Lilith did this look on her lunch break between her history class and literature. When she came out of the bathroom, I thought at first glance that this was a Bowie look.

It’s… not.

There is a large, sebaceous, oozing bloody hole under her hair, too, that I failed to capture in the photo.

One of the things that really impacts me about Lilith and her experimentation with makeup… as little girls, so many of us are taught not to be gross or weird or funny. I know I was raised to be neat and proper; you must maintain your dignity at all costs! Men were allowed to be vulgar and ridiculous, slapstick and absurd. We’re taught that women aren’t as funny as men, and even in horror we’re often marginalized and sidelined in myriad ways – the femme fatale, the final girl, the masochistic, hypersexualized victim.

Lilith isn’t being weaned to any of this, and she couldn’t give a shit what girls are supposed to do. Lilith doesn’t give a fuck. She’s going to be as gross or glamorous or vulgar or funny or loud or polite or proper as she wants to be. Sometimes she wants to feel beautiful, sometimes she wants to feel monstrous, and sometimes she wants to be both at the same time. Or neither. But everything she does for fashion – or horror – she does for herself and no one else, and I hope that never changes.

Lilith’s gleeful middle finger to gender and beauty standards: a hot pink cherry chypre.