Breeder's Digest

Melissa Etheridge is today’s go-to gal when it comes to far-reaching activism, throaty emotional expression, and gutsy fabric choices. But, let’s be honest: gays and lesbians alike have loved her from the time she first came out (album), and from the time she first came out (sexuality). We love Our Lady Etheridge and won’t ever let her go. But let me tell you why, Dear Breeder, lest you think we love her simply for her gay lifestyle, or for her ability to make babies out of David Crosby’s “magic sex dust.”

Musical lesbian invents the international sign for “Yessss!”

Wearing hair like feathers, dreamcatchers as necklaces, and more black denim than you can shake a stick at, Melissa “Missy” Etheridge is a kaleidoscope of gayness: from one angle (see above), she looks like a gay man of the 80s, while admittedly from most other angles, she looks like a cherubic lesbian dental assistant. Recently, when she argued gay marriage rather than promote her secret Christmas album on The View, this tired mommy merely looked like she could use a new stylist. Well, Missy, you have an applicant pool of about ten million gays who are all up for the job. (Pick me! Pick me!)

Missy’s music is marked by her straightforward melodrama and her personal objective to explore the murky mirth of loss, questionable modes of infidelity, and what are normally disconcerting forms of mental illness. Her stalker-esque, obsession-laced ballads (“I Want to Come Over,” “Come to My Window,” “I’m the Only One”) set her apart—as in “restraining order” apart—from other singer-songwriters of the 80s, 90s, and today, as evidenced by her characteristic formula for deeply psychological music videos: black and white jump cuts of her playing guitar angrily, passionately, desperately, spliced with cuts of gorgeous celebrity look-alikes (and sometimes an actual Juliette Lewis) going bat-shit crazy in 1) an old Buick with a fascinating speedometer; 2) a mental institution; or, 3) in front of a plastic wall with artsy handwriting on it. In other words, choose your own Melissa Etheridge adventure.

On the set of the couple’s new show, Fun with Fabrics (I wish).

Although her recent battles with breast cancer, Al Gore, and the legally-sanctioned hate crime against homosexuals known as Prop 8 have brought her voice once again into primetime daytime, Melissa Etheridge has always delivered the kind of bar-room drama that drives us gays wild. We love her 1993 release, simply and not-so-simply titled, Yes I Am. We love watching Missy’s long and stringy Kansas hair slither across her hollow-bodied guitar (Ovation for lesbians). We love the dirty secrets and psychotic extremes which are the very terms of her artistic expression (and coincidentally of our oppressed gay lives). And we love pairing denim shirts cut off at the shoulders with corduroy pants—or, for a more formal look, layering the cut-off over a washed silk blouse.

Thanks for everything, Melissa! We officially grant you the Breeder’s Digest Lez Badge of Courage!

Tags: Gutsy Lesbians, Melissa Etheridge

This entry was posted on December 24, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under I'm Never Doing That Again!, Lesbian, Music, Our Gay Crushes, You're out!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.