Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t

While thumbing through the current issue of Punk Planet at a local bookstore, I noticed several letters referencing this essay; curiosity motivated me to find it online. Its author, Jessica Hopper, is a Chicago-based publicist whose firm represents a number of emo acts, so this think piece for issue No. 56 of Punk Planet, for which Hopper is also a contributor, is somewhat courageous. Hopper’s point is that emo’s solipsistic loop of adolescent male hypersensitivity doesn’t have a lot to offer to women; its wounded-boy ethos, characterized by musical paybacks for ugly breakups (“album length letters from pussy-jail,” as Hopper put it), should be about as interesting to the average female as a superhero comic book—except for the genre’s popularity. And women deserve better. Worth a read.