Ethnography Fieldwork - Part 1

When I began to look into this topic, I found two very intriguing blogs that discussed gender and emo. One discussed the lack of women on the performance-side of the genre, and how that made women less a part of the scene. The author felt that one result of this male-dominated scene was that the music content often depicted women as sexual objects or objects of scorn. Women were either used for sexual exploits or the reason the songwriter felt so emotionally angry/self-loathing/hurt. The other author that influenced the beginnings of my research discussed how emo was a genre counter to the hegemonic masculine norm. Men in emo were able to express themselves emotionally, dressed less stereotypically masculine, and were generally considered to be acting more effeminate than other male music counterparts.

Since readings those blogs, I posed some questions and launched a search of the internet. I searched broadly to start, looking at the site of one of my favorite emo bands that has a female frontwoman – Paramore. I then followed a lead given to me by a friend to look at the music videos. He claimed that emo music videos were amazingly sexist upon close observation. Sticking to the current mainstream emo bands I had heard of, I picked out earlier hits that I deemed to be more emo since the complaints I usually hear are that the favorite emo bands have gotten too pop and mainstream in their later years. I watched music videos for songs off of Fall Out Boy, All American Rejects, and Panic at the Disco’s first albums. The content that I saw though did not seem to demonstrate any bias against women or show the storyline of the songs. There was a lack of women in many videos, but those that had women seemed to portray them fairly. Thinking that it was possible that these early videos were simply closer to emo’s punk/hardcore roots, I then watched videos from sophomore albums. There were more women shown as sexual objects and added for sex appeal in these videos, but it seemed that it was not all women. Only those who were portrayed as popular, backstabbing, etc and the same was true for the men. (See Dance, Dance example of popular boys and girls) In looking at these music videos, I found that even songs I knew to be about anger toward a girl or a bad relationship breakup, the video did not match. I deemed this a dead end and quit. My findings are posted.

A new search starting with definitions was more successful. I noticed patterns when looking up emo on Urban Dictionary, such as the almost purposeful use of poor spelling and grammar by the kids claiming to be emo and the disdain of the non-emos writing definitions. There were many more links to female-emo-related topics than male, and they were much more extensive and seemingly written by females. Perhaps females were more involved in the web aspect of the scene. One entry caught my attention, claiming that there was no such thing as female emos, only homosexual male emos.

For my next stage in fieldwork, I luckily found a book by Andy Greenwald called Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. I am told there is a small section on gender, so I am hoping to get that book soon. I also found a thesis paper on emo and masculinity. The author’s fieldwork included a section on whether emo hates women, citing lyrics that are violent toward women and the lack of female performers. The emo fans he spoke with seemed to acknowledge the facts, but felt that this violent outlook toward women was simply because the content was highly relationship-based and was for cathartic purposes only. And teenage girls often found this appealing because they could relate the emotions and catharsis.

I am now wondering about the content about females in emo and the actual females who are present in the emo scene. A long winded wiki search resulted in very few females in emo bands – before my search I could only think of Paramore and a small duo of sisters called Meg and Dia. The Hush Sound has a girl and is on Fueled By Ramen, but I think most consider them to be more indie. How to proceed from here…I am unclear. I am most interested by the content and the females present in this scene, but sorting through more than pictures of fringe and eyeliner to find content, ideas, and attraction to the genre is proving difficult, especially with very little scholarly or overarching works on the topic. My second search results were more helpful though.