It’s Not a Phase, Mom!

(But even if it is, that doesn’t make it any less real)

By Marley Richmond

There’s nothing more punk than a group of thirteen-year-old girls with dyed hair, too much eyeliner, and clothes from Hot Topic... right? Despite how cringey it feels to look back on our middle school emo phases (don’t lie, you had one, too), it does make sense that a style and music defined by rebellion and fighting the system appealed to a group of young people being introduced to teenage angst. Yet while we may have moved on from whatever our emo phases entailed, we don’t have to renounce it all and shame our past selves! A little rebellion is an important part of growing up, and some elements are worth keeping in your life. 

Even if it was just a phase—and let’s be real, what isn’t?—screaming music, dark makeup, and a little defiance were a valid way of handling problems that felt larger than life. Emo music can be an outlet that validates many of the struggles that came with coming of age and handling our first forays into complicated friendships, first relationships, and developments of our identities. Middle school can be full of one’s first independent ventures into the “real world,” a place where it feels like the system is not on our side. 

Punk music, which grew out of young people’s anger and resentment about a system which didn’t work for them, makes sense for the lives of middle schoolers as well. The melodrama and introspection of modern pop punk music fits the bill for expression of such teenage angst. And while you may have grown out of that phase of your life, pop-punk music can still hit an angsty, political, or nostalgic need that nothing else can. So, looking back on your own emo phase or that of current middle schoolers, cut everyone some slack—despite how silly it may seem, there is a reason young people seek out the validation of their problems that comes from hardcore music and rebellious fashions.