Rainer Maria - Past Worn Searching

Like many underground movements before it, emo was often accused of treating “girls in bands” as fetishized commodities. It was largely a space for white, suburban men to shine while limiting women to song subjects, supporters, and consumers who seldom existed in the spotlight. Despite the fact that emo’s second wave in the late 90s (which included bands like Braid and Mineral) rarely resorted to aggressively problematic lyrics like emo’s more commercially popular third wave in the 2000s, the exclusion of women from the scene revealed the movement’s latent misogyny. In 1997, Rainer Maria’s full-length debut, Past Worn Searching, helped usher change in a scene that had garnered a reputation as sexist.