The ‘emo’ label is loosely based on the term emotional. It takes the term, sectors it off and slaps negative connotations onto it, implying that’s it’s a ‘bad thing’ to be an emotional being. To be or look emotional means you are apart of the entire section of society deemed emo because you look, act, dress, and/or behave a certain way. But that’s the fabrication, and it has no merit. By that logic everyone should stop feeling, or at least stop showing and expressing their emotions. But emotions are all we have, really. Without emotions we would all be walking around like zombies, going about our jobs, maximizing our profit margins and boosting our economic investments. Maybe we wouldn’t even do that, because without any real motivation at the end of the day, who really wants to do anything?
Emo exists in technicality, because it’s a fabricated invention within society, but it’s an illusion without merit. I can sort of understand labels like ‘gothic’ which are actually based on a section of history (the medieval times, the Dark Ages). It’s modernized and associated with stereotypes sure, but it has some basis of merit. But I believe both terms to be negative things because they carry and spread stigmas around. If you’re gothic you’re permanently depressed, if you’re constantly whining and wearing second-hand clothes you’re emo. WRONG.
And the stereotypes don’t stop there. There is emo music too! But of course! Emo kids couldn’t survive without their emo music. So someone hears about the emo label, sees a Good Charlotte video. Oh he’s whining, his hair looks too nice, he’s wearing makeup. Definitely emo. A couple of days later a friend of theirs e-mails them a song by Broken Social Scene. The song has a certain sound to it, and a few lyrics that go something like ‘I know that the sound of your heart is a god I can trust/ I don’t love I just fight with the violence in ourselves’. Hmm this is odd. And it definitely has a lot of emotions in it. I know! It’s emo! WRONG. Good Charlotte and Broken Social Scene are light-years apart, my friend. But the friend doesn’t know that, they write the song off, they write the band off, and they probably write a hell of a lot of other stuff off too. Music is emotional.
It’s like Omar of The Mars Volta said:
"Concept album? How can any huge project that takes up most of your life for a year not have a concept? Prog? How can any innovative, forward-thinking art or music not be progressive? It reminds me of when I first heard the label ’emo,’ which was just the most ridiculous label ever. How can anything you put your heart and soul into not be emotional?"
If there were no emotions involved in music, we’d all be product pushers. All music would be flat and dead and pure product; it would all be about the money and no one would feel bad. CDs would be cereal, vinyl would be asparagus, and tapes would be the moldy chicken in the back of the freezer.
More labels breed more labels which breed more stigmas which breed more stigmas. It’s really getting out of hand. A posting on urbandictionary.com defines the term ‘emosexual’ as ‘one who is sexually indeterminate, mainly because their hair is of medium length and they wear make-up’. I’m really worried about this new generation of kids. How are they ever going to survive? Trying to fit in in my generation was hard enough, now they have to fit in with one group while surviving the backlash from every other group out there. And there are too many to count, really. Just when it’s finally starting to become okay for people to be gay or straight, they have to worry about whether or not they’re screamo-emo gay, or metal-grindcore-gothic gay or emo-retro-metrosexual-homosapien-j-rock-gay. I’m getting tired just writing this. I can’t imagine how they feel.
By the logic of the elitist label-lovers, 2Pac is emo (dying is emo!), David Bowie is emo (a boy in makeup is definitely emo), and every kid who has a poor home life and wears glasses is emo. Emo emo emo. Seriously, it’s nonsense.
Emo is dead; it’s time to move on. We are humans; we are emotional beings; we dress how we want to dress; we talk how we want to talk; we listen to what we want to listen to; we act how we want to act, and we do what we want to do. We’re not emo – we’re emotional. And we’re human. But you know, that’s just my opinion. I’m just an emo kid anyway. At least that’s what I hear.