13er Generation and Melissa Etheridge - Essay Example

It was out of the bored and confused young generation of 70s and 80s of Kansas that Melissa Etheridge emerged as an achiever (Luck, 12). Her parents had been very conservative and emotionally “shut down” (Luck, 16). It was in this ambience that Melissa started trying to write songs in her basement to fill the “emotional vacuum” that she felt (Luck, 16). Melissa’s father, John Etheridge has been described as a “good and decent man who clung to hometown values” (Luck, 17). But they were a conservative family existing inside a conservative society.

When Melissa made her first public appearance as a guitarist and rock singer cum song writer, Vietnam War was raging and her song was about the war (Luck, 19). Just like the present American President, Barack Obama, and many others including Eddie Murphy, Bon Jovi and Whitney Houston, Melissa Etheridge is the product of the much-discussed 13er generation era. The label, 13er generation was given to the “generation of children born between the years of 1961-1981” (Zustiak, 19). This generation derives its name from the fact that this is the “thirteenth generation to be born since the writing of the constitution” (Zustiak, 22).

This was the period marked with the rise of America as a super power in the world, an upward surge in gang killings, the chaos of a world with information overload, and with a struggle to filter out noise and grasp practical truth. The facts about this period in history define the 13er generation as the most aborted generation, having parental divorce as its most serious social phenomenon (children had twice the risk of parental divorce than boomers), home to complex family structures where previously married parents were common and shadowed with dropping grades in educational scene, as compared to the 1960s (Zustiak, 14, 30,45).

With the introduction of birth control pills and with the unprecedented rise in abortions, 1960s saw the birth rates declining to very low levels (Zustiak, 30). This phenomenon of aversion to having children was so prevalent that “the number of young couples who remained childless in thise years swelled to 75%” (Zustiak, 30). It was a common observation that the 13er generation was “the most unwanted, uncared for, maligned, abused, and rejected generation to come down the pike” (Zustiak, 14).

This was so because, “parents didn’t want them, teachers failed them and authority figures betrayed them” (Zustiak, 14). And the consequence was that they “rejected the values and morals of those generations who have gone before them” (Zustiak, 14). The 13er generation has been found to place their trust in their friends and peer groups rather than in their families (Zustiak, 14). It was in this generation that Melissa was born as a member. Melissa was a self-proclaimed lesbian. She advocated gays’ and lesbians’ rights.

Lesbianism was not at all acceptable in those days. As a teenage era friend of Melissa remarked, “everybody was conservative and clean cut” in the small town of Kansas, in those days (Luck, 28). In Boston, Melissa had realized that “the only place you could meet other gay people…was in a bar” (Luck, 41). As she frequented bars of Boston, she picked up the habit of smoking (Luck, 42). But when she started feeling unable to sing caused by her smoking cough, she quit (Luck, 42). When Melissa started her education in Berklee College of Music, situated in Boston, she got the opportunity to get introduced to “an entire community of gay women” (Luck, 31).

In 1982, Melissa arrived in Los Angeles. Soon after, she started playing in women’s bars and Melissa of that period was a “shameless flirt” according to her biographer, Luck (53). This kind of rebellious