That's so emo.

"That's so disturbing," my mom said when she first heard about the "emo" phenomenon. I tried to explain that emo wasn't just the epitome of teenage angst, but then I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I hear the term all the time, but what is emo? A genre of music, a fashion, a lifestyle? 

The essay on "emo" begins by saying that part of what defines emo is its lack of definition.   I loved the lack of the formulaic "essential definition" in the essay. Instead one sentence to sum up the tenuous term, the author focuses on quirky details (like the specific number of results of a google search on "emo") and humorous lists of synonym-like definitions. Interestingly, he claims that emo most closely resembles adolescence. Not only the the longing and the self-absorption, but the interaction between the "emo" and the "teenager."  Emo is about perception, or as he says, turning a "monologue into a dialogue."   Emo, short for emotional, short for emocore, is more than one definite definition- and that's because feelings- our reactions, our yearning, our melancholy- are never easily defined.