Gen Y Not?

I both loathe and pity this girl.

I refuse to name her for a couple of reasons:
a) I'm sick of the amount of attention her story is getting - people making money from teenage angst (that's you, Channel 9)
b) If she is genuine with wanting to move on with her life, everyone knowing her name and associating her with previous "scandal" is not going to help
c) This entry is not about her

The 7PM Project ran a story tonight about Generation Y that used her story as the spring-board for the following question: is Generation Y obsessed with fame without doing anything to deserve it?

This, on top of recent articles about Generation Y being "infected" with narcissism, made me incensed. Can a whole generation of people truly be encapsulated with one word, one feeling, one identity? And if you can - is it fair?

My answer lies in history.

The term "adolescent" is relatively new. While there are a myriad of different explanations for what it means, one thing that everyone can agree on is that it is a turbulent time, when you are at the whim of your hormones and trying to carve out an identity amidst the pressure of family, friends and sworn enemies. It's a rite of passage where boundaries are tested - a time all must go through to reach the goal of maturity.

One may ask however (I know I sure as hell do), how mature it could possibly be to lump a group of people together as soon as a chosen "representative" gets it wrong? We've all been taught that we should never generalise - it's wrong to assume that all black men have large penises, that women aren't capable of doing the same things as men, that all Muslims are not terrorists... yet as soon as a naive and shortsighted teenage girl plays with power and flirts with fame and victimises an entire football (none of which I endorse, in case you're wondering), the integrity of ALL Gen Y is questioned?

When the Baby Boomers started their waves of change in the 1960s and 1970s, they were branded troublemakers and shit-stirrers by older generations - those that had achieved "maturity". Yet the legacy that they have left - equal rights for women, the dismantling of the White Australia Policy and the formation of normative frameworks that would condemn discrimination and embrace difference and diversity - is one that we have all appreciated and should never be underestimated. Amidst the moral panic they produced amongst their elders, the Baby Boomers proved themselves to be revolutionaries achieving feats we are still celebrating.

I guess I'm trying to say is that before you condemn us to being stupid or apathetic, please remember that those that had been accused of the same (or worse) were still able to produce something inspiring and core-shaking.

We are the generation who (similarly to the Baby Boomers) have witnessed wars that needn't be fought, watched regimes that prey on fear and capitalise on hate develop without a finger lifted by leaders that have the power to save millions of lives and do nothing. We are the generation who said "no" to the shortsightedness of the representatives that approved such idleness. We are the generation that have planted the seed for change, have seen Australia's first female Prime Minister take office and helped a black president write a new chapter in history books.

We are not the disengaged youth that buy into every flashy fad that YOU sell to us. We are not our mistakes, nor should our mistakes decide what you think we are.

I leave you with a request from Pulp that has been granted to those before us but is one that we need to yell and demand instead of suggest. It should represent not only the thoughts of Generation Y but the generations of rebellious youth to come.

We don't want no trouble, we just want the right to be different. That is all.

We are rebels. We are rebels with a cause. Many causes. The first may be to piss you off. The rest? You just have to wait and see.

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