Is Emo Just Another Artificially Created Fad?

There are two schools when it comes to emo. One sees that there's something essentially corporate in being emo. It's like the shopping mall of fads - a personality for sale. Just walk into a certain store and walk out with a whole new personality. The other side sees emo as a genuine movement -- something heartfelt and real.

Is emo a mass marketed personality type or simply a label without a cause? Either way one thing's certain, emo draws a lot of attention to itself. To understand what exactly emo is, you have to look at the origin of emo. Only then can you decide for yourself if emo is the real deal or just some artificially generated fad, hyped by MTV to sell Converse tennis shoes and skin-tight jeans.

Emo - The First Label

In the mid '80s, before emo was a fashion statement, it was simply a style of music. Emo was an offshoot of hardcore punk popularized in the Washington D.C. area with bands like Rites of Spring, Gray Matter and others. Emo was short for emotive hardcore, describing a style of music known for its emotional lyrics.

Emo - the Second Label

By the mid '90s emo referred to the scene more than the music. In other words, the word emo became associated with what goes on around the music, rather than the actual music itself. This is a bit of an overstatement, but the term emo expanded from its hardcore beginnings to a more mainstream statement during the mid to late 1990s.

Major record labels, sensing that emo could be the next new hot trend, began promoting and packaging emo like never before.

Emo - the Third Label

As the word emo shifted away from the music, it increasingly became attached to the fans of emo music. While the two are still intertwined, increasingly emo meant a style of fashion leading to the stereotypical emo boy or emo girl seen trudging down school halls.

Emo -- the Fabricated Fad

Here's where emo diverges from music to a full-blown fad. As a marketable fad, emo is practically perfect. It takes teen angst, which has existed since the invention of the teenager (and believe it or not, teenagers are an invention), and packages it as emo. Since one of the core tenets of being emo is a basic belief that "no one understands me" coupled with feelings of alienation, any time someone criticizes a person for being emo, the criticism reinforces the alienation - furthering the person's belief that he or she is emo. This self-reinforcing belief is one of the reasons why being emo is a nearly perfect fad. Attacking emo's pretensions just strengthens the emo kid's beliefs. However, what good is a fad without products to sell? This is the brilliance of emo. With a large majority of emo kids being from upper middle class backgrounds, presumably with lots of disposable income, the appeal to create an emo label and fill it with consumer goods is a key factor in the manufacturing of the emo fad. In short, the target demographic for emo is tailor-made for retailers who want to tap into this lucrative niche market. The emo movement had already been commercialized by the record industry prior to emo emerging as a lifestyle, so is emo a fabricated fad? Perhaps.

Emo - Not a Fabrication

Still others would contend that commercialization began after the fact. In other words, emo was already popular before the hype, and merchandisers just jumped on board once emo became the new "in" thing. There's some credibility to this argument. It's rather like arguing which came first, the chicken or the egg, and it makes sense. Companies would not have become interested in emo, had the movement been too small to be profitable.

Emo - the Controversy

So why is there so much animosity toward emo kids? Part of it is due to the core of what it is to be emo. It's inherently hypocritical to claim to be an individual and then have what amounts to an unofficial dress code. The hypersensitivity displayed by an emo kid makes for an easy target for many high schoolers. The self-pity wrapped in teen angst doesn't earn too many good citizen points either. To many, emo kids come across as self-absorbed, posers hopping aboard a fake bandwagon. Combine that with an art snob mentality, and you have a sub-culture that was made to be ridiculed by other high school stereotypes.