Welcome to my blog for the term. I am looking forward to reading yours. I would recommend that you at least look at my first post from last term, and follow the link to the Dove campaign for Real Beauty ad, because I think that’s an important thing for members of my class to see.
I don’t usually watche Lifetime movies, but I saw the ads for the movie The Pregnancy Pact, and thought it would be a good one to discuss for class. It’s about a high school in which a group of girls made a pact to all get pregnant after the first one did. The acting was not good at all, the writing was clumsy, and it really bothered me that the entire school seemed to be good-looking, popular, white sexually active girls and their boyfriends. There wasn’t a single student even standing around that looked like they might be in the chess club, or the drama club, or a loner, or a goth, or anything other than an athletic boy, or a cheerleader or their friends. The message seemed to be that some girls will have a bad life if they have babies young, as did the girl who ended up smoking pot with her mother and brother with baby by her side, but that others will be just fine, as the story of the main character, who is shown happily playing with her baby at the end will (though we do see her boyfriend off with another girl). This seems like an odd message to be giving out, especially when Camryn Manheim, who played the school nurse, did a Public Service Announcement at the end about what pregnant girls could do.
Because my dissertation was about teen shows, I tend to watch a lot of them still. I also watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager, though I haven’t seen this week’s episode yet. I find it to have the most laughable dialogue of any show on television, a lot of the acting is terrible, and mostly I watch because I want to see how unrealistic and silly it can get. However, I understand that there are a lot of teenage girls who watch the show who really identify with the lead girl, Amy, and her friends. Amy had sex at band camp with a boy who tends to have sex with anyone who will let him, and became pregnant. However, although she has so far not ended up with the father, he is highly involved in the child’s life, gives Amy money, she has a rich boyfriend of her own (or did until last week), and became extremely popular by getting pregnant and became friends with students she would not ever have been friends with before. Although her parents and sister complained about the pregnancy, there appears to be plenty of money, she ended up with a cushy job at a day care center, and there’s always someone to babysit if she actually needs it. All in all, it looks like a pretty good deal for her, even if she doesn’t have as much time to play the French Horn as she did before.
Nearly all the other teen characters have had sex (including the very Christian girl who vowed not to in the first season), are obsessed with sex, and talk about it constantly. They seem to have a lot more fun than they do homework, and there is always an excuse for the entire cast to skip school and go do something. Once again, despite the PSA’s at the end of each episode, I’m not convinced that this show is at all a cautionary tale, but instead makes having sex in high school look normal, and those who choose not to abnormal, and at risk for losing their boyfriends to girls who give oral sex.
Of course shows like Gossip Girl (which I think is a lot of fun, though if had a pre-teen daughter or teen daughter I would hope she didn’t watch it and if she did I’d have to have a lot of discussions about it) and 90210 (less succesful and fun, but better than it was last season) are completely sex-obsessed. In none of these shows or movies is abortion ever seriously considered (though a sympathetic character in The Pregnancy Pact turns out to have had one when younger), and the question is always to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.
Given that most of the audience for these shows is under 18, and I suspect skews mostly toward pre-teenagers rather than actual teenagers, who don’t watch all that much television, I just wonder how it is that these messages are being perceived by the audience. On MSNBC this morning the crawl said that teen pregnancies are up for the first time in a decade. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35071837/ns/health-more_health_news/
My initial speculation for this was that with the financial meltdown, teenagers have smaller allowances/fewer of them have cars, and there is less for them to do for fun, so they’re having more sex, but the article makes it seem like it’s a longer term issue and mentions things like whether abstinence-only education is to blame, or whether cuts to that sort of program is to blame. In light of movies like Juno, and movies and shows like the ones I mentioned, it seems like there are a lot of mixed messages being sent by the media about pregnancy.
Sources:
Stein, Rob. “Rise in Teen Pregnancies Spurs Debate: Rate jumps for first time in decade, raising alarm among experts”. The Washington Post. Health. January 26, 2010.
Photo of Pregnancy Pact from mylifetime.com
Girls Who (Don't) Wear Glasses 