Teen pregnancy, Hollywood style (from Newsweek)...

[bliss_eternal]

Once taboo, pregnant teenagers are popping up more frequently on TV, in movies and on magazine covers. The problem? This latest pop-culture coverage doesn't show what comes before or after.

By Sarah Kliff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 23, 2008 | Updated: 4:50 p.m. ET Jul 23, 2008

It could have been Immaculate Conception. In the premiere episode of the new drama "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," 15-year-old Amy comes home from band practice and is shocked--the pregnancy test is positive! That two-second tryst at band camp, as she describes it to her friends, "was definitely not like what you see in the movies." They share the same confusion: how did a good girl end up in this situation? The obvious answer (Amy had unprotected sex) never quite surfaces; it's brushed off in a whirlwind of mystification. By the end of the episode, band-camp guy has taken a backseat to Amy's new love interest. As the plot pushes forward, it never once looks back at whether Amy considered contraceptives or talked to her parents about condoms. Amy is pregnant, and that is where this story starts.



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"It seems like we keep removing taboos related to sex, and this year it was pregnancy," says Nancy Brown, who teaches a course on adolescent health and sexuality at Stanford University and writes a blog on the same subject. "And I hope next year it's sexually transmitted infections. Because that's something we still don't talk about." She gets frustrated when she watches movies pass up perfectly good opportunities to add a line or two about contraceptives or STDs. Like when Juno's dad, after he learns that his daughter is pregnant, tells her, "I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when." Brown suggests, "What would be a lot better there is, 'I wish I had talked to you about birth control when you were 12,' or 'I thought I raised you to use a condom'."

Condoms aren't the only things that teens and adolescent-health experts see missing from the plot. There's that third C that Jane Brown mentioned: consequences. While Juno and Jamie Lynn are celebrated as heroines, the teen moms NEWSWEEK spoke with recount a different reaction from their communities--being stigmatized and ostracized, one to the point where she dropped out of high school. "I guess I was too scared to be pregnant and in high school, it didn't really seem OK," says one teen, who ended up leaving her Atlanta-area private school.

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Balancing parenting and work is hard enough for moms in their 30s; it's near impossible for 19-year-old Candi Johnson. She wants to go back to school (she dropped out of a GED program two months into her pregnancy) and wants to get a job, but is also responsible for her 18-month-old son, Shymir. Like the majority of teen moms, the father isn't in the picture, so she largely relies on her mother and grandmother for financial support. "Pampers cost $20, a little bottle of milk is $7," says Johnson, who lives in Queens, N.Y. "I want to be the best mom that I can, but it's hard, because I don't have the money or the education to give him everything that he wants." She doesn't see the financial strains or work-parenting balance mentioned at all in OK! Magazine. "She has all that money, she can pay for nannies, she can give her baby whatever she wants. It's so fake," says Johnson. "For me, its fun but hard. It's the best thing in the world but at the same time it's the worst thing in the world."

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excerpted from:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/148437>1=43002


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Glad this issue is being covered. But I still wish the media at large would do their job--hold the anti-choice, forced birth, abstinence only initiatives of this admin. accountable for their hand in the rise in stats of teen pregnancies. Yes, the media plays it roles w/films and tv shows that seem to glamourize the choice, but w/out honest communication and education how are teens supposed to know any better?

Also I find little discussion here of the overwhelming media messages shown to women in general that glamourize motherhood as the end all, be all of "womanhood." One of the things that made me want to throw my tv out the window were all the commercials and reports about "a bump" (impregnated belly) being the best accessory one season. :grr::mad: Disgusting and disturbing.

[ThomCat]

1. I got some harsh responses

when I posted that Juno had anti-choice messages in it. It was a well made movie, but it clearly had a political message that abortions are scary, and scary people get them or support them, and having the baby is really the cool choice anyway.

Hollywood is definitely counting on selling tickets to the anti-choicers.

[bliss_eternal]

2. Seriously? That sucks.

I'm sorry to hear that. :hug: I recall you talking about it a bit here (in pro-choice), but missed any other places you discussed it. I'm not surprised, just curious about where you were flamed--sounds like Gd or the lounge. :(

I didn't see the movie. I pretty much refused, after hearing from pro-choice friends it would piss me off. But I read every review of it I encountered. I read a few discussions and editorials about it (pro and con) and read parts of the script. I was over it when I read that the visit to the family planning clinic was portrayed as "negative", and the lead character said she couldn't abort because the fetus had fingernails.

:grr::mad:

For all of Diablo Cody's "I'm a feminist" swagger, she sold us all out.