What IS Kinderwhore?

I hope you guys had a good spring break!! I’m back in full force today, talking about my favorite fashion subculture, kinderwhore. If you are unfamiliar with the kinds of bands I talk about on Hysteria, or unfamiliar with the entire riot grrrl genre as a whole, you are probably confused as to what this blog post will be about. In short, kinderwhore is a punk fashion subculture that emerged in the late eighties among figures like Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love. While on the surface, it may just seem like some kind of weird fashion fetish, it can actually be interpreted as a feminist call-to-action in combating pedophilic and, overall, harmful beauty standards. I’m going to add a content warning here because I’ll be discussing themes of substance abuse, SA, and CSA, so if you prefer to sit this one out, that’s okay too! Otherwise, if this sounds interesting to you, keep on reading, because I’m going to start at the very beginning of the movement and explain how it has lasting effects on popular fashion subcultures to this day, like morute, coquette, and riot grrrl!

I’ll start by saying that I KNOW the name is weird, but there is a reason why, I promise. Journalist Everett True coined the phrase during an interview with Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain in 1993. He wanted to capture both parts of the fashion movement: “kinder” represents innocence, fragility, youth, while “whore” represents deviance, ruin, and decay. And the look does in fact portray the two; it’s all about contrast and shock. From what I have gathered by researching the live performances of bands like Babes in Toyland, Hole, Daisy Chainsaw, and the Divinyls, this is what makes up a kinderwhore outfit:

Hair

(taken from reddit)

Hair was a polarizing topic, but was most commonly ruthlessly bleached, though Bjelland and Love sported jet-black hair at various points in their careers. Additionally, hair was teased, tangled, disheveled, and/or adorned with bows and clips. Hair was worn either down, in pigtails, or in braids.

Makeup

It was agreed that the staple makeup look for kinderwhore was eye-catching yet not too much effort (it was the grunge scene, after all). So, think an old-fashioned black eyeliner pencil and mascara—but don’t forget the sultry red lipstick, which was a major attribute. Courtney Love attributes this to an ironic sense of glamour, even referencing the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? as one of her biggest inspirations. Below, I have added a photo of her on the Pretty on the Inside album cover, where the kinderwhore makeup look is very apparent. You can see how her extremely pale, heroin-chic skin emphasizes her dramatic doe-eyed makeup.

(taken from youtube)

Clothes

The clothes of kinderwhore are inarguably the most controversial and infamous part of the movement itself. Many can attribute the origin of kinderwhore fashion to the time when Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland shared an apartment in San Francisco. Essentially, the two's fashion sense fused; they exchanged clothes so much that neither was solely responsible for the look, and neither could tell whose clothes were whose. Again, there was a grunge movement, so the disheveled and dingy were already popular; cheap thrifted pieces were more common at places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army, so it was easy to procure the clothing. You could find kinderwhore girls wearing babydoll dresses and tops, pieces with a Peter Pan collar, nightgowns and white slips, long dresses in soft pastel colors or dark colors, frilly, feminine dresses usually in pink, among many other articles. It was also common to contrast a more feminine piece with an edgy one: one could balance out a girly pink dress with a leather jacket, or a feminine white top with a leather skirt—stark contrast is the goal.

(taken from reddit)

Shoes

It was very easy to get creative with your shoe style. While black Mary Janes were the typical selection, wearing any kind of menacing black shoe with a chunky wedge, like combat boots, was also very fashionable, especially when contrasted with white thigh-high or knee-high socks. Ballet flats fit the aesthetic but are less common, I assume, because when you don’t have enough edginess, it borders on coquettish. They can be paired with articles like fishnets or black stockings, which were very popular.

Accessories

Jewelry was gaudy and costume-grade; very cheap, once again. Pearls, emblematic of vintage Hollywood glamour and femininity, were worn as a tribute to that era. My personal favorite accessories for women of this style are childish tiaras reminiscent of a prom or homecoming queen. I just think they are so cute! Some women would also write derogatory phrases on themselves with lipstick, like “whore” and “slut” in a reclamatory effort.

Okay, I know that was a lot to read, but thanks for bearing with me. I hope you can see now what kinderwhore is actually comprised of. I want to tell you a couple of things that it isn’t, along with squashing some popular misconceptions. Kinderwhore is not coquette because coquette has no sinister double meaning; it’s exclusively feminine and very romantic. Kinderwhore is not morute (an aesthetic that combines morbid and cute, literally) because morute is a byproduct of kinderwhore, made popular on Tumblr in the early 2010s because of singers like Niclole Dollanganger, and from what I can gather, morute is stricter about things being only pastel pink or white and frilly. Kinderwhore is not girlcore because girlcore is more reminiscent of rococo revival pieces, and it’s kind of in the same place as coquette, being that there is no ‘darker side’ to girlcore. Kinderwhore is not child prostitution, and no, Kinderwhore is NOT riot grrrl. Riot grrrl is more like the little sister of kinderwhore that steals all of her clothes and keeps the cute stuff. It’s very similar, and I’d love to go into the intricacies of that on another blog post, on another day.

(taken from pinterest)

But how does this relate to feminism, you ask? You should know by now that all fashion, all art, is inherently political. While Bjelland and Love may not have been consciously starting a feminist movement through their clothing, they were actively critiquing and challenging traditional beauty standards. Kinderwhore’s strength is in its clunkiness. The Western beauty standard for women has always been a variation of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, young, graceful, and submissive, and this completely flips it on its head. The rough, frayed, damaged platinum blonde hair is a jarring feature rooted in decades of it being the beauty standard; think Marilyn Monroe, if she left 40 vol bleach in for too long. The idea is to be shocking, to be jarring. To twist the standards of the patriarchy so far until you become mangled, until the idea of “standard” is lost upon you. Makeup was plastered on with reckless abandon to imitate that of sex workers, strippers, and women of low income; some might say it was applied so carelessly to replicate how a child would. The most infuriating misconception about kinderwhore is the false claim that it sexualizes children, or sexualizes the infantilization of grown women, in which the contrary is true. I would guess that Courtney Love, having been assaulted as young as thirteen years old and groomed into prostitution not much older, would say that it is an expression of trauma and a reclamation of her power. Kinderwhore presents a very real, very grim reality in which women and girls are simultaneously made to be sexually charged figures, but also innocent and traditional; a kind of paradox that only presents in the patriarchy, where the senses of men develop women’s beauty standards. Regardless of your age or gender, I recommend you start dressing a little bit kinderwhore, a little bit starker…I know I have.

Thank you so much for making it to the end!! I am so passionate about kinderwhore, and feel so happy knowing that my generation has continued to reshape it and take it into our own hands. Similarly, the entire feminist punk genre is so dear to my heart, especially with the works of Bjelland and Love; every time a man says that Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain, a cute little bunny rabbit dies. If you genuinely believe she did that, reach out to me on Instagram so I can block you. As you can tell, this blog post was lengthy, so kudos to you for sticking with it all the way through. I’ll see you next Tuesday, everybody!

Nom nom nom,

Mila!