All you need to fit in at an emo prom is smudged eyeliner, gauged ears, a tuxedo t-shirt, choppy dyed hair, fishnet stockings, black lipstick, a pair of Chuck Taylors and some parents that just don’t understand it’s not a phase.
Chelsea’s Live hosted its first installment of “Emo Prom” on Friday night, featuring local New Orleans band Paris Avenue, DJ Dan Lion, and the founder of Emo Night Baton Rouge, Garret Anthony Saia. The very definition of alternative Valentine’s Weekend plans, Emo Prom Night, was the best way to be sad and angsty with your special someone.
The event was a second chance at doing their teenage years right for many. While wearing a floor-length black dress and a spiked choker, Loujuanda Weary spoke about her experience growing up in Louisiana, feeling like she couldn’t fully express herself in the rather straight-laced, traditional southern environment.
“Once I got the confidence, I pretty much just wanted to do all the stuff I didn’t get to do as a teenager,” Weary said. “It’s liberating.”
Weary’s friend Alex Alvarado, dressed in a black and white corset with black mesh gloves, agreed that Emo Prom Night was a fantastic way to embrace alternative emo culture in a way she never could before. Dressing how you want, piercing what you want, tattooing what you want and screaming what you want, regardless of what others might think, is what emo is all about.
“I didn’t get to actually express myself as a kid, but now as an adult, I can do whatever I want,” Alvarado said. “We need to get away from the social pressure from other people; it’s suffocating.”
The venue was decked out with black and red balloons, many of which popped as emos head-banged and stomped around the floor. Love was in the air as Jack Skeleton-Corpse Bride-esque looking couples screamed out to Panic! At The Disco, Paramore and Fall Out Boy songs.
Cara Faulk, an emo enthusiast, wore a thrifted 50’s inspired pink dress with a striped shirt underneath. Faulk usually has to extensively search to find emo events in Louisiana, with most of the emo concerts she has been to being limited to New Orleans. When she heard about Emo Prom Night, she picked up her pink dress for five dollars at goodwill and drove in an hour from Lafayette.
“I love the music, the clothes and the expression of self,” Faulk said. “It’s so much fun. It’s so energetic; it’s way more fun than going to a regular club.”
When Paris Avenue made their entrance on stage, they were dressed to the nines in tuxedos, vans and of course, some beloved smudged black eyeliner. Their physicality on stage was electric, and the audience went wild as they played classic emo throwback covers.
As frontman of the band, Joseph Imbraguglio, began to sing out My Chemical Romance’s song “Teenagers,” you could feel the whole crowd releasing the same amount of teen angst you would find at any high school prom. The crowd was supercharged with 2000’s nostalgia vibes, and no one was mad about it.
While it may seem like emo has been dying out since its peak of popularity in the early 2000s, Emo Prom Night sought to “Make America Emo Again.” Even though it may not be the early 2000’s anymore, emo culture is still important to many people as a way to embrace and celebrate the angry and sad sides of themselves.
Alexis McNeel, physics major at LSU, has identified as emo and taken part in the culture for nearly ten years. For them, emo has been a form of expression and a form of community.
“It takes the lonely loners and brings them all together under one commonality,” McNeel said.
