16 and pregnant

so i've been watching the MTV documentary series 16 and pregnant this summer, though I wasn't sure why at first. MTV has always aired the show "Engaged and Underage" which doesn't deal explicitly with the same subject matter, but still falls under the "too young, too soon, & too fast" genre that the TV channel likes to explore. Anyway, as seen in the trailer above: 6 girls, 6 pregnancies, 6 1-hour episodes.

After watching my first episode of the series, I was immediately hooked. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion from a nightmare state while you're lying paralyzed in your bed. Every episode is full of what.the.fuck moments, and horrifying reality checks about why these girls are too young to have kids. On some level I'm uncomfortable with the sense of shock-and-awe that I get from the show. It makes me feel morally superior, snobbish, entitled, and bourgie. I never would be in the situations these girls are in, and each episode I wish I could turn back the clock and sit down with them to discuss the nature of boyfriends and sex in high school. High school is not an easy time in anyone's life. I would hardly try to argue that it is inappropriate to have sex in high school as natural desires and curiosities will inevitably take their course. But these decisions are complicated by the maturity levels of both the girls and their boyfriends (or mysterious sperm donors, as one episode barely dealt with the issue of the father), and sometimes the reasons why teenagers have sex and how aren't made in the clearest, more careful state of mind.

So what should one person take away from the show? I'm not sure. If these episodes were aired in a perfect society I would hope that everyone could watch these girls' stories with the right mixture of empathy, sympathy, and hope. Unfortunately, the editing and the real-life experiences that make up each episode usually lends itself to viewer judgment: in my case, overall relief that this.is.not.ME. Sometimes I fantasize that these shows could be used as educational videos in high schools nationwide; however, I wonder if high school students are introspective enough for these girls' lives to make an impact on future generations. One can only hope that, at bare minimum, nobody watches these shows and thinks it's cool to get pregnant at 16.

I'll probably have to return to discuss the final episode, as I've only seen the first five. They break down something like this:

1. Maci: Tennessee girl with a boyfriend. They move in together after they discover she is pregnant. After she gives birth, the boyfriend peaces out mentally and clearly hates fatherhood. He tries to compensate with an enormous tattoo. Their marriage plans derail and they have a discussion (featured in the preview above) where he declares "if you didn't get pregnant, we wouldn't be together.) Maci, a self-described over-achiever, graduates from high school a semester early and enrolls in a community college.

2. Farrah: Iowa girl with no boyfriend. The father of the child is never shown on screen, though he attempts to contact her early in the episode. This episode was rife with conflict between the mother and her daughter; sometimes I wonder if the mother educated Farrah on birth control at all. Farrah's mother also had a stupid, bovine look about her: the overall lack of love and empathy that she showed on camera towards her daughter was hard to watch. Farrah graduates from high school, but only after she enrolls at a community college instead of attending her regular school. She loses her best friend who tells the entire cheerleading squad about the pregnancy and fears the taunting and the rumors at her old high school.

3. Amber: Indiana girl with a boyfriend who proposes during the episode. There were two stand-out details about this episode. First, Amber and Gary seemed like the most quintessential, American tourist kind of couple. They ate every meal at a fast food restaurant and Amber's brother was in the military. Second, this particular episode was the only one with even a shred of hope. Amber and Gary were young, definitely, and had a few lessons in maturity to learn, but they also seemed to genuinely love each other. At one point Gary buys a PS3 but then returns it after he sees how much grief it gives Amber and her family. It might not have been the best initial decision, but he tries to atone for it, which is more than I can say about the boyfriends in any other episode.

4. Ebony: Colorado girl with a neanderthal boyfriend. This girl's story was the most heartbreaking. They both dreamt of enlisting in the Air Force after graduation; Josh, however, did not seem to care about graduating a single iota. Long after she decided to keep the baby, she discovers that she and Josh both can't be in the Air Force because of Air Force policy: if there is a child involved, they do not want both parents deployed at the same time. She eventually decides to put her full efforts into Josh: making sure he graduates from high school, making sure he enlists in the Air Force. As a result, she does not graduate. Josh, additionally, no longer wants to marry her as they had planned because "we're already 17 with a baby, do we want to be 17 and married?" I watched this episode with my mother and during the last heartbreaking scene where Ebony recounts what is happening in her life and the fact that she didn't graduate from high school, both of us cried. She was a sweet, smart girl who seemed determine to succeed; her boyfriend couldn't stop acting like he was 5 long enough to give a shit.

5. Whitney: Georgia girl with a boyfriend. I'm writing this blog post as I am watching this episode because some of the moments in the episode were too memorable too ignore.

a) Witness Whitney claim at the mall that everybody is looking at her because she "has a beach ball under her shirt." Whitney, have you thought about the fact that everybody is looking at you because you have a camera crew surrounding you?
b) Witness Whitney's weirdly named friend Eerie claim "a lot of people don't want to hang out with you because they think they'll get pregnant too." Pregnancy is a disease, right Eerie.
c) Witness Whitney's grandmother claim "If you'd have not gotten pregnant and still be in school, you'd still have a lot of those friends. You feel lost without your friends don't you." Rubbing salt in the wound, grandma.

Those three soundbytes are only the tip of the iceberg of the bludgeoning-over-your-head sob stories that these shows consistently use to make their point.

So i'll come back later to summarize the final episode. But ultimately I'm not sure what MTV wanted to accomplish here. If it's a scare tactic for their younger demographic, I fear for its effectiveness. If it's a viscious form of schadenfreude, then I wish they hadn't filmed these pregnancies.