Much like the Bloods and Crips set aside their differences for Kendrick Lamar’s legendary “The Pop Out — Ken and Friends” concert in Inglewood to hate on a common enemy (Drake), the ever-feuding emos, punks and even goths of El Paso will have to lay down their flat-irons, studded belts and eyeliner against a bigger threat to their existence: the El Paso Independent School District.
Last week, reports began to circulate that Charles Middle School in the borderland city had banned all-black outfits for students in the upcoming school year, citing mental health concerns for the ban.
In a letter to parents alerting them of the new dress code, Charles Middle School principal Nick DeSantis wrote that wearing all-black “has become more associated with depression and mental health issues and/or criminality than with happy and healthy kids ready to learn.”
Sarah Venegas, executive principal at EPISD, doubled down on DeSantis’ concern for the well-being of his students rocking alleged depression drip by saying it’s a safety issue. “Anytime there are concerns that are brought forward about student safety it’s important for us to take those seriously,” she said.
Much to unpack here, but my first thought: Is everyone with the last name DeSantis hell-bent on stripping people of their personal rights? Also, let’s not pretend there’s actual concern for children’s safety in schools when Gov. Greg Abbott and the Uvalde Police Department have proved otherwise to the extreme.
Norma De La Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Assn., told CBS Texas that she defended the dress code though she acknowledged that “the colors are not much to prevent or stop mental health issues. You can have the most colorful dress on and still be suffering through depression.”
That’s correct, Norma. The backlash to this news story has highlighted the hypocrisy and stupidity of the ban as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of young people and subcultures they may belong to. Have these administrators been living under a rock? Do they not see how Kourtney Kardashian dresses? Are they choosing to ignore El Paso’s very own bands At the Drive-in and the Mars Volta?
Banning all-black outfits will do as much for safety and depression for tweens and teens as instituting “excuse me, miss, you dropped your smile” laws on women to combat rage. It’s pointless, absurd and counterproductive, with its sole purpose being to stamp out any kind of dissent or individuality from young people.
“I should say I think in Latino and in border communities there’s often a level of respectability politics that women and young people have to deal with,” said Frida Garza, a journalist and former “light emo kid” raised in El Paso. “So I don’t think this surprised me, but it does seem completely out of line with what students actually want or need, which I think the school could tell from the very strong and immediate feedback it received.”
Garza recalled that during her years in school, it was ripped jeans that got kids sent to the principal’s office. “Certain clothes are associated with students being disaffected or troublemakers, but often teens are just trying stuff out,” she told me.
Char de la Torre, a makeup artist in San Diego who was a teen goth, believes some of this stems from the Columbine school shooting, where in 1999 two teenage boys dressed in dark trench coats killed 13 people and injured 24 others. The incident led to a goth panic. “I feel like there’s still that stigma,” she says.
And we know now, after hundreds of school shootings in this country, listening to Sisters of Mercy or My Chemical Romance isn’t an indicator of a violent person. But just like the goth panic of the ‘90s and early 2000s, a skull-print shirt can set off a satanic panic, especially among religious Latino communities.
Melissa Illidge, a 34-year-old television consumer marketing researcher and former teenage emo, says her dark clothes not only freaked out her teachers and administrators s in her conservative hometown of Alexandria, Va., but also her immigrant parents.
“They were thinking that it was related to the devil and 666 or whatever,” she told me. “I have very vivid memories of this with my mom. I would go to local shows and hang up the posters in my room, and she would rip them down if they had a skull. She was like, ‘It’s the devil, it’s the devil.’”
If her clothes would have been banned, Illidge said she would’ve been “so upset and angry.”
“I would have felt trapped and just not myself,” she said. “I was really upset reading [about this ban]. I feel like it’s gonna really impair a bunch of young kids and their expression of themselves and their personalities.”
This is about control and fearmongering, especially of what I assume are a majority Latinx kids who are likely calling B.S. on any form of control the school is trying to force on them tied to their ethnicity, gender, subculture and/or other parts of their identity. Anything different is a danger.
The actual purpose seems to be forcing a status quo for other people’s comfort and, as Garza pointed out, respectability politics, because emo, goth and punk kids disrupt an aesthetic of normalcy. But just as baggy jeans or halter tops don’t affect your ability to learn or perform in school, neither does wearing black.
You know what does? Being bullied. Being hungry. Being abused. Being poor. Not having a stable home. Fearing for your life because your state won’t pass gun laws to protect you.
Taína Morales is the assistant director for student and community engagement at Occidental College. She was also a former emo/scene kid in the early 2000s. For her, wearing ripped black jeans, black band shirts and scene kid hair helped her navigate her identity both as someone part of a subculture with a specific style but also as a kid struggling with their sexuality.
“In all transparency, I definitely was depressed, but for reasons that as an adult I’m understanding now,” she told me. “I was a closeted, queer teen. So having to deal with that, I felt like wearing black not only matched the music that I was listening to, but also a little bit of how I felt in society.”
As Morales puts it, stripping a young person of their “comfort zone” by banning the clothing they feel most comfortable and themselves in would “only trigger more mental health issues.” These educators are, in her opinion, eliminating what could be “the gateway to a more critical and intentional conversation.”
“Self-expression is so important at an age where they’re still developing as young adults, and to censor them so young is detrimental to their growth as learners, as critical people in the world,” Morales adds. “It’s just going to create resentment against educational institutions.”
This, arguably, has a bigger impact on student’s learning than a Pierce the Veil T-shirt and skinny black jeans.
“What I needed at that age was to feel safe and heard without being criticized,” said De la Torre. “I never felt comfortable around adults in high school because they’d look at me weird because I had big boots and chains and spikes. But I was a frequent honor roll student. I just did my work and kept to myself.”
For De la Torre, dressing in her all-black mall goth outfits made her feel “safe,” pretty and her most authentic self.
And the reality is, wearing all-black as a young person isn’t going to affect their future prospects. “Even now, as a 34-year-old, [music] still influences me and my decisions of who I am now,” said Illidge. “And it obviously hasn’t affected me in a negative way or whatever.”
Morales calls the entire situation “very much a Sum 41 ‘Fat Lip’ moment,’ and to paraphrase the song she references, these kids don’t want to be a victim of conformity. De la Torre echoes this sentiment, saying, “When you’re a teen, the more restricted and controlled the more you’re gonna want to do that thing out of spite.”
The adults should be more focused on the resources and support that will actually empower success.
“To think now, 24 years [after I was in school], to see this happening, I’m just like, leave goth kids alone. Leave the emo kids alone,” Morales said. “This is what makes them happy.”
Alex Zaragoza is a television writer and journalist covering culture and identity. Her work has appeared in Vice, NPR, O Magazine and Rolling Stone. She’s written on the series “Primo” and “Lopez v. Lopez.” She writes regularly for De Los.
