By Charlie Gainor, Staff Writer 

I used to really, really hate “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5. 

Everybody knows the song. You can probably recall the whistle hook easily backed by the disco-style electric guitar. It was Maroon 5’s first super-duper hit, charting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks – something almost unfathomable in 2011. The song’s success marked the band’s departure from their rock days of the late 2000s and launched them into the pop juggernauts of the 2010s we know them to be.

I can’t really remember why I hated this song in high school – maybe it was because others believed Adam Levine sold out by hiring Benny Blanco to write the song. Maybe I just really hated everything Maroon 5 did after their horrendous Super Bowl halftime show in 2019. However, I think the most feasible reason is that I was so sensitive about what my friends in high school would say if I simply said that I enjoyed listening to “Moves Like Jagger” even though it had come out almost 10 years prior.

Now I’m a college senior. “Moves Like Jagger” is 15 years old and I can say that the song is awesome. So is everything I secretly liked in high school but was too afraid to tell everyone about.

        There is something enigmatic about the label “cringe.” It has barely any definable meaning at all and yet it’s one of the most effectively demeaning labels anything or anyone can hold. Even without any substantive foundation, having someone essentially say “it’s embarrassing for anyone to be interested in that” or “being associated with you is embarrassing” feels unnervingly cruel. For a word that’s built off of disgust, it makes your body instinctively recoil; it sure is used a lot.

         More often than not, I’ve found that “cringe” is used a lot when talking about neurodivergent people. Look up a “cringe compilation” page on Instagram. Yes, they exist. You’ll mostly find content from young, queer, neurodivergent people showing passion for a show or game they love. None of it is harmful, it’s all just honest creative expression. I hardly find that embarrassing at all.

         It does explain why I would cower from the label at the most sensitive time in my life, even if it meant avoiding listening to a very generic and inoffensive pop song from 2011. Autism is being treated as a disease to be cured and queerness is as close as it’s ever been to being outlawed again, so embracing something that is labeled as “cringe” can feel like forfeiting a “right” to be normal.

         Now that I’m a grown, transgender, neurodivergent person about to graduate college, I think it’s more important than ever to stop throwing away what I like to the culture of shame. I do enjoy listening to old 2010s music; I love playing games like “Undertale” and “Deltarune.” I still sometimes pick up “Warriors” by Erin Hunter and have a good time reading it like I did in middle school. If it doesn’t harm others, you and I have the right to enjoy something proudly and not have to endure a label of shame.

As Levine once sang in 2005, “Nothing lasts forever, but be honest, babe. It hurts, but it may be the only way.”