Greek name. Lex is in fact Greek. Only Kitty Kowalski has a low or diminutive name.
(3) Others include: The Search for Joseph Tully by William H. Hallahan (1974); Wolfen (1981), from the novel by Whitley Streiber; etc. We could go on and on in this list.
Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley
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