I don’t think my mum has much to fear from ‘Emos’
Henry Sands meets a group of ‘Emos’ — ‘emotional’, blackclad teenagers — who claim to hate his mother for what she wrote about them in the Daily Mail. But they’re not very scary Iwas walking through Hyde Park with a friend on Saturday when I noticed some people dressed in black gathering on the other side of Round Pond. At first I thought it might be a school trip having a picnic, but the eclectic mix of young teenagers — many of them with their parents — and peculiarly dressed older people suggested otherwise. A few of these gothic-looking creatures were holding banners and signs. The first I saw read ‘free hugs’. It was being held by an attractive dark-haired girl.
‘That’s nice,’ I thought, but before I could go to receive my hug, my friend pointed out that I was perhaps too old for that kind of thing. The next sign I saw was not quite as inviting. It read, ‘I am not afraid to keep living’ and was being held by a boy of about 15. In normal circumstances this sentiment should not have justified a placard. To me, ‘I am not afraid to keep living’ is as rhetorically powerful as ‘I am not afraid to brush my teeth.’ But among this gathering of netherworldly creatures, this appeared not to be the case. It was the third sign that really took me by surprise though. It read “F**k the Daily Mail’, asterisking the letters to avoid undue offence. This one was being held by a baldheaded man in his late twenties wearing a spiked dog collar around his neck. He didn’t look like someone I particularly wanted a confrontation with. Then I saw a radio presenter and realised what the occasion was. We had walked into the middle of the ‘Emo’ community’s protest against the Daily Mail.
Emos — short for ‘emotional’ — are young rock-music fans who dress in black clothes, wear dark mascara and make a point of showing their despair. Crucifixes, piercings, leather boots, chains and studded necklaces are also fundamental Emo trappings. Their anger towards the Mail started after a piece in 2006 describing them as dreary, ugly and romanticising suicide. The reaction to the article was instant. The pages of Kerrang! magazine were overrun by Emo fans demanding revenge. The Mail writer concerned was reported to the Press Complaints Commission and her Wikipedia entry rewritten by angry Emos accusing her of gutter journalism. A few days later, a cousin at the Reading Festival reported that 150,000 fans of the Emo band My Chemical Romance (MCR) were chanting, ‘F**k the Daily Mail’. He said they were still cross with the writer, too. They were chanting, ‘F**k Sarah Sands’. This was worrying, for Sarah Sands is my mother. I decided not to tell her that bit.
So I had mixed feelings when I chanced upon the demonstration at the weekend. On the one hand, my mother’s honour was at stake. On the other, I didn’t fancy being pursued by a bunch of mini-Goths in an emotionally unstable state.
What I had not expected was a collection of young children. Since they were not in the least fearsome, I decided to join them on their march to the Mail headquarters in Kensington.
When we arrived, there was already a small group of young teenage girls sitting cross-legged outside Northcliffe house. It felt more as if I were queuing for a Harry Potter book launch rather than a nationally publicised protest. A second Daily Mail article had brandished Emos as a ‘dangerous and sinister suicide cult’. As I looked around at my fellow protestors there were several words I would have used to describe them — ‘socially reclusive’ certainly, ‘unhygienic’ perhaps — but not ‘dangerous’ and ‘sinister’. Most of them had middle-class parents peering around the corner and popping by to deliver their children sandwiches. I talked to a protestor on my left, Lily, a 4ft 6in 11-year-old blonde girl wearing a linen skull-and-crossbones dress and an oversized My Chemical Romance black hoodie.
Her parents were having lunch in a nearby restaurant while Lily and her friend did a bit of protesting. I asked her whether they were expecting more people to turn up. ‘A lot of people were put off after reading a comment left on the MCR website suggesting people were going to climb to the top of the building and throw themselves off. One friend of mine who was planning on coming called to cancel saying she didn’t want to have to kill herself,’ she explained.
She told me she thought we should all try and charge through the heavy security into Northcliffe house. ‘What do we do once we are inside?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know. Maybe hide or just run around.’ There was an innocent enthusiasm in her voice. Her friend then said randomly. ‘Lily likes to dissect her Teletubby dolls.’ Perhaps she wasn’t so sweet and innocent after all.
As a few more people turned up, including a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair with her dog sporting an MCR bandana, the healthy numbers of police decided it was now time to put up the gate barriers.
To my surprise, two teenage boys and the bald man with the dog collar around his neck immediately began assisting. This was turning out to be a very civilised protest indeed. I made my way down the line to meet some of the other protestors and hear their views, but was quickly asked to clear the walkway for safety reasons by the protest organiser, 16-year-old Anni Smith.
Smith had already been on the Today programme that morning and was now making sure her protest was abiding by the necessary safety rules. I apologised and moved back against the wall before congratulating her on the smooth running of her Emo riot. I asked her what she did when she wasn’t organising protests. ‘Well, I left full-time education last year and now I just work doing odd jobs to make enough money to follow MCR around the world on their tours.’ What had the Daily Mail actually done? ‘They have been writing unfair and hurtful perceptions about MCR fans and we have come here today to show them how wrong they are.’ ‘How nasty of them. Which journalists are responsible for this?’ ‘Some snotty woman called Sarah Sands started it. But she doesn’t even work here any more.’ ‘Oh really, well perhaps we should find out where she lives and move the protest to her house!’ She laughed and said that would be a good idea, before escaping to talk to someone she was interested in. Before I left I posed for a photo with my new friend Lily but was shouted at by a teenage boy with peroxided hair. ‘Hey, why are you smiling, man, we’re Emo, we’re supposed to be sad!’ I made my way home to let my mother know I didn’t think she had much to be worried about.
That evening I went to watch Bruce Springsteen at the Emirates Stadium. The 75,000-strong crowd was a combination of old-time rockers and London professionals. Everyone was smiling and happy through a three-hour performance. We left the stadium through singing and dancing fans to find a Tube station that didn’t have a milelong queue. An hour later, we reached Angel Tube station and headed down to Bank to get the Circle Line. All I could hear was whistles, stamping and chanting from the platform. It was the last night that alcohol was allowed on London public transport — the first edict of the new mayor — and I had walked into my second demonstration of the day: ‘F**k Boris! F**k Boris!’ Only this lot looked like they meant it.
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