I loved it not only because I love the Lifetime film of the same name with Kirsten Dunst in her most heart wrenching and overall'd role. I loved 16 and Pregnant because in an age when teenage girls are losing their virginity younger than ever, government programs and loud-mouthed Evangelicals are promulgating dangerous ideas about contraceptive use and teen-pregnancies are on the rise, the show gave MTV viewers (I don't have the exact stats here but I'm assuming that if TRL screaming crowds are any indication, that 15-20 and female is a pretty large cut of the demographic) a realistic look at what could happen if you give it up to Tommy from gym class and he made his pimply spawn grow inside of you.
I loved 16 and Pregnant.
Its follow-up, Teen Mom, is currently airing on the cabeler to astounding success. Its premiere was the highest rated in MTV history before the Jersey Shore juggernaut came along and it's been doing well ever since. So, am I going to show the same love for this show as I did the first?
Well, the answer is difficult. The show shares many of the same elements that I enjoyed so much in the first series. It is a stark, realistic look at the differing experiences of teenagers who get pregnant. I still appreciate the concern for realism with which the network is handling the situation. That celebrity pregnancies have glamorized having a baby is of no question. People in Middle America can't look like Heidi Klum or Nicole Richie three weeks after they pop a nine-pounder out because they don't have personal trainers, nutritionists or the benefit of tummy tucks following pre-scheduled Cesarean Sections. And, yes, that does happen. The business of birthing a baby is booming and if the aughts have taught us anything, it's that teenagers are a monstrous horde of consumers, ripe for the pop-culturally fuelled propaganda picking. So, seeing these formerly pert teens stay fat after baby or have trouble dating cute boys or having to watch as their friends get to be kids and they get to take care of them is a nice counter-point to the US Weekly element of it all.
But in that reality is the nasty documentation of kids caring for kids. What often psychologically accompanies teen pregnancies is anger, resentment and regret--perfectly reasonable emotions in the face of a volatile life event. But these emotions are rarely discussed and NEVER condoned in our society. It doesn't matter how many interviews Brooke Shields does about post-partum depression or how many times Jen Aniston says that she's not looking to have kids, women are seen as genetically predestined Mother Madonnas. Their maternal instincts are all-encompassing, ever-present and always, always, first priority. To deviate from this ideal is to become a threat to the very fabric of our culture--mothers are to be unfailingly Mothers or they are deemed a failure. As caregivers. As women. As people.
These girls are teenagers too, and as much as we give them all too lateral allowances and teach them to seek an independent voice and expect them to act as "young adults" they are biologically still children; children deal with emotions differently than us adult folk. So a feeling of despair, resentment or regret that might lead an adult to express their emotions in a constructive manner often lead teenagers to lash out erratically. In my day I nearly broke a door off its hinges by slamming it. "I hate you! I wish I were never born!" These outbursts were present in 16 and Pregnant, usually borne of one of my (admittedly) lesser-loved cast members, written off as immature or bratty. But they were always forgiven. Forgiven because these were kids after all, and the gravity of the situation was about the size of a fucking mountain on their shoulders, about the size that their bellies were growing to be. I gave them a pass but I gave it to them with expiration date. Nine months. They were allowed to be bratty and bullish and downright babies until their own came. Then, they were magically expected to learn how to juggle it all, to cast aside doubts and depression and to rise above the statistics. Shouldn't their maternal love and instincts alone push them to rise above it all? Don't we all expect this of our mothers?
In Teen Mom we see the nasty truth. We open the gift that we have been given with a perfectly tied bow and watch uncomfortably as real life unfolds before us. These girls are still girls. They are often petulant and selfish and they make the sorts of decisions that remind you of your own high school experience, embarrassing, ill informed, awkward. And that's all good and fine when I'm watching NYC Prep or Laguna Beach and the biggest consequence at hand is someone being cast aside from one private school only to be picked up by another. But now there are babies. And they're so perfect. As the couplings begin to disintegrate, the grammar school constructed communities abandon the girls, the slow and deep-setting realization that "the rest of your life" is at least in part spelled out before them, the juxtaposition of the unaffected, innocent children and their trial-by-fire weary parents (children as well) is a jarring--and saddening--reminder that maturity does not have a due date. Motherhood is not inherent. Sometimes reality television really is reality and perhaps, the lives affected positively by the program will never outweigh the documented sadness of these babies' earlier months, and the children who are raising them. Knowing that I control the replay button on my own less-than-forgiving childhood, and that I am the only one who can watch, is sometimes the most abundant solace I have.
So, is it all a wash? Is Teen Mom more potentially damaging than it is helpful? Is my own culturally imbued notion of femininity and motherhood clouding my entertainment value and ultimately, judgment of these girls? Perhaps. But perhaps this is but a temporary inhibition. Life's most frustrating and judgment-inducing situations often give rise to larger learning moments; the more we expose ourselves to humanity, in all of its facets, the more that we learn about each other and ourselves. Sure, I feel like punching these kids in the face sometimes for choosing going out over their kid one night or fighting with their baby daddy while the baby is in the room, but I'm also beginning to see their plight as people not instead of, not even as well as, but something akin to parallel to their roles as parents.
Take for instance Amber. Amber of my-boyfriend-bought-me-a-$20-engagement-ring-from-Walmart-and-then-purchased-his-fat-ass-a-Playstation3 fame was one of my least favorite segments on 16 and Pregnant. Whiney and curt, she was exactly the sort of teenaged girl who made me think to myself, "In order to punish me for the wrongs I have committed, God will surely smite me with the likes of a girl like this living in my household and looking vaguely like me." And since she's had the baby, she's still one of those girls. No miracle of motherly grace has been bestowed upon her. Amber’s storyline follows her struggle to obtain a GED (a heartbreaking scene in which she is informed that the train for High School Diploma Land has come and gone offers a heavy dose of the aforementioned reality), be a full-time stay-at-home Mom, repair her relationship with breadwinning but absent (and absent-minded) doof/baby-daddy Gary, and wrestle with severe depression.
That's right, folks. The girl done got depressed. In one scene that I would typically deem put-on and affected, the cameraman holds the shot as Amber and her baby gaze longingly out the window of their duplex rental, placing hand to glass in a feeble attempt to regain a piece of the outside world. Suddenly all temper tantrums are forgiven. All of the counter-productive negativity is washed away. Even the questionable fights she has had with Gary (in the presence of her child) are somehow less tantamount. Because in this moment she's a human being. And a woman. And a child. And a human. In this moment the reality of her roles, and her world, and my reinterpretation of them have converged to demonstrate the expansion of my own. In this moment I am making my own world bigger; hopefully that's a good enough end game for these kids.
