“Hug an Emo Boy.”
In this world of bumper stickers and catchy sayings, it’s surprising that this line doesn’t adorn sorority girl’s cars everywhere. Yet this is not just a cute line, it is a philosophy for the preservation of emotional happiness.
Perhaps this is the very theory that psychologists have been searching for to decrease the number of depressed teens.
The Emo Boy, as you probably know, is an extension of a musical genre-emo. Originally termed “emotional hardcore,” emo music centered on human emotions, often the pain associated with lost love.
To this day, there lacks a strict definition for what emo really is: a search online of the phrase “definition of emo” only turns up threads of arguments on the exact denotation.
The Urban Dictionary comes closest to the college perception of emo, with one user claiming that emo is “soft-core punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who don’t smile; high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts.”
This is the genre that has spawned the Emo Boy, the so-defined “melodramatic” youth. Indeed, the Emo Boy feels the anguish of life more than the common individual. He seems, in a sense, to be cursed by emotion, for it is the ruling force in his life.
Physically, the Emo Boy is an interesting creature. A lanky individual, he looks as though he has forgotten to eat for a week.
He is often heavily tattooed, his body screaming of histrionic symbols (a rose or a bleeding heart would be some examples) that announce his inner pain to the outside world.
He wears tight jeans and Converse All-Stars (conversationally known as Chucks) and tight wool sweaters that cling to his frame.
In Florida, the Emo Boy must make an exception here, unless he likes being known as “the Sweaty One” of the crew. He substitutes band t-shirts for the sweater.
But what really sets the Emo Boy apart from the crowd is his emotional characteristics. He often possesses a morbid sense of humor. He’s likely to joke about death and general carnage.
Overall, the Emo Boy is concerned with that which is distressing, agonizing or saddening.
Like a small child who drops his ice cream cone, the Emo Boy seems pitiable, with language that can come across as a constant histrionic whine about society’s wrongdoings, the promiscuous girl who left him and how bent and broken he is.
Starting to sound like a bad country song? Never fear, there’s no dog that dies, nor a pick-up truck that gets stolen.
The Emo Boy’s song revolves instead around love lost, an often twisted, convoluted love that turned sour.
So how can we help this poor lost soul? With the simple physical action of a hug. This contact will not only reassure the Emo Boy that he is loved, but it will force a connection on him that he lacks with the outer world.
No longer will the Emo Boy be able to claim that he’s unloved when arms are embracing him. The goal of the hug is to draw the disheartened individual from his inner conflict and make him realize the realities of life: that life, in all probability, will go on despite his sadness.
Hug an Emo Boy, and bring emotional peace back to him.
Yet Hug Therapy is not a miracle cure. Most likely, the recipient will still remain an Emo Boy-just with a slightly less depressed outlook on life. And that is the first step on a journey from inward melodrama to well-adjusted, outgoing youth. So go ahead, hug an Emo Boy, and help him on his voyage.