MTV and the Celebrity of Teen Pregnancy

Permit me a bit of nepotism.  My boss’s daughter has been published in National Post, writing about MTV’s horrendous show, 16 and Pregnant.  Lacking any subtlety, the title tells us all we really need to know about the show.  MTV parades pregnant teenagers in front of their cameras, turning a life-changing event into hollow entertainment.

The MTV-as-Nero, fiddling while North America burns, meme is nothing new; people have been hollering about it for quite a while.  What struck me about this commentary was not just its reasonableness, but the fact that it was written by a teenager – someone so young that she probably doesn’t even qualify as part of the MTV Generation, but has been fully immersed in their pop culture.  Her experience, and her friend’s, brings fresh insight to this old argument.

In the piece, Chantala Forgie writes:

As much as we teenagers would like to deny it, the media has an immense influence on our attitudes. Media may not be able to tell us what to think, but they do tell us what to think about. Throughout the 60’s, for instance, the idea of femininity took a sudden shift from a voluptuous Marilyn Monroe to a skeletal Twiggy. As stick-thin celebrities and models appeared with increasing frequency throughout the media, the previously unfamiliar disorder of anorexia became epidemic. A show like 16 and Pregnant risks setting off a similarly disturbing pattern.

Sometimes, I worry there is not much to be done to correct so many of the errors and extravagances of our society.  Sometimes, an unassuming freshmen will tell me that, maybe, I’m wrong.  Thanks Chantala.