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The Gosselin's twins are celebrating their birthday! OMG! Children of tabloid fodder and unwilling reality-show participants MAKE NEWS by just LIVING.

and of course...

MILEY CYRUS DELETED HER TWITTER ACCOUNT.

Wait. Wait! It gets better.

Because her sorta boyfriend doesn't like it and convinced her.

Aside from the facts that 1) Miley, a popular twitterer (?), is now a trending topic (it's gotta be the gossip stalkers and the few teenagers who follow her) 2) This is going to become a big deal, deciding when/how celebrities can just up and quit a service 3) She can't come back under her old name or her old email address, unless Twitter changes the rules just for her and 4) She followed her boyfriend's counsel, and millions of girls are now sighing and shaking their head, there are excellent reasons why she doesn't need an account. Some branding/publicity people would tell their client that they should, but I think it's a step toward reclaiming her privacy, figuring out her boundaries. Yeah, she's had some bumps in the world recently--pretty common for anyone in her position--but it just again shows how the little decisions we all face reverberate when it reaches a celebrity, and how much now every little thing is news. Not sure how much "real" news was delivered via her Twitter account, other than some vaguely interesting and voyeuristic updates, but the TMZs of the world are now both energized by this new story and sad by the fact that there won't be any more pure straight-from-the-source gossip to deliver.

No, Not All Teen Girls Get Pregnant: Why I Hate The Secret Life of the American Teenager

I came on Facebook a few days ago to see a number of people going crazy over the return of The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I’ve never watched this show. I have no desire to watch this show. From the little I know, the lead teen girl gets pregnant. Because obviously every teenager knows someone who got knocked up if she didn’t herself. I envisioned other contemporary-teen problems, of mean girls and MySpace and blah blah blah. But no, the show is way worse.

With the news that teen birth rates have skyrocketed and that virginity pledges don’t work (which we already knew already), I question the wisdom of having a show—and a terrible one at that—that focuses on teen pregnancy. Oh, you say, but it can serve as a warning! And now that all these girls are getting knocked up, they can relate! Please.

One or two of the articles I read discussing these two studies mentioned the rash of high-profile teen pregnancies, and how that could be seen as “glamorizing” teen pregnancy. I think the spike is a combination of a lot of factors, and I don’t want to discount or endorse that idea. But I absolutely do not think having a show like Secret Life is helping.

Secret Life was created by Brenda Hampton, of 7^th Heaven fame. This should make most normal, rational people quake in their bones. 7^th Heaven moralized, but it did it in the worst way—showcasing certain value sets by letting its characters run amok, behaving badly, generally being abhorrent, amoral people, but it was all ok in the end as long as you waited til you had sex to get married and believed in church and god. It fostered “traditional family values” in the worst way. The Secret Life of the American Teenager, from what I’ve read, does the same thing.

The show was actually passed by FOX. Maybe they thought that the moralizing wasn’t for them, but on the surface, this is a show MADE for them. The show has one hell of a titillating title. Of course it’s going to arrest a certain type of teen and their parents.

But it’s precisely those teens and parents who should stay far, far away. For one thing, I don’t think the title is representative of anything. I think a teenager’s secret life would be far more interesting and far less soapy that what this show’s got going one, what with the pregnant teen marrying a boy that’s not the daddy, cause he’s awesome and the daddy’s not. What teenage boy in his right mind would do such a thing?!?!?

The show is supposed to show all aspects and all consequences of what happens when a teenager becomes pregnant. There are major characters who are religious and vow to wait until marriage. Despite this, the show is filled with stereotypes. The lead, Amy, is a “good” girl who slipped up and had sex with some rowdy playa—except she was too dumb to realize that she actually had sex.

I always feel, watching teen shows, that it’s a must that someone gets pregnant. There’s always a pregnancy scare and some point, and then it happens. But why? I no longer find these plots amusing—on any show. They’re rarely dealt with sensitively or realistically, and it just makes it seem like everyone is too busy having sloppy sex to do anything else with their lives. Yeah, girls get pregnant, and teenagers are stupid. But teenagers are more than that, and it’s insulting to always see it boiled down to the same things. I went to a small high school, and my sophomore a junior girl I didn’t know got pregnant. This was big news, whispered about constantly. But really, that was it. Everyone I was surrounded by was far more worried about colleges and grades and teachers and other mini-dramas that were a world away from pregnancy. And I honestly don’t believe that in this we were that different from millions of other teenagers in the United States. I had quite a secret life in high school, but it certainly didn’t involve me getting knocked up. The fact that the central character gets married is another thing that shown as positive—gotta love those family values!—with no mention of how insane that really is. And at the wedding, there are no adults, and fake IDs are provided for all the high school students...even though several said they wouldn’t drink. Right. But it’s ok, guys—she’s keeping the baby and she’s getting married, to hell with breaking the law and just having a huge-ass bash! Hooray!

A poster on Television Without Pity explains how awful the show is below, saying the show “reads like really bad fanfic written by middle schoolers”:

While I was less than shocked that SLOAT was riddled with stereotypes (my old roommate watched 7th Heaven reruns far into her twenties) I was actually surprised that the show manages to denigrate all stereotypes. According to this show, all Christians are overly preachy and naive, as well as hypocritical and judgmental, everyone in therapy must be considered crazy by not only teenagers but Deputy District Attorneys as well, mentally retarded people hire hookers over the internet to be their friends, teenage girls are universally morons, non-religious people go around jumping into bed with any person they can get their hands on, single mothers are oversexed and don't care about who they sleep with, married man or not, etc, etc. And also? Ben? Is a stalker. For real. He needs serious therapy. Not cool. Not cool at all. This is actually what parents want their daughters to see as an ideal of romanticism? What?

This is no holds barred the worst show on television. Absolutely the worst. No question. I knew it in the first ten minutes of the show... and the whole therapy thing, which was totally weird random and unrealistic, as well as the fact that everyone felt the need to whisper the word "abortion" when they said it at all AND the fact that the show moralizes constantly without being able to figure out what it's moralizing about (condoms are good, but premarital sex is bad; abortion is wrong, but it is every persons personal choice; christianity is good but christians are crazy) has done nothing to prove me (and everyone else on this board wrong).

But this is the part I totally cannot figure out -- I watched all of this monumentally stupid shows monumentally stupid episodes in the last two days. And while I'd really like to plead overwork and exhaustion, I find that argument insufficient to explain my inability to simply turn off the damn television. I know others have faced a similar plight and yet I cannot stop wondering what is the freaking deal? Why can it not be turned off? What weird hold does Brenda Hampton have over the population of the world and is there any way it can be harnessed for good rather than evil?

It’s shows like this that not only give teenagers a terrible rap, but also warp their viewers’ minds. A young kid, a middle schooler—and as this is on ABC Family, there are many watching—will form really weird and potentially damaging ideas about love, sex, and high school. And then when that time comes, they might realize that something isn’t quite right. But while the premise behind The Secret Life of the American Teenager could be interesting if done well, it’s clearly shallow and silly, wrapped in a guise of morals and real family drama that everyone can relate to. At best it’s a silly soap that enthralls a bunch of people for some time, at worst it distorts a real and complex issue, reflecting the mixed-up notions of a nation that just doesn’t know what to do with its teenagers.

Be Sexy. Just Don't Have Sex. But Don't Wait Too Long, Or Then You're Weird.

“You can see how what they want the most is beauty. Not in a chauvinistic way, not even as something they can act on. Just instinctively, to look at and enjoy. It’s what they expect, and who they expect it from most of all is teenage girls. When you’re older, it’s all right to get heavy, but when you’re a teenager, being beautiful or at least cute is your responsibility. Say the words sixteen-year-old girl to any group of males, eleven-year-olds, fifty-year-olds, and they will leer, maybe a lot or maybe a little or maybe they’ll try not to leer. But they will be envisioning the sixteen-year-old’s smooth tan legs, her high breasts and long hair. Is expecting her beauty even their fault?”

--The Man of My Dreams

How has it that teenage pregnancy has become this big thing? Yes, teenage pregnancy was always around, and for most people it always loomed as a danger to avoid (at least in modern life). But in the past year it’s just exploded, with the idea of teen girls having sex a linchpin of the culture wars.

There has been a lot written, particularly aimed at Juno, about how “normalized” teen pregnancy is becoming, and it must be that newfound attitude that the Republicans and the media adopted when the news that Bristol Palin was pregnant hit. She and her mom were lionized for keeping the baby, and unbelievably, this story is spun as a positive thing.

I do not want to suggest that Bristol should be shamed by her pregnancy, but the hypocritical attitude towards girls and sex boggles my mind. On one hand, you have conservatives—including her mother—who want to avoid teaching teenagers anything about sex and preferring to stress waiting until marriage to do so, and on the other hand, the encouragement to think about sex constantly; it’s the national pastime.

Sex is this great chasm. Angela Chase put it best in an episode of My So-Called Life (7:30): “There's this dividing line between girls who have had sex, and girls who haven't. And all of a sudden you realize you're looking at each other across it.” She’s talking about an old friend here, one who’s suddenly grown up, on the other side of that line. Sex is adulthood, and you haven’t reached it until you cross that threshold.

Sex is the bane of young adults. Watching the VMAs brought this home: Many of the stars were under 20, and their stances on sex were Not Until Marriage. The fact that they were so public about it—and that Jordin Sparks felt compelled to defend her choice so ardently in front of millions of people when attacked by an aggressively heterosexual 35-year-old male—just made that culture line so much sharper.

Jordin Sparks’ sex life is only her business. Making a joke about how the kids are wasting their youth by choosing to not get any by any of their ardent fans might elicit a chuckle and some boos, but it’s tacky, and makes it seem like they are only in it for the booty, not because, y’know, they actually like music. Nor is Sparks’ comment that sex = slutty fair. It’s just promulgating a standard and a detrimental label, one that’s increasingly used as a general all-purpose slur.

One of Britney Spears’ biggest mistakes was to announce that she was waiting until marriage to have sex, because that vow was constantly hanging over her head. It subconsciously colored her image, and made her appeal vastly more interesting. But when she couldn’t hew to that misguided standard she set for herself, her image fell apart. She shouldn’t be judged for doing something millions of other teen girls do, and she shouldn’t be punished because she said something really stupid when she was young. But it also shouldn’t be the standard that is espoused to the youth of America. Since her downward spiral, she’s become a laughingstock of the public, eliciting pity and scorn. Her sister’s own pregnancy was just another nail in the coffin of the Spears saga. Someone somewhere must have made the case that because she had sex outside of marriage, breaking her vow to wait, her punishment is to become insane. After all, in pop culture, teen sex is bad! We see that time and again on TV, now it’s proven in real life!

It’s not fair that these starlets are forced to say these things. Miley Cyrus may really and truly want to wait until she is married…but she’s 15, and she will probably reevaluate many of her statements for the next few years. After all (and you can take this with a grain of salt, since it is a post-scandal apology), she said she didn’t realize the pictures in Vanity Fair were sexual, and is deeply embarrassed by the outcry. A teenager, especially one in the public eye, should not have to discuss her opinions on sex when most of us know—even if she doesn’t—that they will probably change, and if our immediate reaction to the comments is smirking that they are lying.

These statements are a way to protect the stars, a way of saying it’s ok to look up at them, an excuse to offer them as role models. It’s ok to emulate them, even though they put up provocative pics on the internet, because they aren’t going to have sex until they’re much older and have a wedding ring to prove their commitment. It’s not just dishonest, it’s a terrible message to send. We can sexualize ourselves all we want, make ourselves sexual commodities for other people’s fantasies, but we hold off until it really matters. The song and dance is old hat; it’s called being a tease. And yes, being a tease can be fun. That’s also called flirting. But in a public space, it’s also ripe for judgment, because it’s a way of subverting the system, of having the cake and eating it too, with no caloric payback.

The stars also become oddly sexualized by just making these statements. I know very little about the Jonas Brothers, but hearing that they all wear promise rings—and having that become a defining fact, instead of their music—immediately makes one think of them as sexual beings, because they are announcing their (lack of) intentions to the youth of America. They shouldn’t be mocked for that decision, but rather we should be questioning ourselves to why it’s necessary in the first place.

Our culture is also conditioned to accept teenage girls as sexual beings, and increasingly, they are marketed that way. Victoria’s Secret has its own line of teenage lingerie (shouldn’t that be an oxymoron?), Pink. It’s as if they’re not ready for red. Red = blood, lust, lipstick, fiery passion, adult. Pink is gentle, mild, lipgloss, sweet, girl.

Other clothing retailers, like teenage mainstay Abercrombie & Fitch, have similar lines. And they are hardly the only ones marketing sexualized material to a young audience. Music, movies and especially television always revolve around sex as the be all and end all, with looking good as the way to get sex, and often some of the most memorable episodes of a teen drama revolve around When They Finally Have Sex (see Everwood, Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, 90210…). This attitude has not only grown, it’s been enhanced. Teen stars are no good girls; they have to flirt with sexuality. It’s mandated by the rules governing pop culture. Other than Daria, can one think of a teenage character that resists the lure? She was constantly trying to prove that she shouldn’t have to tart herself up to be accepted, that she was just fine in her black skirt and green jacket. She didn’t need to conform to the ridiculous standards of beauty that a girl in her demographic was expected to don. But Daria is a glaring exception, and that’s a reference a half-generation removed. She, incidentally, decided to wait in her sex episode.

Sex and its consequences are also the backbone of the popular Twilight series; the first book will be released as a movie in a few weeks. Popular with teenage girls, Twilight features a traditional female lead, complete with a waiting-for-marriage-to-have-sex philosophy.

This ideology is hailed as being a positive role model for the target demographic, despite the fact that Bella, the protagonist, is largely a cipher. The sexual content of the novels is one of the draws; there’s no sex 'til the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn, but it’s all heart-throbbing lust until then. Edward, her eventual husband, is marketed as the perfect man (except in vampire form), patient, understanding, responsible: a real caretaker. Yet she gives up everything for him, and when she does, both she and the story lose a lot of their appeal. Reviews of Breaking Dawn all harp on this point; the story dissolves into a very traditional happy homemaker life, one that author Stephenie Meyer apparently has. In addition, her views of love and what makes a happy couple are very alarming: most, including the main one, seem to fall somewhere on the “abusive” scale. She also does not believe in the word “choice”, for in her world, everything is preordained, and nothing goes against destiny; it’s just a matter of waiting.

Twilight might be telling girls to wait—but sex here is also viewed as an act that has violent and horrifying consequences: she is badly beaten up during it, and becomes pregnant with a child whose sole existence is seemingly designed to torment her physically, psychologically, and mentally. The passion and her new life are supposed to be worth the expense of physical torture, but it’s a trade-off that doesn’t sit well with many readers. The message to wait is lost—thirteen-year-olds (not to mention twenty-five-year-olds) may be scarred by the idea of sex equaling broken bones and demon spawn.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with waiting to have sex, though in this culture, it’s often scorned at. At a certain age, the choice to wait is regarded as a curiosity. How can you not have sex? It’s a biological imperative. The 40 Year-Old Virgin exemplified this. Despite its “old-fashioned” values, the movie still managed to condemn the lead character, and by doing so, scared some people into having sex because they didn’t want to end up in his position.

Teenagers shouldn’t be forced to hold to a societal standard of sex, whether or not that is the rampant hookup or sanctioned chastity, and they shouldn’t have to defend their choices on a public scale. It robs them of the complexity of sex, boiling it down to an either/or, a narrow line of wrong or right, depending upon who’s doing the judging.

Sex Is Bad

While I have no interest in watching the new "90210", I read the Times interview with many members of the old cast, and this jumped out at me:

[Executive Producer Charles] ROSIN We did our prom episode, which was written and directed by Darren, and Brenda loses her virginity to Dylan McKay in a hotel room and comes down and tells Kelly that indeed this has happened.

[Creator Darren] STAR The affiliates were scandalized — not because they had sex, but because Brenda was happy about it, and it didn’t have any dire consequences. I was strongly advised to write a show that would address the consequences of that sexual experience. So the first episode of the second season Brenda broke up with Dylan because their relationship had gotten too mature. (Bold mine)

There has been a long history in television of showing negative consequences for teenagers having sex. Pregnancy scares are usually the first plotline, hyped up to get the kids a-watching. For girls especially sex is usually aligned with punishment--something Amy Sherman Palladino tried to mock in "Gilmore Girls" by having Paris have a public meltdown when she discovers she was rejected by Harvard, thinking it's a direct connection to losing her virginity. Of course it's preposterous, but that wasn't the message that came across. If you have sex and enjoyed it, you will pay.

So now we have "Beverly Hills, 90210" to thank. I haven't watched this show in a long, long time--since maybe I was 14--and even then I didn't like it. I found it then to be too slow and painfully boring; I found it hard to believe that this show was so controversial and scandalous. And the episodes I saw were the early seasons. To a viewer with another eight years of teen shows behind her, the old 90210 would only look even more old-fashioned and quaint (those were the words I used then) compared to Gossip Girl, Dawson's Creek and The OC.

But notice: The Dylan/Brenda breakup--which I'm sure was a pivotal, dramatic moment in the history of the show--was necessitated by suits too uncomfortable to show a regular teen girl (albeit in stylish Cali '90s wear) living a regular life. They can't show that! This is a show about teens for teens! What will happen to the youth?!?!? Brenda fell for the bad guy, a guy who was going to lead her down the Wrong Path, and for that they needed to show that she should have waited.

I bet that many, many shows followed in this wake, whether it was because the execs pressured them to, the showrunners felt other pressure to showcase a certain value set, or just because they couldn't fathom doing something different. Teen sex isn't always the best course of action, we know. But to demonstratively prove, time and again, that the woman who is having the sex must be "punished" in some way is sexist and ridiculous. Far too many girls (and even boys) take away messages from the television they watch, both conscious and unconsciously, and for them to fear or worry that sex will always negatively affect them is wrong and irresponsible. I understand where the execs were coming from, especially considering a new network that needs to desperately please advertisers, but too many times the need to moralize is just a knee-jerk reaction. Did Dylan go through any doubts or fears? I doubt it. From the little I can recall, he was an Elvis-type figure, aloof and cool to the extreme. This was before the era of sensitive guys, and it wouldn't have occurred to anyone that he would have any of the hangups that Seth Cohen did.

Granted, I haven't seen the scene, so if someone has, feel free to enlighten me. This also goes for the original "90210" as well, in addition to any examples of teen sex where the plot twisted in a way that made the girl regret she had sex (though if you give me time, I can find some that aren't Gilmore Girls-related).

Sex On the Brain

Angela: I mean, I think about it... all the time, but...
Brian: Wait, you *think* about it all the time?
Angela: Brian! Yes! Shut up... guys don't have a monopoly on thinking about it.
Brian: They don't?
Angela: *No!*

–My So-Called Life

"You were not bored. There was plenty of stuff to watch on TV. And Blair Witch Project was about to come on Starz, and you were like, "I haven't seen this in forever" and you wanted to watch it, but then you were like "Oh no, we should just make out instead. La la la."

–Paulie Bleeker, Juno

Maybe it’s all because of Sex and the City.

It used to be that girls didn’t want sex. Oh, they wanted it, but it wasn’t acknowledged, it was never talked about. Girls wanted the boyfriend to cuddle and to pay for their movie tickets, but they didn’t actually want to make out. They didn’t lust after anyone sexually, even if they swooned over Brad Pitt. It was just a crush.

But you can’t say that anymore.

Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s another girl taking charge of her sexuality. She’s the one who initiates it. Knocked Up, Superbad, Juno, Mean Girls–-in all of them the girl is the one who’s going "fuck me hard" and leaving the boy’s head spinning.

The moments above are both comic and real, but what’s notable about them–-with the exception of Knocked Up–-is that they all deal with teenagers. Is it a way to acknowledge the feelings at a time when they are possibly the strongest and most frightening? Or that this attitude has trickled down to teenagers? It’s years after Sex and the City went off the air, after all, and that show was known for both being very appealing to teenage girls (heaven knows I was one of them), and for allegedly changing the way sex, and female attitudes towards it, were portrayed.

All I know is that I love every one of those scenes when the girl goes for it. She’s vulnerable but presses on anyway. She has to. And the boys are always baffled by what’s happened, confused how it all came to be, never knowing how to act but that they want to be the good guy. They’re never prepared. Maybe watching enough of these movies they’ll get the drift and won’t be so taken aback the next time a girl jumps them.