Popular Music (2014) Volume 33/2. © Cambridge University Press 2014, pp.

225–242
doi:10.1017/S0261143014000300

Cheer up emo kid: rethinking

the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo
SAM DE BOISE
Department of Sociology, Wentworth College, University of York, York, United Kingdom YO10 5DD
E-mail: sam.deboise@york.ac.uk

Abstract
‘Emo’, an abbreviation of the word ‘emotional’, is a term both used to describe music which places
public emphasis on introspective displays of emotion and a pejorative phrase applied to fans of a
diverse range of music. It is overwhelmingly male-dominated in terms of production and it has
been suggested that the development of emo can be explained with reference to a ‘crisis in masculin-
ity’. This implies that explicit, male emotional expression is historically incompatible with the per-
formance of Western ‘masculinity’. This article first briefly explores how emo emerged and how it
has been linked to the idea of a crisis. It then moves on to conduct a lyrical, discursive analysis
around three themes: emotional expression and relationships; overt chauvinism; and ‘beta male
misogyny’. Through these concepts I suggest that, rather than indicating a crisis or ‘softening’ of
masculinity, there are actually a number of historical continuities with masculinities as a means
of sustaining gendered inequalities.

Introduction
But what does me being from Hawaii have to do with me acting like an emo chick on her
period? (South Park; Parker and Stone 2012)

In April 2013 a 16-year-old male was assaulted in Manchester, UK. This led to
two arrests on the grounds of hate crime directed at a member of the ‘emo subcul-
ture’, the first of its kind in the UK (Pidd 2013). ‘Emo’, a term originating in the
1980s, firstly to describe ‘emotional hardcore punk’ (Greenwald 2003; Williams
2007) and latterly considered a pejorative slang term, applicable to fans of a
diverse range of music, has received little sociological focus. Given that the term
has been around for at least the last 20 years, sociologists have remained largely
quiet on its relationship to society, especially with regards to its representations
of gender.
Notably, emo has been brought into focus in the Western media for its stress on
‘gender bending’ and ‘identity queering’ (ABC4 2007; Sands 2006). Often at the heart
of these moral panics are its ‘effeminising’ effects on (predominantly) young males.
Where emo has received some academic focus there is a similar tendency to see it as a
form of resistance to ‘typical’ masculine traits (Anastasi 2005; Peters 2010) or a prod-
uct of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Williams 2007) because of its stress on emotional
expression. Its relationship to cis-male bodies, particularly, and therefore its potential
to illustrate malleable gender performance (Butler 1998a, 1998b; Halberstam 2007),
225
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 226 Sam de Boise

may suggest, then, that the males who listen to the music construct their identities in
opposition to a ‘mainstream’, ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’ masculinity (Connell 1995).
This in turn is taken as indicative of shifting gendered power relations.
The problems in taking a subcultural approach to music listening aside (dis-
cussed briefly below), this article suggests that emo’s stress on overt, introspective
emotional expression has a much longer history in relation to the male body than
is often acknowledged, although the timing of its formulation (late 1980s) is no coin-
cidence. It therefore locates emo within a broader strategy of male power, or more
properly within a reconfigured continuation of gender inequality. Emo has been cho-
sen as the focus of this article for two main reasons. Firstly it has become a pejorative
term because of its stress on a particular discursive construction of emotional open-
ness; this highlights the structurally Cartesian view of masculinities as socially
enforced through a policing of emotions (Segal 1993; Seidler 1994, 2006a, 2006b,
2007; Connell 1995). As a result, very few people identify with the label. However,
its visibility in media moral panics, arguably for its links to self-harm and ‘self-pity’
(Hill 2011), make it difficult to ignore even if there is little ‘subcultural’ affirmation of
the term. Secondly, the audiences and performers are largely white, middle-class
males – this raises the assumption that the kind of emotional expression that emo
encourages, directly or indirectly, suggests a reworking of powerful ‘masculinity’.
Nevertheless, this is based on a misunderstanding of ‘masculinity’ as singular rather
than multiple and a misreading of emotions as incompatible with masculinity.
Beginning with a brief outline of what emo is, the paper moves on to discuss
how masculinities have been theorised in relation to the suppression of emotion,
characteristic of the Cartesian subject. It demonstrates the intersections between
emo and masculinities with reference to Williams’ (2007) piece around emo as
indicative of a ‘crisis in masculinity’. It finally discursively analyses the lyrics from
a variety of emo bands, selected due to their popularity and influence, in order to
sociologically illustrate several discourses in emo, grouped around three themes:
emotional expression and relationships, overt chauvinism and ‘beta male misogyny’
(Kennedy 2012). These demonstrate how emo and genres with similar lyrical focuses
cannot always be considered a progressive re-working of gendered power relations
or a crisis of masculinity.

What is emo?
While The Get Up Kids apologised for ‘inventing’ it in the mid 1990s (Michaels 2009),
emo, as Greenwald (2003, p. 2) notes, was initially:

. . . short for ‘emocore’, a strain of hardcore punk that was notable for its obsession with
feelings (as opposed to politics, anger and smashing stuff up). Then it started to be applied
to bands that weren’t punk, to fashion trends, to sad-eyed kids in the back of class. It’s
always been mildly derisive . . . [and] every generation that loves emo bands simultaneously
rejects the term while claiming ownership of it. (Greenwald 2003, p. 2)

The term was first applied to bands such as Minor Threat, Embrace, Rites of Spring
and the Promise Ring, who were part of the Washington, DC hardcore scene in the
mid to late 1980s (Greenwald 2003; Kuhn 2010). More notably the case with Minor
Threat, their music was frequently characterised by distorted guitars, 4/8 or 4/16

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 227

signatures, simplistic power chord progressions, often along a minor scale, with
shouted, screamed or strained vocals laid over.
American hardcore, taking inspiration from British punk, was a reaction to the
economic and political conditions of the Reagan/Thatcher era in which many disen-
franchised young people found themselves at odds with the perceived political
establishment. It emerged from the American suburbs, areas of varying white
middle-class affluence, and articulated an aggressive opposition to the middle-class
conservatism of the parent generation, both lyrically and sonically. As Blush’s
(2001) history of hardcore argues, hardcore retained core elements of punk
(anti-establishment lyrics, loud distorted guitars, short three-chord songs, simple
and fast rhythms) and rejected New Wave bands’ ‘art-school baggage’. Instead he
suggests that it fulfilled a need for ‘something more primal and immediate’ (Blush
2001, p. 13). Hardcore shows were typically male dominated and involved ritual
physical violence, with many of the young men engaging in intensely homosocial,
‘hypermasculine’ displays. This tended to exclude women from the spaces, despite
an avowedly egalitarian ethos (Blush 2001, pp. 34–8).
While emo was inspired by hardcore and emanated from similar suburban
areas, bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbreaker were slower and more
melodic than hardcore and made greater use of vocal and instrumental dynamic
range. Later bands, such Weezer, TGUK and Brand New and Taking Back
Sunday, also experimented with different chord progressions (there was a wide-
spread use of minor seventh chords) and a greater variety of rhythms, frequently
involving half-time ‘breakdowns’. In contrast to punk’s aversion to musical ‘preten-
tiousness’ (Hebdige 1979) musicians were often more unashamedly technically adept
and did not rely almost exclusively on basic I, IV, V ‘power-chord’ patterns.
Significantly there is also a direct link between 1990s emo bands and 1980s post
punk bands such as the Cure, the Smiths and Joy Division,1 both musically and lyrically.
Emo bands of the 1990s, like post-punk groups, also tended to place more emphasis on
vocal harmonies and melody. The vocal qualities of singers in emo bands echo ‘a slight-
ly prepubescent nasal quality with a diaphragmatic push that resembles the arrogant
vocalizations of British punk’ (Williams 2007, p. 153), but there is generally much less
emphasis on shouting and much more on singing; typically considered ‘feminine’
due to its links with embodiment (Green 1993; Armstrong 2008).
There are few obvious similarities between Minor Threat and Taking Back
Sunday. While undoubtedly all of these bands owed an allegiance to punk, particu-
larly in the use of heavily distorted guitars, the main commonality between them is
the lyrical focus on individual, subjective feelings of insecurity or hurt. As Greenwald
(2003, p. 15) notes, the shift from hardcore to emo marked a significant move from
‘extroverted rage to internal turmoil’ and as Kuhn (2010, p. 16) suggests, emo/emo-
core initially emerged out of the DC hardcore scene as ‘a conscious attempt to go
beyond the hardcore tough guy image, musically, lyrically and image wise’.
Lyrically in emo there is usually reference to (heterosexual) relationships which
tend to focus on existing, unrequited or lost love, as well as other personal relation-
ship anxieties. While emo is obviously not the first genre to focus largely on these
issues, there is a marked emphasis on how specific circumstances make the (almost
exclusively) male lyricists feel. This particular aspect of the range of music which has
been termed ‘emo’, is markedly different from many Anglophone punk bands who
tended to (and still do) focus on ‘political’ as opposed to ‘personal’ issues.2 This is
also what sets it apart from ‘hypermasculinist’ hardcore.

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 228 Sam de Boise

There are undoubtedly problems with analysing music using genre-based tax-
onomies (Savage 2006; Warde et al. 2007) or subcultural affiliation (Bennett 1999;
Blackman 2005; Hesmondhalgh 2005; Moore 2005). As already highlighted, what is
labelled ‘emo’ has differed in construction, style and tone of the music and the fash-
ions attributed to emo ‘fans’ over time. This is further complicated by the notion that,
because of its pejorative undertones, few bands or fans actually identify with the
label (Hill 2011, p. 144). Therefore it does not represent a coherent style or genre
(Greenwald 2003, p. 4). Peters (2010), for example, focuses on the queering of gender
through the appropriation of makeup and ‘peacockish’, flamboyant or dandy-esque
style. However, few, if any, of the bands already mentioned dress in this way.
Nevertheless, the term emo has been applied to all of them and a variety of others,
both in the UK and the US.
Aside from the problems in defining subcultures, the focus on ‘subcultural
style’ as indicative of shifting relations ignores the fact that males listening to glam
rock (Auslander 2006; Branch 2012), goth (Brill 2008) and punk (Hebdige 1979) uti-
lised similar standards of dress as ‘contemporary’ emo, yet gendered behaviour
did not necessarily change as a result of these fashions; this was especially the
case with punk (Miles 1997; O’Brien 1999; Reddington 2007; Downes 2012).
‘Subcultural style’ may be more of a marketing strategy to perpetuate consumer
choice (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997 [1947], p. 123; Hesmondhalgh 2007)3 rather
than a manifestation of anticapitalist (see Moore 2005) or antisexist (see Frith and
McRobbie 1978; Leonard 2007) politics. This article is, therefore, less concerned
with focussing on the issue of ‘subcultural’ style and more on how emo can be under-
stood as a locus of competing temporal and gendered discourse.

Hegemonic masculinity, emotions, music

Cultural texts are an important tool of analysis inasmuch as they reveal something
of the structure of power relations in society (Adorno 1945, 1975, 1976, 1981, 2004;
McClary 1991; Adorno and Horkheimer 1997 [1947]; DeNora 2003a, 2003b).
Culture is also integral to work around masculinities, which has emphasised how
it ‘naturalises’ certain socially produced values and behaviours, leading to the struc-
tural reinforcement of gendered inequalities (Carrigan et al. 1985; Connell 1987, 1995;
Horrocks 1995; Edwards 2006). As Connell (1995) and others utilising Connell have
argued (see Messerschmidt 2012), when cultural texts correspond to institutional
power they work to perpetuate and legitimate gendered privilege.
Connell termed the strategy by which men retain power through gender as
‘hegemonic masculinity’, defined as:

The configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the
problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the
dominant position of men and the subordination of women. (Connell 1995, p. 77)

While the concept has been revisited and reformulated in recent years (Connell and
Messerschmidt 2005; Aboim 2010; Messerschmidt 2012), its central component remains
that representations and performances of gender (for a definition of the difference
between sex and gender see Rubin 1975) are themselves configurations of power,
which guarantee the position of some men, predominantly those who identify as
white, heterosexual and middle class. Masculinities in Connell’s view are constructed

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 229

in relation to femininities and ‘other’ masculinities (for example gay masculinities),

which cultural representations and texts help to ‘naturalise’ as the ‘currently accepted
answer’, constructed in line with particular historic and spatial factors.
One of the core ways in which hegemonic masculinity was historically legiti-
mated, according to Connell, was a disavowal of emotional expression:

Classical philosophy from Descartes to Kant . . . constructed reason and science through
oppositions with the natural world and with emotions. With masculinity defined as a
character structure marked by rationality, and Western civilization, defined as the bearer of
reason to a benighted world, a cultural link between the legitimation of patriarchy and the
legitimation of empire was forged. (Connell 1995, pp. 186–7)

The influence of Cartesianism, splitting the ‘rational mind’ from the ‘emotional
body’ (Barbalet 2001, p. 34), has characterised emotions as animalistic tendencies
which have to be controlled in order to assert a specifically Westernised notion of
‘masculinity’ (Petersen 1998, 2004). Thus, because music is the ‘cultural material
par excellence of emotion’ (DeNora 2000, p. 46) to a certain extent, as McClary
(1991) notes, most music has been historically ‘feminised’ (particularly, she high-
lights, in Anglophone countries).
Similarly, as Biddle and Gibson’s (2009) collection of essays4 demonstrates,
music has tended to occupy an uneasy place alongside Western conceptions of mas-
culinity. As Castiglione in Il Cortegiano, a key text in the formulation of Western
ideals of masculinity (Forth 2008), explicitly stated:

I think that music, along with many other vanities, is indeed well suited to women, and
perhaps also to others who have the appearance of men, but not to real men; for the latter
ought not to render their minds effeminate and afraid of death. (Castiglione 1528, cited in
Weiss and Taruskin 1984, p. 80, emphasis added)

Male musicians and composers have therefore arguably tended to emphasise rational
detachment from mere ‘sensuous experience’ as integral to ‘formal’ aesthetic critique
and musical production (McClary 1991, p. 17), as a means of distancing themselves
from ‘femininity’. This undoubtedly has mediated how texts are embedded and
understood within the Western musical canon (Biddle and Gibson 2009).
As McClary (1991, p. 55) also observes, ‘constructions of gender and sexuality in
music vary widely from time to time and from place to place’. Feminist musicologists
have therefore pointed out that music is gendered inasmuch as ideas around music and
specific sounds are constructed in line with, and help to construct, ideas around gender.
To a certain extent this means that cultural constructions of gender have also been sus-
tained through the proliferation of different musical genres. For example, metal, hard
rock, rap and hardcore have all been accused of embodying ‘hypermasculinity’ (Frith
and McRobbie 1978; Blush 2001; Jarman-Ivens 2007) and certain genres are considered
more or less ‘authentic’ due to discursive gendering (see Davies 2001; Railton 2001;
Leonard 2007). Exploring music as a consequence of and contributor to gender relations
therefore helps us to understand sexual inequalities in any given society.

Emo as a crisis of masculinity

As pointed out, emo has been accused of encouraging ‘gender bending’. What this
critique actually centres on are young men who listen to the music perceptibly

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 230 Sam de Boise

behaving in more ‘feminine’ ways. As Gibson (2009, p. 52) notes, in early modern
England there was a belief that without conscious regulation, listening to certain
kinds of music could induce the humour of melancholy and that music could have
‘the same effeminizing effects on men as real women’. It is interesting, then, to
note that the moral panics around emo share obvious similarities with the idea of
the music encouraging a form of (problematic) melancholic behaviour. Yet, unlike
early modern music, emo actively espouses personal anxieties and emotions, embra-
cing the ‘embodied feminine’ and distancing itself both from the ‘tough guy’ image
(Kuhn 2010, p. 16) and from the ‘rational’ composer.
This fits with arguments that suggest that we are witnessing a crisis (Bly 1990;
Horrocks 1994; Faludi 1999; Benatar 2012) and/or softening of ‘masculinity’ (Forrest
2010; McCormack and Anderson 2010; Roberts 2012). As proponents of these posi-
tions have suggested, due to large-scale political and economic changes, male
power is in decline and this has caused a ‘loss’ of masculine identity leading to a
reworking of gender power dynamics. These changes include the gains made by
feminist activists and scholars, the increase of women into the labour market, rising
family separation rates, ‘absent’ fathers and a decline in manual labour and ‘bread-
winner’ jobs (McDowell 2000; Edwards 2006).
Central to this is also the idea that men have become more emotionally sensitive
which, as Illouz (2007) has suggested, was one of the main impacts of feminism.
Through the feminist aphorism of ‘the personal is political’ she notes that:

[extracting] emotions from the realm of inner life . . . put[s] them at the center of selfhood and
sociability in the form of a cultural model that has become widely pervasive . . . Under the aegis
of a psychological model of ‘communication’, emotions have become objects to be thought of,
expressed, talked about, argued over, negotiated and justified. (Illouz 2007, pp. 36–7)

Academic arguments around the ‘pure’ relationship (Giddens 1992) or desire

for more egalitarian partnerships (Bauman 2003) also suggest that women’s increas-
ing economic independence has caused fundamental shifts in the organisation of
men’s emotional life. This may explain then why emo emerges in the mid to late
1980s; as a response to changes in gender relations which sees the apparent erosion
of ‘traditional’ male bases of power and increasing demands directed at men to ‘get
in touch with their sensitive sides’.
Williams (2007) has made this link directly, stating that ‘in many ways, current
emo rock embodies what journalists and sociologists have referred to as a so-called
crisis of masculinity’ (Williams 2007, p. 146). This is because, she argues, ‘emo cap-
tures the changes in cultural attitudes about masculinity [through] the musical signif-
iers of emotional weakness – that is, such ‘undesirable’ qualities like vulnerability,
femininity, weakness – while attempting to retain the musical signifiers of aggression
that are the bedrock of the punk/hardcore musical style’ (Williams 2007, p. 152). The
juxtaposition between ‘aggressive’ and ‘soft’ instrumentation, vocal timbre, and the
lyrical content, she opines, seem to suggest the tensions between historic expectations
placed on males to be emotionally inexpressive and new expectations to be ‘more
emotionally’ forthcoming (Williams 2007, p. 146).
Crucially, Williams argues, ‘the expansion of musical ideas, lyrics, and instru-
mentation [in emo] are slowly becoming acceptable as an indicator of emotional tur-
moil, insecurities, vulnerability, and other emotions beyond one-dimensional
stereotypes of men’s experiences’ (Williams 2007, p. 157). In this way, the musical

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 231

characteristics that emo adopts are indicative of changing structures and discourses
around how males ‘should’ behave, while representing a temporal lag in the uncer-
tainties associated with performing ‘masculinity’. Emo therefore both gives a voice to
those insecurities and provides a cathartic function in exposing feelings of isolation
and angst (Hill 2011, p. 148). In this way emo could be explained entirely within
the framework of a crisis of masculinity.
While music in general need not be considered ‘feminine’, emo arguably sonic-
ally communicates a loss of emotional control and because its lyrical content especial-
ly is so concerned with displaying emotional vulnerability and dependency, it
presents an important case for exploring a re-working of ‘masculinity’. If the per-
formance of gender is crucial to its structural integrity (West and Zimmerman
1987; Simpson 1994; Butler 1998b; McNay 2004), then emo’s popularity may be
symptomatic of a decline in the historical legitimacy of emotional suppression linked
to gendered male power.

Emo as a reconfiguration of gendered power

Whilst Williams’ argument is compelling, I want to suggest that, far from indicating a
crisis in masculinity, emo embodies certain dialectical tensions which were always
historically present in ‘masculinity’ (Hitchcock and Cohen 1999; Aboim 2010).
These tensions are therefore symptomatic of a reconfiguration and a continuation
of unequal gender relations, rather than a decline in male hegemonic power. To illus-
trate this, this article now turns to providing a discursive reading of emo lyrics, taken
from several influential emo bands. Drawing inspiration from Rogers’ (2005) work,
which adopts a discursive approach to ‘lads’ mags’, I want to offer a more nuanced
understanding of how multiple discourses are propagated through emo, in order to
illustrate a number of gendered power dynamics.
As Rogers highlights, conventional feminist readings of lads’ mags tend to
emphasise how they encourage a ‘nakedly’ [sic] misogynistic attitude to women as
an expression of patriarchal dominance. She however observes several tensions
between discourses of certainty, uncertainty and danger, present in the magazines,
that ‘allow men to take intimate relationships seriously while maintaining a version
of traditional masculinity’ leading to a ‘masculinisation of intimacy’ (Rogers 2005,
p. 192); therefore intimacy is not necessarily ‘feminine’ even if it is precariously
balanced alongside other, more visible discourses.5
This suggests that, as Foucault (1979, p. 100) argues, power should not be under-
stood as ‘accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant dis-
course and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can
come into play in various strategies’. We therefore need to focus on nonlinear readings
of music and gender in order to illustrate how gender in music entails multiple strat-
egies of domination and consent. What a similar reading of emo song lyrics reveals
is that, far from destabilising gendered assumptions, there are in fact also numerous his-
torical continuities with cultural constructions of masculinities as frameworks of power.
While there are solid arguments about interpreting gender through
‘acousmètres or beings in sound’ (Biddle and Gibson 2009, p. 227) rather than lyrics,
as already noted it is lyrical rather than stylistic homogeneity that has defined what
has been labelled as emo over the course of the past 20 years. It is also problematic to
suggest, for example, that ‘loud’ sounds are de facto ‘masculine’ and soft sounds are

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 232 Sam de Boise

‘feminine’, as this tends toward an ahistorical framework, emphasising singular con-

ceptions of gender as conflated with male or female bodies. As outlined later there
are multiple masculinities and numerous contradictions inherent within a seemingly
coherent performance of gender in music (Jarman-Ivens 2007, p. 5). This problema-
tises gendering a sound or genre as ‘masculine’. For these reasons I am focussing
entirely on lyrics in order to elaborate competing discourses.

Emotional expression and relationships

As noted earlier, the most consistent characteristic of what is labelled emo is a focus on
feelings of anxiety and insecurity as a result of relationships. A cursory glance at song
titles also reveals a strong heteronormative bias. She Drove me to Daytime Television, Her
Words Destroyed my Planet, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl can Have with her Clothes on, Sugar
We’re going Down and Hey Girl are all prime candidates. The lyrics and videos are often
focused on monogamous, heterosexual relationships and the problems that these entail.
The homogeneity in subject matter is a particularly striking feature and emo songs are
usually concerned with unrequited or lost affection from the male perspective. In one
respect they do little to disrupt any gendered assumptions around sexual or romantic
desire, as the ‘object’ of affection is almost always female. This has the effect of natur-
alising a ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich 1980) which is integral to constructions of
hegemonic gender relations (Connell 1995).
Nevertheless, a greater willingness to discuss emotions in or through relation-
ships has often been viewed as an indication of changing masculinities because of the
historic stress on dominant forms of ‘masculinity’ as autonomous from emotional
‘dependency’ (Seidler 1994, p. 149). Allen’s (2007) research, beginning from this
premise, notes that:

Because romantic masculinities can be characterized by a softer, more sensitive expression of

male sexual subjectivity, they appear to offer an alternative to hegemonic forms of masculinity.
Their nonhegemonic potential also seems to stem from the way that romantic masculinities
appear to contest aspects of hegemonic masculinity such as emotional remoteness. (Allen
2007, p. 147)

What is particularly noticeable in many emo song lyrics are the links between love as
a physical survival need and the affective pain of being in love. The metaphors
invoked here are often linked to physical harm, suggesting that emotions are painful
but that love in particular is a necessary source of pain:

But I’m lying awake now and I’m holding your picture. It’s so cold here without you. And I
need you now, cause it’s killing me. And I wish somehow, you were here with me. (Blessthefall,
40 Days, 2011)

So cut my wrists and black my eyes. So I can fall asleep tonight, or die. Because you killed me.
(Hawthorne Heights, Ohio is for Lovers, 2004)

I drop down onto my knees, the sun is hanging low through leaves. I know my love I drove
you away. I’m dying, trying to change. (Saves the Day, Deranged and Desperate; Conley 2011)

Ever since this began, I was blessed with a curse. And for better or for worse I was born into a
hearse. I know I said my heart beats for you. I was lying girl, it beats for two. (Bring me the
Horizon, Blessed with a Curse; Sykes 2011).

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 233

This demonstrates a certain ambivalence toward masculinities (Rogers 2005) through

an almost masochistic desire to engage in practices which encourage ‘negative’ emo-
tions. The admission of hurt or distress here indicates dependency on the other,
which may be considered part of a ‘previously subordinated romantic masculinity’
(Allen 2007), because self-worth is derived from the other’s recognition of the indi-
vidual as an object of sexual or romantic desire (Illouz 2012, p. 130). In this respect,
it appears as if males are submitting themselves to situations which destabilise a
powerful sense of self; in explicitly equating their very existence (living as opposed
to dying) with validation by a female other.
Because the idea of love as ‘madness’ undermines the capacity for rational judg-
ment and is therefore experienced as a lack of freedom, there is an assumption that
the type of anxiety caused by love necessarily transforms gender relations. However,
love in the fragments outlined below is actually often painted as constraining rather
than enabling:

There’s not a lot that I feel obliged to share or talk about . . . You hold me down. (Motion City
Soundtrack, Hold Me Down, 2005)

Isn’t this messed up how I’m just dying to be him. (Fall Out Boy, Sugar We’re Going Down;
Wentz 2005)

Anything is better than the time you spent hoping I’d get it sorted out . . . If we’d only stayed
together I might not have fallen apart. (Motion City Soundtrack, Her Words Destroyed my
Planet; Pierre 2010)

And will you tell all your friends, you’ve got your gun to my head? (Taking Back Sunday, Cute
Without the E (Cut from the Team), 2002)

The idea of emotions as constraints then is a specifically gendered discourse

entirely congruent with a Cartesian mistrust of emotions as unanticipated con-
sequences of the natural body (Seidler 1994, 2007; Gibson 2009), one which
has precedents which stretch back further emo’s genesis. In this respect, then,
emotions do not compromise a Cartesian masculinity because, as Barbalet
(2001, p. 34) argues, according to Descartes, ‘persons can take no responsibility
for their feelings and emotions. This is because these are not things that persons
do, but what their bodies do to them’. Men cannot help experiencing ‘negative’
emotions but nor do they celebrate them, leaving the rational Cartesian
subject intact.
More than young men being just victims of their ‘unanticipated’ emotions,
however, there is also the idea that women are deliberately cruel or vindictive, that
they are to blame for causing emotional anxieties:

You know you do, you kill me well. You like it too, and I can tell. You never stop until my final
breath is gone. (Hawthorne Heights, Ohio is for Lovers, 2004)

I’ll slit my throat with the knife I pulled out of my spine. Maybe when you find out that I’m
dead. You’ll realize what you did to me. And if my lungs still let me breathe. Would you be there
for me? (Silverstein, Smashed into Pieces, 2003)

Tied to the testing of wills. When my heart breaks and spills. Left to the sight of the sky. In
your arms I’m defined. . . . Yet I’m nothing more than a line in your book. (Funeral for a Friend,
Juneau, 2003)

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 234 Sam de Boise

What are we doing? I am so in love with you. I forgot what I wanted to say . . . You won’t change
your ways in time. If I just save you, you could save me too. (You Me at Six, No One Does it
Better; Franceschi 2011)

At the heart of your convictions sits a broken man, that needs to understand. I am owed this
now. This is, all I ever ask from you. The only thing you couldn’t to do. Tell me the whole truth. You
don’t know, yourself. How can I know you? (Taking Back Sunday, This is All Now, 2011)

And isn’t this, exactly where you’d like me? I’m exactly where you like me you know, pray for
love in a lap dance and paying in naivety. (Panic! at the Disco, But it’s Better if You do; Ross
2005)

Males are not just slaves to their emotions, then, but their emotional anxiety is the
result of female connivance. This links to a ‘backlash’ against the gains made by
women’s liberation movements, whereby men tend portray themselves as victims
(Faludi 1992; Banyard 2010). They are therefore not necessarily responsible for
their emotions but have their ‘natural’ emotions used against them by women.
The notion that expressions of love indicate a crisis of masculinity is predicated
on the idea that giving control of oneself to the other interferes with emotional self-
governance and thus autonomy. However, the idea that romantic or sexual relation-
ships are fraught with insecurities for men does not necessarily challenge hegemonic
male power, as these public declarations are also not particularly new. Patriarchal
relationships have historically been sustained through normative narratives of
romantic love and intimacy (see Duncombe and Marsden 1993; Jackson 1993;
Wouters 1998; Ahmed 2010; Illouz 2012). Therefore ‘emotional intimacy’ or ‘sensitiv-
ity’ in and of itself may not have been as antithetical to the construction of masculin-
ities through music in the way that other authors suggest.
On this point, Illouz (2012, pp. 12, 34–5) identifies how in Western, heterosexual
courtship practices during the 18th and 19th centuries, men were always required to
win women’s affection. As women ultimately made the final decision, Illouz argues,
this caused a degree of anxiety and uncertainty for male suitors. Yet despite having a
form of personal power over men in this respect, the structure of female choice in pre-
modern societies was fundamentally unegalitarian. These observations also resonate
with McClary’s analysis of sexual politics in classical music where she explicitly
states that late 19th century classical music was ‘rife with portraits of hapless men
who are seduced from their transcendental quest by feminine sensuality’ (McClary
1991, p. 55). Just as Rousseau was bemoaning a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in the 18th cen-
tury (Forth 2008), the narratives McClary identifies in 19th century music are more of
an expression of the fact that masculinities do not always rely on personal expres-
sions of power to legitimate them as forms of power (Hearn 2004). Men’s personal
anxieties either support the social order or do little to disrupt it, and arguments
around male emotional insecurity, implicated in the crisis of masculinity, are not his-
torically novel.

Overt chauvinism
Greenwald (2003) notes that:

though they may disagree on almost everything else, one characteristic shared by Vagrant,
Drive-Thru, and Deep Elm [emo record labels] is that none of the labels has a single female

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 235

artist signed to its roster . . . though Vagrant and Drive-Thru’s emo acts are a long way from the
naked misogyny of hair-metal or some hip-hop, there is something equally disturbing in their
one-sided fury at all of the females who did them wrong. (Greenwald 2003, p. 133)

His brief chapter on this issue highlights that the lyrics of early 2000s emo particular-
ly, contained explicit and often violent references to taking revenge on women. He
makes special mention of lyrics in songs by Brand New (Greenwald 2003, p. 136)
and Saves the Day (Greenwald 2003, p. 135), demonstrating a disturbing, often
not-so-thinly veiled, misogyny at work in the lyrics of emo songs. Take also, for
example, Funeral for a Friend’s (2003) She Drove me to Daytime Television, where
vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye declares that:

I like the way you cry. Break my heart and break my hands and let me down. I want to snap
your neck in two. And leave you for dead, you are so dead

Taking Back Sunday’s (2006) Makedamnsure underscores ‘romantic’ affection with

sinister threats:

I just wanna break you down so badly, In the worst way. . . . I’m gonna make damn sure that you
can’t ever leave. No, you won’t ever get too far from me

While the Used (2002) make explicit reference to physical violence against partners in
Buried Myself Alive:

My foot on your neck and I finally have you right where I want you

These quite explicit references to violence as a means of working out the types of feel-
ings of anxiety and insecurity already outlined are hardly emblematic of a softer,
more emotionally attuned masculinity. They instead rely on more ‘conventional’
form of masculine domination (Bourdieu 2001), namely the use or threat of physical
force to guarantee consent.
A subsequently troubling aspect of emo is how women are often labelled as
promiscuous and this is identified as a source of male pain. There is both the
sense that the male protagonists make demands for greater emotional intimacy or
that they are being ‘used’ for sex. Here the separation between sex and love is
invoked, with the lyricists usually privileging the latter. This could be taken to under-
mine a normative definition of masculinity, because the separation of emotions from
sex are presumed to be a key characteristic of male gendered practice (Illouz 2012,
pp. 103–4). Thus it appears to go against the notion that sexual ‘conquests’ with
numerous partners are a core tenet of male identities (see Simpson 1994; Flood
2008). For example:

I’m a screw up of epic proportions . ..Hypermatic and dime store dramatic; a conduit for pain.
She said don’t speak don’t think just take it off. I said don’t speak don’t think just mess me up.
(Motion City Soundtrack, True Romance; Pierre 2012)

I’m just a notch in your bedpost but you’re just a line in a song. (Fall Out Boy, Sugar We’re Going
Down; Wentz 2005)

Please make the technology. So I can turn up your love like some cold machine. Don’t feed me
scraps from your bed. I won’t be the stray coming back just to be fed. (Brand New, Not the Sun;
Lacey 2006)

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 236 Sam de Boise

‘This is the first and last time’, he said. She fakes a smile and presses her hips into his. He keeps
his hands pinned down at his sides. He’s holding back from telling her exactly what it really
feels . . . like. He is the lamb, she is the slaughter. She’s moving way too fast and all he wanted was to
hold her. (Brand New, Sic Transit Gloria . . . Glory Fades; Lacey 2003)

Alas but what a shame, what a shame the poor groom’s bride is a whore.6 (Panic! At the Disco, I
Write Sins not Tragedies; Ross 2005)

If I could take you somewhere. I’d take you to the darkest place. Scatter you in art forms.
Admire the whore. (Escape the Fate, Cellar Door, 2006)

You slut me into this decision. (Taking Back Sunday, Semi Automatic, 2011)

Women here are depicted as the more emotionally detached in sexual encoun-
ters, reversing the cultural trope that men should be ‘naturally’ more interested in sex
in order to be considered masculine (see Petersen 1998). In the lines ‘don’t feed me
scraps from your bed, I won’t be the stray coming back just to be fed’ and ‘she’s mov-
ing way too fast and all he wanted was to hold her’, women are depicted as more
interested in casual sex than men. Men are, in turn, portrayed as victims of female
sexuality. In one respect this may be taken as a marker of a ‘softer masculinity’,
one which does not reduce women to sexual objects and craves ‘real’ intimacy or
it could also be suggested that female sexual liberation has caused a crisis of male
security in stable relationships (Giddens 1992).
However, what is also clear is that despite ‘only’ infrequent, overtly misogynis-
tic overtones (‘what a shame the poor groom’s bride is a whore’) the sexual promis-
cuity that men tend to emphasise as integral to their gender identities (Flood 2008) is
still stigmatized in women as a by-product of their heartlessness or ‘unfemininity’
(see Skeggs 1997; Adkins and Skeggs 2004). The ‘cruel girl’ is demonised as an aber-
ration from the ‘good girl’ and is chastised as a ‘whore’ for enjoying sex for its own
sake or having sex with multiple sexual partners. Bourgeois ideals of virginity as
essential to female respectability have a very long history and it is clear that the dou-
ble standard around female sexuality still resonates (Kreager and Staff 2009; Reid
et al. 2011). Emo therefore also imposes a dubious puritanical moralism on women
and equates romantic desirability with sexual exclusivity.
As the possessive pronouns below indicate, the ideal relationship is one based
on ownership, where the female devotes herself entirely to the male singer/lyricist.
Thus there is very little in these narratives that suggests a reworking of patriarchal
gender relations:

I want a girl who will laugh for no one else. When I’m away she puts her makeup on the shelf.
When I’m away she never leaves the house. I want a girl who laughs for no one else. (Weezer, No
One Else; Cuomo 1994)

Don’t ever forget. My only, you own me, if you’d only see . . . promise me you’ll still be mine.
(The Get up Kids, Central Standard Time, 2001)

As Jessica Hopper has suggested, emo in this respect ‘relegates [females] to the role
of muse or heartbreaker, an object of either misery or desire. Emo just builds a cath-
edral of man pain and then celebrates its validation’ (cited in Greenwald 2003,
p. 134). Thus female sexuality in emo is subject to disciplining, regulatory mechan-
isms around appropriate and inappropriate sexual conduct, framed largely in

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 237

terms of what males consider as romantically desirable, that is, a stable, heterosexual,
monogamous relationship with an idealised version of chaste femininity and of patri-
monial ownership.

‘Beta male misogyny’

As Kennedy (2012) commented with regards to ‘twee’ (a genre which shares much of
the same lyrical subject matter as emo) ‘[there is] an implication that men can – and
perhaps even should . . . feign sympathy with feminist anger about institutionalised,
“traditional” misogyny in order to pull’. What he brilliantly coins as ‘beta male mis-
ogyny’ implies resistance to ‘traditional’ (some may say hegemonic) forms of
behaviour, in order to achieve the same desired outcomes as those perceived as ‘trad-
itionally’ masculine.
Beta male misogyny foregrounds competition for female affection and, more
importantly, possession as a means of asserting moral superiority over other men.
Therefore, as Kennedy notes, this is an attempt to:

heal old playground wounds, and there’s certainly no desire for gender equality behind it . . .
the new man, apparently, will gradually come to assert his authority over the Neanderthals of
days gone by, wielding his intellect and therapeutic literacy as, once upon a time, white-shirted
archetypes splashed on the Brut and flexed their biceps.

There are, in accounts which stress a ‘crisis’ or ‘softening’ of masculinity, often fun-
damental misreadings of ‘masculinity’ as singular rather than plural (see Hitchcock
and Cohen 1999). For example, Williams (2007) stresses that emo enables men to
enact less ‘one-dimensional stereotypes’, yet Connell’s key insight is that male gender
identities have historically not only been constructed in opposition to femininity but
also in relation to ‘other’ forms of masculinities. Crucially this means that there could
be no crisis of a singular, authentic masculinity to deviate from in the first place.
As both Aboim (2010) and Coles (2009) have also noted, there may be multiple
hegemonic masculinities within societies. Therefore the idea that (hegemonic) mas-
culinity is a fixed type of individual or social group, rather than a series of inter-
relations between institutions, representations and actors is mistaken (Connell and
Messerschmidt 2005).
In emo, as in ‘twee’, the apparent reworking of a masculinist aesthetic is under-
pinned by patrimonial chivalry and male competition. The idea that the female needs
to be ‘saved’ from making the wrong romantic choice undermines her agency and
autonomy, indicating that the protagonist, arrogantly, believes he knows what is
best for her. As Halberstam (1998, p. 17) has suggested, this view relies on ‘a slightly
old fashioned feminism that understands women as endlessly victimized within sys-
tems of male power’; in short, ‘chivalry’ is comparable to chauvinism. It becomes the
lyricist’s ‘duty’ to point out that she is making the wrong choice, while at the same
time portraying himself as the more appropriate suitor and emphasising his qualities
over more ‘traditional’ stereotypes.

I’m looking down on you from above . . . Loverboy, you’re playing those hearts like toys. Don’t you
feel bad . . . Feel bad for them? (You Me At Six, Loverboy; Franceschi 2011)

You hate him more than I know, yes I wrote this for you. You need him, I could be him, I could
be an incident but I’m still trying and that’s more than I can say for him . . . Where is your boy

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 238 Sam de Boise

tonight, I hope he is a gentleman. (Fall Out Boy, Grand Theft Autumn/Where is your Boy; Wentz
and Stump 2003)

Then think of what you did and how I hope to God he was worth it. When the lights are dim
and your heart is racing as your fingers touch his skin. I’ve got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter
touch, a better fuck, than any boy you’ll ever meet, sweetie you had me . . . you know it will always
just be me. (Panic! At the Disco, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl can Have Without Taking Her Clothes
Off; Ross 2005)

In the last case, Brendon Urie’s/Ryan Ross’ declaration that they are a ‘better fuck
than any boy you’ll ever meet’ directly espouses the same logic of heteronormative
competition that is a cornerstone of hegemonic masculinity. In this case, as Lovell
(2000, p. 20) has noted with regard to malestream approaches, ‘women tend to circu-
late as repositories of social value’. Thus the logic of competition for (hetero)sexual
partners by being more emotionally open asserts autonomy from rational, ‘main-
stream’ masculinity (Forth 2008, p. 28) and superiority over other ‘Neanderthal’
men, while reducing women to objects in order to gain advantage over other men.
This is entirely congruent with a notion of hegemonic masculinity or masculinities
(Coles 2009).
As Connell clearly states, ‘I stress that hegemonic masculinity embodies “a cur-
rently accepted strategy”. When conditions for the defence of patriarchy change, the
bases of dominance of a particular masculinity are eroded . . . Hegemony then, is a his-
torically mobile relation’ (Connell 1995, p. 77, emphasis added). This suggests that what
is labelled as a crisis of masculinity, observed through emo’s ‘inner turmoil’, may
actually be an ideological reworking of male power which positions ‘sensitive’
men above ‘Neanderthal’ men in light of economic, social and political change (see
Edwards 2006). In this way, emo is indicative of societal shifts which guarantee
the dominant position of some males rather than a crisis of masculinity. Far from
destabilising many of the core tenets of ‘masculinity’, ideas of chivalry and beta
male misogyny, prevalent in emo, are superficial alterations of previous perfor-
mances of masculinities. Again, they represent continuities rather than challenges
to traditional forms of gendered practice.

Conclusions
This article has demonstrated that to see emo as evidence of softening masculinities,
or to see contemporary ‘masculinity’ in crisis is problematic. While a focus on overt
emotional expression appears to be indicative of a destabilising oppressive gender
practices I would suggest that this is not the case. This article has demonstrated
that many of the arguments made around the crisis or softening of ‘masculinity’
fail to draw historic comparisons which support the contradictory practices involved
in maintaining gendered privilege. The intensely homosocial composition of the
bands aside, the embracing of heteronormative relationships as a cornerstone of
the music, the frequent underlying misogyny, the unease with which love compro-
mises individual autonomy and the way in which males are perceived as the victims
of female sexuality, all suggest that emo is merely an aesthetic reworking of gendered
power dynamics.
Songwriters write what they know about and what their audiences can relate
to. However, cultural narratives also construct ideas around gender relations.

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 Cheer up emo kid: rethinking the ‘crisis of masculinity’ in emo 239

Much American emo emanated (and still does) from suburbia – areas of distinctly
white, middle-class privilege. The lyrics undoubtedly reflect the fact that the bands
are young males with very few economic problems or barriers to participation in
public life. The lyrics are self-directed because they stem from musicians’ experiences
so it is unsurprising then that the main problems tend usually to be (heterosexual)
relationships. However, it is how these personal experiences are framed as male vic-
timisation and come to be seen as progressive that is especially problematic.
I write as someone who grew up listening to what has been labelled emo. I also
identified with the same premise critiqued here: that emotional openness and being
‘more emotional’ than the ‘average’ guy represented a progressive stance toward
masculinity. If there is anything to be rescued from music that focuses so singularly
on cis-male relationship experience, it is that lyrically the focus needs to move from
narcissistic ideas of personal pain toward awareness of systemic privilege. Rather
than apportioning blame to women, more emphasis needs to be placed on how emo-
tional experience can be a way of producing new identities and new forms of gender
consciousness. It is only through actively resisting lazy lyrical clichés around gender
difference that music can help to enable more egalitarian form of masculinities.

Endnotes
1. TGUK’s Eudora was a cover album featuring cov-
ers of The Cure’s ‘Close to Me’, New Order’s
‘Regret’ and the Pixies’ ‘Alec Eiffel’. Jimmy Eat
World’s opening track ‘Disintegration’ on their
(2005) Stay on my Side Tonight was a direct refer-
ence to The Cure’s (1989) ‘Disintegration’ and
Brand New’s ‘Mix Tape’ also contained the lyrics
‘and I’m sick of your tattoos and the way you
always criticise The Smiths . . . and Morrissey’.
2. The distinction between the ‘personal’ and the ‘pol-
itical’ was critiqued by feminist accounts in the
1970s and 1980s which attempted to demonstrate
that a discursive separation of domestic and public
life had been used to legitimise women’s exclusion
from institutions which yielded power over them.
Insisting on direct political action is demonstrably
a broader strategy of ‘masculine domination’. The
suggestion by Illouz (2007) that overt emotional
expression comes to signify a political act in itself
is partially due to the impact of feminist critique.
3. ‘Marked differentiations such as those of A and B
films, or of stories in magazines in different price
ranges, depend not so much on subject matter as
classifying, organizing, and labelling consumers.
Something is provided for all so that none may
escape; the distinctions are emphasized and
extended. . . . What connoisseurs discuss as good
or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semb-
lance of competition and range of choice’ (Adorno
and Horkheimer 1997 [1947], p. 123).
4. While Biddle and Gibson’s collection is an excel-
lent exploration of how music relates to the male
body, some of the authors in this collection con-
fuse ‘masculinity’ with being male. As both
Petersen (1998) and Forth (2008) demonstrate,
‘masculinity’ came to mean something different
from being male in the 18th century, suggesting
that there are problems in discussing ‘medieval
masculinity’. Halberstam (1998) also demon-
strates how ‘masculinity’ can be performed by
women; thus, it is not intrinsically linked to the
male body.
5. She highlights, for example, that the advice columns
on sexual prowess belie certain ambivalences
between the certainty of proving oneself through
sex and insecurities around not knowing what to
do and therefore needing advice. It is therefore
incorrect to suggest that male power is legitimated
through positioning intimacy as the antithesis of
sex. It is not just the case then, that male hegemony
is achieved through sexual objectification.
6. Interestingly, in some radio edits the words
‘god damn’ were censored but the word ‘whore’
was not.

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Discography
Blessthefall, ‘40 Days’. Fearless Records. 2011
Brand New, ‘Sic Transit Gloria . . . Glory Fades’. Razor and Tie. 2003
Brand New, ‘Not the Sun’. Interscope. 2006
Bring Me the Horizon, ‘Blessed with a Curse’. Visible Noise. 2011
Escape the Fate, ‘Cellar Door’. Epitaph. 2006
Fall Out Boy, ‘Grand Theft Autumn/Where is your Boy?’ Fueled by Ramen. 2003
Fall Out Boy, ‘Sugar We’re Going Down’. Island. 2005
Funeral for a Friend, ‘Juneau’. Atlantic Records. 2003
Funeral for a Friend, ‘She Drove Me to Daytime Television’. Atlantic Records. 2003
Hawthorne Heights, ‘Ohio is for Lovers’. Victory Records. 2004
Motion City Soundtrack, ‘You Hold me Down’. Epitaph. 2005
Motion City Soundtrack, ‘Her Words Destroyed My Planet’. Columbia. 2010
Motion City Soundtrack, ‘True Romance’. Epitaph. 2012
Panic! At the Disco, ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’. Decaydence/Fueled by Ramen. 2005
Panic! At the Disco, ‘Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off’. Decaydence/
Fueled by Ramen. 2005
Saves the Day, ‘Deranged and Desperate’. Razor and Tie. 2011
Silverstein, ‘Smashed into Pieces’. Victory Records. 2003
Taking Back Sunday, ‘Cute Without the E (Cut from the Team)’. Victory Records. 2001
Taking Back Sunday, ‘Makedamnsure’. Hollywood Records. 2006
Taking Back Sunday, ‘Semi-Automatic’. Warner Bros/Interscope. 2011
Taking Back Sunday, ‘This is All Now’. Warner Bros/Interscope. 2011
The Get Up Kids, ‘Action and Action’. Vagrant Records. 1999
The Get Up Kids, ‘Central Standard Time’. Vagrant Records. 2001
The Used, ‘Buried Myself Alive’. Reprise. 2002
Weezer, ‘No One Else’. DGC. 1994
You Me at Six, ‘Loverboy’. Virgin. 2011
You Me at Six, ‘No One Does it Better’. Virgin. 2011

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