I’m a proud goth mum & wear dead doll earrings on school run – haters say I shouldn’t be a mother but kids love my style
IN 10 year’s time, we’ll look back on lockdown as the time we wore the same pair of tracksuits everyday for a week and baked enough banana bread to feed a village.
But for Zoe Smith, 24, from Devon, the pandemic allowed her to finally rediscover her personal style – after years of trying to “conform” to stereotypical mum clothes.
After giving birth to her twins Haylan and Hunter (who are both autistic) when she was 19, the now mum-of-three says she felt completely lost with her wardrobe.
Describing how she “dropped a part of herself”, Zoe said: “Women are told that motherhood looks one way and one way only and anything other than that is morally wrong, but women don’t just lose all of their interests once they have children.
“The idea that we should give large parts of ourselves up as soon as we bring another life into the world is absurd really.”
So during the pandemic, Zoe took advantage of lockdown and started experimenting by dying her hair bright colours again.
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Next, she plucked up the courage to express her true self with her wardrobe choices – and started showing up to the school run in dead doll earrings, stompy spiked boots and fairy makeup.
She explained: “They all love my pixie ears. Hunter – who is non-verbal – always gives me the sweetest looks when he sees me in full fairy make-up, ears and all.
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“Sometimes he just laughs at me – I had a dramatic black eyeshadow on one day that covered most of my face, and he did a double take and just giggled at me.
“The other two don’t usually mention my make-up unless it’s to compliment the colours, but Harlen has asked me a few times ‘Mama, why do you have elf ears on?’
“I don’t think he believes me when I tell him I’m part-fairy!”
Although the reaction she gets in public has been overwhelmingly positive, Zoe says her gothic style has sparked backlash online – specifically her dead doll earrings.
Zoe said: “People seem hugely shocked at the baby head earrings – over everything else, that seems to be the thing that’s provoked the most reactions.
Women are told that motherhood looks one way and one way only and anything other than that is morally wrong, but women don’t just lose all of their interests once they have children.
Zoe Smith
“‘How can you have dead babies on your ears when you have children?’ was my favourite, I’ve had that a few times.
“They’re doll heads, not realistic in the slightest.
“It’s usually silly things that people pick at so it doesn’t bother me – all the best people are weird, after all.”
When she shared a video of her earrings with her 179,000 TikTok followers, trolls argued that they were “inappropriate” for a mum to wear.
One person commented: “Imagine this is your mom. Poor kids.”
“U shouldn’t be a mum ur kids probs are embarrassed,” said another user. [sic]
Someone else added: “I thought people grew out of this when they became mothers?”
However, Zoe believes her personal style is teaching her kids an important lesson.
Zoe added: “Don’t be afraid to dress differently or to change your style just because you have children, or because you feel like you’re too old, or because you’re worried about what people think.
“I feel like I’m setting the example that it’s OK to be who you want to be, that it’s OK to experiment with style and do things that go against what other people do.
“[My kids and I have] just started experimenting with makeup together which is fun, they’re all allowed to choose their own clothes and whether or not they want their hair cut.
“They’ll be allowed to dye their hair when they get a little bigger, only with safe dyes of course.
“Above all I just want to foster an environment where my children feel safe to explore their identities without the negative attitude that often comes from a lot of parents, and to be a safe space to push back from societies pressure to conform.”
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