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"The Media and the Glamorization of Teen Pregnancy"

Page history last edited by Andrew Winckles 13 years, 7 months ago

The Media & the Glamorization of Teen Pregnancy

 

 

 

Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is an independent, quirky 16-year-old girl who was impregnated by her awkward, track star friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera).  In attempt to avoid her untimely bout with motherhood and to get back to her normal, high school life, she finds Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman & Jennifer Garner), a wealthy, young couple, unable to have their own children, who want to adopt the baby once it’s born. After nine months of cruising through high school, and sitting around and waiting, Juno effortlessly hands her baby off to the Lorings and took her life off hold, resuming her seemingly average life, with Paulie now as her boyfriend, her pregnancy only a blip on her radar.

 

Directed by Jason Reitman, who also directed Thank You For Smoking and Up in the Air, Juno was received many positive reviews, receiving a 8.9/10 on the movie critique site, Rotten Tomatoes, and receiving praise from pro-life communities, regarding the movie’s anti-abortion views. An Academy Award winner for Best Screenplay (2008) and nominated for numerous Golden Globes, Juno quickly became a must-see movie, showing the upsides of teen pregnancy, such as Juno finally winning over Paulie’s heart after the birth of their child brought them together.

 

Juno represents one of the 750,000 teenage girls who unexpectedly get pregnant yearly in the United States. In 2008, one year after Juno was released, seventeen students under the age sixteen atGloucester High School in Massachusetts became pregnant, choosing to not complete high school, or obtain a college education or career. Timemagazine called it the “Juno Effect” and accused films such asJuno, Knocked Up (2007)andSaved! (2004)of making teenage pregnancy seem fun and appealing. The media today idealizes teenage pregnancy and young motherhood by only revealing the unrealistic side of a teenager’s an unwanted pregnancy, not taking into consideration the financial toll it will have on the teen, her family, and others, and glorifying the pregnancies of famous teens as well.

 

 

Juno fails to portray the issues surrounding teen pregnancy in an authentic and responsible manner. However, the glamorization of teen pregnancy is not only limited to the silver screen. MTV’s reality, documentary show, 16 & Pregnant, follows the life of teenage girls, a different girl for each episode, through her third trimester of pregnancy, her delivery, as well as a few months into motherhood. While it is meant, supposedly, to show the hardships that result from a teen pregnancy, the greatest hardship usually shown is when the girls have to quit the cheerleading team, not being able to attend prom due to becoming too big to fit into a dress, or not have a car. However, whenever the teen mother has  her mothering capabilities questioned by her peers or parents, the teenager would go into a frenzy, screaming, “I am a good mother!” before leaving in a huff. The show’s main goal is to shine a light on the reality for some of the viewers, but, for many teens, it looks more and more like fun, showing the attention the teen mothers get at baby showers and from friends with their adorable newborn. Dr. Cynthia Rosengard, a researcher in internal medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Brown Medical School in Providence says that, in reality, these girls “…are not cognitively at the level of understanding the realities of parenting.” The show glosses over many of the other hardships of being a teenage mother, such as the financial and emotional toll a baby has on such a young mother.

 

According to a United States Department of Agriculture report, it costs $124,800 to raise a child with two parents, annually, $250,260 if the mother is raising the child on her own. Many health insurance policies do not cover the cost of maternity, which, with sonograms, checkups, vitamins and medication, can reach up to several thousand dollars, with an additional $10,000 for safe hospital delivery. (Alexander, 264) Due to this lack of knowledge of these expenses and necessities for a healthy baby, the newborns of many teenage mothers are usually unhealthily underweight. As seen in the media, such as in 16 & Pregnant, many pregnant teens continue to smoke, drink, and party, despite the negative consequences it will have on the baby, advocating that a teenager can still have fun during her pregnancy. The media fails to broadcast the financial toll in raising a child, having the parents of the teen willingly paying the outrageous medical expenses, maternity clothing, and other baby supplies in order to continue being documented by television.

 

These costs are not limited to the teen mother and her family. In the United States, teenage mothers cost federal, state, and local taxpayers at least$9.1 billion, according to a 2006 report by Dr. Saul Hoffman, published for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Most of the costs of teen pregnancies are associated with negative consequences for the children of teen mothers, including increased costs for health care, foster care, and incarceration. Television only portrays the teen couples that decide to keep their baby and raise it on their own, never considering the option of abortion and with adoption being a very last resort.

 

Gloucester High School, located Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small fishing town about 30 miles from Boston, first believed their sudden spike in teen pregnancy numbers was merely a statistical blip -  about seventeen girls out of a school of 1,200, instead of the average three or four. However, school officials began to look into the matter after the school nurse observed an unusual number of girls began reporting to the school clinic for a pregnancy test, with many girls returning multiple times to obtain pregnancy tests. The principal, Joseph Sullivan, said, “Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” in a Time magazine interview. Several girls confessed that all of the soon-to-be mothers made a pact to all get pregnant and raise their babies together, with one of the fathers being a 24-year-old homeless man.

 

The girls perceived the raising of their babies together as an exciting, new adventure that they all could embark on.  They did not have any dreams beyond getting pregnant and having the babies together, no goals of a college education, a career, or even getting married. They did not realize the other hardships that are to come in raising a child, especially with no husband, all girls still dependent on their parents as their main source of financial income. However, the media frenzy that ensued around scandal made the girls out to be celebrities, which may explain why so many other Gloucester High girls outside the pact wanted to get pregnant after the scheme was publicized. The media’s main goal was to broadcast the alarming increase of teenage pregnancy, but hardly touch the economic or social consequences of single parenthood.

 

The brief fifteen minutes of fame fizzled quickly, however. Nowadays, no one outside the Gloucester community knows how these girls are doing with their babies, whether or not they completed high school or got married, the scandal dropping off the radar, almost as if it never existed.

 

 In 2007, OK! magazine announced that Jamie Lynn Spears, star of Nickelodeon’s pre-teen hit Zoey 101 and younger sister to pop singer, Britney Spears, was pregnant at the age of sixteen. A media circus followed and every parent suddenly knew who she was. Soon after Jamie Lynn gave birth, OK! published a $1 million photo spread, with the new mother and her baby on the cover, seeming as if it was easier to get Jamie Lynn on the cover of the magazine as a teenage mother rather than a hit TV star. The magazine glamorized the life of Jamie Lynn, her baby, and her boyfriend, saying that “I had a perfect pregnancy and a perfect delivery. I was very blessed.”

 

However, not all teenagers who unexpectedly get pregnant are not in as good of a financial situation as Jamie Lynn is. The magazine is only concerned with painting a rosy picture of a young, beautiful mother with an adorable baby girl, hoping that Jamie Lynn’s image will help sell more of their magazine, neglecting to inform the other aspects of the pregnancy that may not be so peachy. This glamorization proves that the media knows withholding other information about teenage pregnancies and only showing the positive side will influence their teenage and young adult audience to some degree, with their magazine selling in the process.

 

Bristol Palin, the daughter of 2008 Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was 17 years old when it was announced at the Republican National Convention that she was pregnant. After the social and political media storm that followed, it was publicized that Bristol was going to marry the father of her child, only to break off their engagement after Sarah Palin and John McCain lost the presidential election. The media tiptoed around the scandal, instead of vilifying the daughter of the conservative party member. Her mother, former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, advocated abstinence for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The media did not highlight this fact, but, instead, made it appear that it was okay for Bristol to have her baby as she comes from a well-known and wealthy family with a strong political standing.

 

Bristol Palin recently teamed up with the Candie’s Foundation to debut a public service announcement for teen abstinence, which will run in May of this year. In the PSA, Bristol asks “What if I didn’t come from a famous family? What if I didn’t have all their support? What if I didn’t have all these opportunities?” This implies that only wealthy, well-connected teens, such as herself,canget pregnant with no consequences. This may be to counteract the field day the media had, who canonized Bristol for keeping her baby, in desperate attempt to set a good example, though not very successful.

 

The media did not delve deeply into the repercussions of being a teenage mother. After birth, the media showers the teen mom with alluring photo shoots or a spot on a hit TV show of the mother and a cute baby. They do not discuss the economic hardships, how they cope with being a teenage, unwed parent, or whether or not they have been receiving help from their families and community. Instead, the media focuses on how well everything turned out after the birth of the baby. The media glamorizes these photo shoots and television shows so much that some teenagers yearn for a baby themselves, thinking that perhaps their life could turn out that way too, without complications. The pregnant teens live vicariously through the celebrity teenage mothers until they have to face the harsh realities of life.

 

Works Cited

Alexander, Greg R. "The Future of Children." The Role of Prenatal Care in Preventing Low Birth Weight. Vol. 5. New Jersey: Princeton University, 2007. 103-20. Print. Ser. 1.

 

The Candie's Foundation. "Pause Before You Play." Address. The Candie's Foundation. Mar. 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2010. <http://candiesfoundation.org/>.

 

Hoffman, Saoul. National Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy, comp. "By the Numbers: The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing in Michigan." The National Campaign. Nov. 2007. Web. 09 Apr. 2010. <http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/costs/pdf/states/michigan/fact-sheet.pdf>.

 

Juno. Dir. Jason Reitman. By Diablo Cody. Perf. Ellen Page, Michael Cera. Fox Searchlight, 2007. DVD.

 

"Juno Movie Review."Rotten Tomatoes. Web. 10 Apr. 2010. <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/juno/>.

 

Kingsbury, Kathleen. "Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High." Time. CNN, 18 June 2008. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html>.

 

Locker, Dr. Sari. "America's Glamorization of Pregnant 16 Year Olds." Web log post. Dr. Sari Locker. Dr. Sari Locker, 20 Dec. 2007. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://www.sarilocker.com/articles/glamour16.php>.

 

OK! Staff. "World Exclusive: Meet Baby Maddie!" OK! 9 July 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010. <http://www.okmagazine.com/2008/07/world-exclusive-meet-baby-maddie-7750/>.

 

Reuters. The Cost of Raising Children. Rep. MSN, 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2010. <http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/family/kids/tlkidscost.asp>.

 

Ward, Kate. "Bristol Palin Pregnancy Prevention PSA." Entertainment Weekly 7 Apr. 2010. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/07/bristol-palin-psa/>.

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