Matthew Yglesias links approvingly to an amazingly retrograde article in the New York Observer entitled, diplomatically, "Stuff It, Emo Boy!" Purporting to be a sophisticated exercise in up-to-the-minute trendspotting, the article in fact is a backwards exercise in ironized propaganda for traditional gender roles. Of the offending "emo boys", the article says
Emo boy is not your mother’s "sensitive New Age guy." "He’s not Alan Alda, who’s a little too sappy," as Sharon Graubard, the creative director of ESP Trendlab, a trend-spotting firm, explained. "You could talk to him and he could express feelings, but I feel like the new emo man is more arty, more poetic, has more of an interior life."Ah, the interior life. What that means, more than anything else, is that he’s conflicted—and he needs a woman ... to support him, to help him keep his head on straight and, above all, to listen to him as he goes on and on and on. ...
Emo boys are known to favor soft, floppy vintage T-shirts, flip-flops and low-riding women’s jeans that display a hint of pubic fuzz. "It’s like longer hair and introverted and sensitive," said Ms. Graubard. "Being skinny without muscles is a big part of it."
You can tell an emo boy, according to Ms. Graubard, by the snug fit of his clothing. "They wear a shrunken jacket. It gives them a little tender, boyish, vulnerable look—like they outgrew their clothes," she said.
Notice how the emo boy is constructed in terms of fashion. Having an interior life is not sufficient; you have to dress in a particular way, and a certain skinny build is mandatory. The article quotes Judy Kuriansky, a Manhattan psychiatrist, as saying "This is the type of man that women have been screaming and begging for for years." This demand by women reduces the emo boy to a decorated peacock: an ornamental extra, a trophy for the post-feminist woman. The emo boy is thus placed in an objectified state that women have worked long and hard (not entirely successfully) to resist.
But the trophy, once won, loses much of its glitter. The emo boy is not so desirable anymore, contends the article:
Constance Wyndham, a 24-year-old art critic who lives in the East Village, also decried the role that women have played in creating the emo-boy type. "All of this falls under the broad category of the collateral damage of feminism," she said.
Emo boys are an obvious post-feminist phenomenon: as women stood up and demanded their right to self-expression, men gradually followed suit. Furthermore, as feminism installed itself in an implicit way in the consciousness of young women (even if they disavow the label of "feminist"), men discovered that being sensitive and emotive worked to their benefit. The sexual revolution worked in both directions, opening both sexes up to new possibilities that traditional gender roles prohibited.
But to the array of women quoted in this article, being sensitive is not enough: you have to be tough, too. It's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it scenario, where the new sensitivity is expected to bloom, while keeping in place the old rough Marlboro Man edges. That's a balancing act as impossible for a man as the unrealistic expectations that have been heaped upon women forever: to be at the same time perfect mothers, angelic virgins, demons in the sack, always smiling, but still emotionally open.
These impossible demands on both sexes exemplify the way in which the fashion system, with its eternal demand for constant change, undermines both sexes. The idea of an "interior life" -- an actual way of being in the world -- is anathema. Emotional sensitivity is cast as a matter of style, as if it were a pair of acid-washed jeans to be worn for a couple of seasons and then discarded, remembered only with embarassment. Dr. Kuriansky again:
What I hear from men is: "You’ve asked me to be this way, but there is still a group of women who still go for the bad boy."
With immense pressure to consume, and an infinite array of fashion choices -- or worldview choices -- there is no choice you can make. No matter what you choose, someone in the world will deride you for being out of style. The trendspotting system extends fashion to matters of personality: this year, emotive is out; next year, who knows? What gets lost is any sense of authenticity, or individuality, or simply being who you are. After all, there's no worse crime to a fashion maven than being yourself.
Posted by Chris at December 8, 2004 10:52 AM