To be fair to the "MCR totes promoted gender nonconformance crowd," the band itself kinda leans into this. I remember reading a interview with Gerard Way where he was talking about, like, understanding women better because his role models were Bowie and various other gender nonconforming/feminine men. Which is, I think, something you can…
To be fair to the "MCR totes promoted gender nonconformance crowd," the band itself kinda leans into this. I remember reading a interview with Gerard Way where he was talking about, like, understanding women better because his role models were Bowie and various other gender nonconforming/feminine men. Which is, I think, something you can say when you're in a very masculine social setting. I'm sure some people were mean about him being insufficiently masculine. I'm also pretty sure those people were other boys/men who were mean, but not particularly scandalized by a guy in eyeliner.
Part of me thinks it's a little silly to look at emo bands as being or encouraging gender nonconformance, since (as you said) dudes in bands had been wearing eyeliner for decades. Another part of me that wants easy radical points feels bad that it gets harder and harder to do the gender nonconforming thing as time goes on. I wear a tie on occasion; give me cool points, even though Marlene Diedrich wore a full suit a hundred years ago!
To be fair to the "MCR totes promoted gender nonconformance crowd," the band itself kinda leans into this. I remember reading a interview with Gerard Way where he was talking about, like, understanding women better because his role models were Bowie and various other gender nonconforming/feminine men. Which is, I think, something you can say when you're in a very masculine social setting. I'm sure some people were mean about him being insufficiently masculine. I'm also pretty sure those people were other boys/men who were mean, but not particularly scandalized by a guy in eyeliner.
Part of me thinks it's a little silly to look at emo bands as being or encouraging gender nonconformance, since (as you said) dudes in bands had been wearing eyeliner for decades. Another part of me that wants easy radical points feels bad that it gets harder and harder to do the gender nonconforming thing as time goes on. I wear a tie on occasion; give me cool points, even though Marlene Diedrich wore a full suit a hundred years ago!