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" Hey CG!s,  It looks like the &amp;quot;Dark Ages&amp;quot; feature I wrote for our September issue (with Ashley T. or Zac E. on it, depending on which you got) really struck a nerve with you guys.  For those of you who haven&amp;#039;t read it, it&amp;#039;s about how our current culture glamorizes depression and having &amp;quot;issues,&amp;quot; to the point where some of you say that people around you may even create issues to seem cool. As Liz, 18, puts it in the article, &amp;quot;In my town, everywhere I turn, someone is on antidepressants, developing an eating disorder, becoming an alcoholic or cutting themselves. It happens so much that I can&amp;#039;t help but think people do it to make themselves look more complicated. I&amp;#039;m tired of everyone having to be the &amp;#039;rock star&amp;#039; with the biggest problem.&amp;quot;  We got a ton of emails about this story, and I wanted to share some with you so you can continue the dialogue online. Some of you could really relate to the girls quoted in the story. Others were offended by it. We apologize for offending some of you...that wasn&amp;#039;t our intention. We&amp;#039;d never belittle depression... the reason we did the story is that we saw this trend happening and we set out to get to the underlying roots of it. Here&amp;#039;s some of what you guys had to say about it, and some notes from me. If you haven&amp;#039;t read the story and want to see what all the controversy is about, check out &amp;quot;Dark Ages&amp;quot; on page 189 of CG!&amp;#039;s September issue! \u2014Marina, News and Features Editor   &amp;quot;I was appalled by &amp;#039;The Dark Ages&amp;#039; (Sept. 2007). The music has nothing to do with kids needing more therapy, and most people don&amp;#039;t listen to emo music just to be cool. Next time, consider all people before printing such a sickening article.&amp;quot; \u2014Kay, 17  [note: Hi Kay. I&amp;#039;m sorry you got the impression that we were blaming emo music. All we meant to get across was that the skyrocketing popularity of emo music is just one reflection of what some experts call a &amp;quot;generational depression&amp;quot; that people your age seem to be going through.] &amp;quot;I was upset to read &amp;quot;The Dark ages.&amp;quot; I understand that the intentions of this article were most likely to educate teens about the rising rates of depression, but I felt the article was biased, categorizing every teen on anti-depressents as &amp;#039;emo.&amp;#039; I was extremely offended by the article.&amp;quot;  \u2014[name withheld by request), 16  [note: So sorry that you were offended. Again, we know how serious depression is and would never disregard that!] &amp;quot;Do you even realize that most &amp;#039;emo&amp;#039; kids are just misunderstood kids who went through horrible s$ that are just looking for a way to express how they feel and want to fit in? Do you realize that they are kids who are harassed daily by the &amp;#039;preppy&amp;#039; kids? Do you realize that the preppy kids are doing equally/if not worse things to themselves? Also, why did you put that button at the end of your article that says &amp;#039;cheer up emo kid&amp;#039;? That&amp;#039;s just offensive!&amp;quot; \u2014Kaitlin  [Hi Kaitlin. Just so you know, I was really careful in the story to refer to the emo &amp;quot;mentality&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;mindset&amp;quot;...what I&amp;#039;m talking about in the story is more an attitude than a style, and today that attitude is so widespread that it affects all kinds of people, even preppy people who don&amp;#039;t dress in the &amp;quot;emo&amp;quot; style. You&amp;#039;ll see in the story that we even quoted a girl who says the preps at her school are starting to take on that mentality (but don&amp;#039;t necessarily think of themselves as emo). And that button is not something we created and isn&amp;#039;t a message from CosmoGIRL!, but as you&amp;#039;ll see in the caption, it&amp;#039;s a button from  interpunk.com, and we use it as an illustration of how mainstream emo has gotten...it&amp;#039;s so widespread, people are now making buttons about it!] &amp;quot;While I enjoy reading CosmoGirl! I was extremely disappointed in the article &amp;quot;The Dark Ages&amp;quot;. If the magazine had gotten the facts right, they would have realized that emo is on the way out. Everyone I know would die before they would call themselves emo. People would laugh in their faces. Emo is from back in 2000-2003. Everyone is scene.&amp;quot; \u2014Morgan, 14  [note: Hey Morgan. Your email is interesting because at the end of the story, we do say that the emo mentality is on its way out. But also, even though I know kids call themselves &amp;quot;scene&amp;quot; and not emo, many music subcultures have called themselves &amp;quot;scene.&amp;quot; Like, punk rockers in the 80&amp;#039;s and early 90&amp;#039;s called themselves scene, not &amp;quot;punks&amp;quot;. Because the term &amp;quot;scene&amp;quot; isn&amp;#039;t exclusive to any music subculture, it would&amp;#039;ve been confusing to use it in the story.] &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a regular reader of Cosmogirl and I love it! But the article in the September 2007 issue titled &amp;quot;The Dark Ages&amp;quot; I really did not like. The three bands on the first page, Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday, and Dashboard Confessional are not &amp;#039;emo&amp;#039; bands they are pop punk (Fall Out Boy), rock (Taking Back Sunday), and acoustic indie rock (Dashboard Confessional). Classifying these bands as &amp;#039;emo&amp;#039; makes readers think &amp;quot;Oh if I listen to them, I&amp;#039;m emo.&amp;quot; Emo isn&amp;#039;t a style, its an emotion. A feeling of being alone or a feeling that no one cares and your life is horrible. People have a name for the ones following the emo trend and that name is &amp;#039;poser emo&amp;#039;. Also, a word to Tara from Los Angeles, you don&amp;#039;t have to dress a certain way to get a guy, guys should like you for who you are not what you&amp;#039;ve become.&amp;quot; \u2014Nora  [Hey Nora. Sounds like you&amp;#039;re very passionate about the term emo. Check out the funny book, &amp;quot;Everybody hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture&amp;quot; by Leslie Simon and Trevor Kelly, who work for Alternative Press magazine (which many people believe is an emo bible). In the book, they claim the bands we mentioned in the story are emo, so it may just be a matter of different opinions! Even all of you who wrote in don&amp;#039;t agree on what emo really means: some think it&amp;#039;s a style, some say it&amp;#039;s a music genre, some think it&amp;#039;s a frame of mind, etc. But I agree with you that Tara should only date guys who like her for who she is!] &amp;quot;I just have to say THANK YOU for putting &amp;quot;The Dark Ages&amp;quot; article in your magazine. Marina Khidekel took the words right out of my mouth! It is tough being a teen today, but it doesn&amp;#039;t make it any easier when you&amp;#039;re almost forced to be sad &amp;amp;amp; angry. My best friend is like many of the kids described in these pages: upset with the world &amp;amp;amp; full of pain. Eventually, I followed along. But one day I realized this isn&amp;#039;t who I was or even who I wanted to be &amp;amp;amp; understood that it was just a trend. I just hope a lot of girls read this article &amp;amp;amp; realize that their depression may be something we kind of force ourselves into.&amp;quot; \u2014Dimitra  &amp;quot;I would like to send you some feedback on the article, the dark ages. &amp;quot;emo-ness&amp;quot;, and the need to be depressed are definitely too prominent in our society today. i say this from experience. this whole thing has fallen into the category of an epidemic. i myself started cutting cause i thought people would think it was cool. but i will say..it didn&amp;#039;t take long to get over that. i guess my point of this letter is that i wanted to thank you...but also tell you that i have found another outlet for my angst and pain...poetry. it showed me that through angst and pain...you can produce great things, and you can teach other people that they can deal with their suffering too.&amp;quot; \u2014Emily Rose  &amp;quot;Thank you so much for the article &amp;quot;The Dark Ages&amp;quot;. When teenagers think that being depressed and getting therapy is the cool thing to do, it lessens the importance of those of us with real problems, and can even prevent a proper diagnosis. I&amp;#039;ve been diagnosed with depression, and mild medication and regular therapy have helped a lot. But it&amp;#039;s still a lot of work and I struggle every day to change my habits and my view of the world around me. Kids may think it&amp;#039;s cool to be sad, but those of us with depression know that it&amp;#039;s a disease that hurts not only us, but the people around us. Thank you for speaking for the truly depressed.&amp;quot;  \u2014Lindsay, 19 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/a10882/the-dark-ages-backlash/>