@omgleah

2 months ago

This video changed my life. I was 12 and this was playing on late night MTV in 1996 when I caught it by chance. This was one of the most malevolent-sounding songs/covers I'd ever heard, and the video was extremely unnerving and scary but also artistic. I picked up Smells Like Children in the store but didn't buy it right away because the picture and the number of bleeped-out words in the titles kind of scared me. But I made my dad go buy it eventually, who insisted he listen to it along with me, then decided it was okay (lol). When Marilyn Manson came into my life, I was a shy girl on the precipice of puberty, and rejected by my more popular peers. I started to read any magazine that mentioned Manson at all, and through that I learned it was okay to be different, to be weird, even to be scary. I dyed my hair purple, wore fishnets under too-short dresses, tons of jewelry and smudgy eye makeup, and I was happy that way! By seventh grade I was known as "that Manson girl" and I was truly in love with the man and his creations. When Antichrist Superstar came out, my dad bought it for me the day it was released and a whole new world opened up to me. This album was even darker than his earlier work, and I loved it! I know Manson has become a controversial figure lately but he made me who I am today and I can never repay him for that. You just can't imagine the impact of being a "weird girl" and finding a group of musicians who were even weirder and totally unapologetic about it. I felt like I had come home, and that what other people thought of me didn't matter. I learned about so many bands, artists and authors through reading Manson's interviews, and he was smart! I remember him saying "If you want to be like me, be like you", and that stuck with me. He truly was a safe haven for all the kids who didn't fit in; if you didn't fit in out there in the world you would surely fit in at a Manson show. I just can never repay what he gave to me, and no matter what anybody says about him I will always owe him a debt and my gratitude for changing everything for me.

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