By Charlotte Poitras
As I approach my thirties, My Chemical Romance (MCR) is back on tour with The Black Parade; Gerard Way, MCR’s lead singer, is still my celebrity crush; and the algorithm keeps feeding me new queer pop-punk and emo singers. I never truly got to live that “phase” as a teenager—my hairstylist didn’t know what the “emo look” was, piercings were forbidden at my high school, and the dress code killed any attempt at rebellion—but I already knew all the songs by heart. Now, at 29, I’ve finally claimed those piercings, the military boots, and I rock the pop-punk style daily, like I’m reclaiming a chapter of my youth that someone tried to skip.
I’ve since realized that many pop-punk and emo artists were far more openly queer than I ever imagined back then. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong reappropriated the F-slur in American Idiot as a bisexual singer. Frank Iero and Gerard Way (together also known as Frerard), bandmates from My Chemical Romance, were often caught kissing on stage. Yungblud wears skirts and sings about fucking his male best friend. TX2 calls himself “kind of gay” on TikTok while unapologetically uplifting the LGBTQ+ community in his work. Yet so many of these artists are still accused of queerbaiting (hinting at queerness to get LGBTQ+ community attention), while in the same breath being bi-erased the moment they date a woman.
At 29, I’m screaming those songs from queer icons at the top of my lungs, catching up on the angst I wasn’t allowed to express at 16. (Luckily, I work from home, and my colleagues haven’t had to process my new “inappropriate” look on Zoom.) It turns out I needed this delayed pop-punk era—whether it’s a phase or not—to fully give myself permission to live outside the neat little box the world kept trying to shove me into. Growing older hasn’t dulled that rebellion; it’s sharpened it, given it depth, and freed me from the fear of being “too much.”
Am I too old for this? Maybe the question should be: too old for what—joy, self-expression, finally belonging? No one bullies me as an adult, unlike the teenagers who mocked me in high school. My look might be a male repellent, but I get endless compliments from the queers. Dating apps light up my inbox (though sadly, no man or woman has yet met my trifecta of queer + artistic + alternative look). I admire men with eyeliner and women with unapologetically badass tattoos. I’ve got Kiss Me tattooed inside my lower lip. And I’ve never been happier than now, living my teenage years with the freedom, budget, and audacity of a grown-up. (Don’t we love how piercing studios take walk-ins?)
You’ll find me walking downtown at night in my military boots, wrapped in black clothes, an emo playlist blasting through my headphones, my TikTok For You page flooded with queer emo bands. You’ll find me at strip karaoke, slipping out of those clothes to reveal leather underwear—though I haven’t dared to sing emo there yet; my voice isn’t ready for that. And maybe it’s better late than never. I love whatever the hell this is: the queerness of punk, the joy of dressing for myself, and the sight of a gay kiss on stage as the purest form of rebellion.
Maybe it’s not a phase at all. Maybe it’s the truest version of me—the one I couldn’t be at 16, but who came to life in her late twenties, fiercer and freer because she had to wait. Aging, it turns out, isn’t about letting go of who you were. Sometimes it’s about going back to meet the self you were never allowed to become.
Charlotte Poitras is a neurodivergent and queer artist-entrepreneur based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She explores the blurred lines between fiction and reality through writing, visual arts, and short films with more than 80 publications. Her work aims to entertain both hearts and minds by embracing devil’s advocate perspectives.