it's a good thing that I left my black eye-liner at home

I'll actually write something more substantive later (I have some stuff I want to get down), but I could not pass up the sort of farcical ridiculousness of one thing happening in Mexico right now.... emo kids are being beat up all over the country and have staged demonstrations in a couple big cities. Yes, this is not an april fool's news story (as I originally thought), but it's actually true and the big papers were reporting it long before yesterday.

I've noticed the emo kids here on other occasions and been quietly amused that the black eye-liner, tight black pants (with white belt), black banged bob look is so ubiquitous on either side of the border but hadn't realized that it was seen as either something more than trendy middle class kids (I know, that's totally dismissive) or as something threatening! Last night, walking back from Yoga I saw some emo kids running down the street in hunched over positions looking like they were comforting each other.... I wonder if this bashing of emo kids has reached here. What's interesting is that one of the reasons given is pure homophobia, that the slightly androgynous masculine aesthetic is so threatening as to provoke mass violence. I mean Mexico is not exactly a queer friendly country, but this is happening in cities (especially DF) which have become at least slightly more open.

This actually has nothing to do with my project (as it seems does little I'm informally learning), but I think does get at issues of gender and gender performance-- although there is such such such a classed rural urban split (which is complicated by generation and migration) in terms of identity performances.