Mtv’s 16 & Pregnant Glorifies Teen Pregnancy Essay

According to the National Center for health Statistics, 86 percent of mothers who give parturition out-of-wedlock ar immaturers. MTVs charge 16 & significant, which has only been on air since June 2009, is already reflecting the rapid boom in stripling gestation across various cities in America. Since the early eighties MTV has been considered nearlywhat of a cultural phenomenon for American adolescents and its depiction of sexuality has a strong impact that continues to this daytime (Holtzman 2000).Created by Morgan J.Freeman (director of teen shows Dawsons Creek and Laguna Beach), the show 16 & enceinte has been said to be bloodguilty of exacerbating, prescriptizing and even glorifying teen pregnancy. Perhaps, its bonnie reflecting a current kindly dilemma occurring amongst egg-producing(prenominal) youth. Each week a new chance revolves around a different girl struggling with the challenges of teenage pregnancy. The net sue presents these characters as real, pull from the grips of reality, validated and chosen to represent some sort of normalized or otherwise glamorized middle family line identity of teenage pregnancy.The show depicts womens roles that ar oft typified to include traditional gendered norms of hetero call forthual relationships, marriage, motherhood and femininity. 16 & pregnant serves as a platform to publicise what is deciden as a stereotypical American culture that is now engulfing teen girls everywhere. The social identities MTV presents reinforces those of traditional char charwomanish roles and gender norms and attempts to pass a new model for great(predicate) teens in a modern age. honorable by airing the show, MTV is assimilating new ideas of teen pregnancy into American society. Historically, there has alship canal been some sort of hard Christian tradition that has governed American womens birth rights that one should not sound meaning(a) out-of-wedlock. Today, however, teenage pregnancy is so rampant that families are forced to overcompensate with the situation in a commanding manner, often honoring the decision the tike has made in regards to keeping and bringing up the newborn tike (Gallagher 2009).In a 2004 survey, the Parents Television Council reported that MTV is the some memoriseed platform for those between the ages of 12 and 19. Studies showed watching MTV created a more liberal attitude toward pre-martial shake up. Teenagers who watch MTV receive centres to the highest degree sex that are apt(predicate) to sway their own behavior. MTV is organization the identity of the teenage mama, a enceinte 16 year old high school student whose uncertainty about motherhood is due to the fact that she views her pregnancy as the consequence of a selfish action that was ultimately unavoidable.16 & Pregnant normalizes sexual behavior that eventually forces teenage girls into the traditional gender role of the grieve mother, one who is forced to consequence vex of a baby age struggling to support herself (Schmidt 2009). The foremost episode of 16 & Pregnant takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee and documents the biography of Maci who gets fraught(p) by her first boyfriend, Ryan. For Maci, ad pick oution and abortion were never an option, she count on she made the decision to bewilder susceptible sex so now she moldiness deal with the consequences.At one nous during an argument in the show, Ryan yells out, If we didnt take away a kid, we wouldnt be together, and its clear from watching the that the two are still just teens. Maci struggles to take care of her newborn child, who, once born, requires constant precaution and deals with the turmoil of trying to get Ryan twisty in the relationship of fatherhood. The teen ma is now a stable identity offered up on the MTV network to heterosexual feminine youth a child who is forced to mature and deal with braggy realities as an accepted way of life.The show is sending a message that it is normal for teenage girls to deal with such expert issues as birth control, adoption, abortion, marriage, and finances, further cementing these issues into the female identity at a youthfulness age. Maci symbolizes that it is now acceptable for a 16 year old girl to be a dedicated mother in America. Episode two introduces Farrah, a cheerleader from Council Bluffs, Iowa who juggles school, work and cheer practice. Her life be confuse senses a jackpot more complicated when she finds out she is pregnant.Farrahs best friend turns on her spread nasty rumors, forcing Farrah to finish school online. Farrahs ex-boyfriend, also the babys father, begins to harry her after he finds out she is pregnant which leads her to change her number. I would collect never lost my virginity to someone I believed would transact me like this, Farrah exclaims about her ex-boyfriend. Farrah struggles with single motherhood and has to deal with a judgmental advert who looks down upon her decisio ns.Episode two once again reinforces traditional American cultural eliefs of female gender roles by portraying the woman as the single mother, ultimately accountable for the child, showing the girl dealing with worked up problems while trying to hold the family together, tasks and situations often associated with femininity. These images scram engrained on a new(a) viewers minds and being sixteen and pregnant becomes just another fad for boylike girls to consider. MTV has a long history of reflecting the lives of our viewers with compelling reality stories, says Tony DiSanto, MTVs president of programming.The programs featured girls come from rural Mid-Western or Southern states, ordinarily from small, working-class towns, in attempt to supplication to teenage girls of the same background. The implicit message at the center of the series class prejudice implies that working-class girls from middle America, should opt to view as a child because its as good enough a path t o character development as working on the high school yearbook (Bellafante 2009). The show reinforces the stereotype that a woman is at least a good mother, if not anything else and displaces the identity of teen mom onto middle American teenage girls.16 and Pregnant seems to, above all, incite viewers to working-class voyeurism, given how many cliches of lower-income American life are exploited. It could be mathematical that other MTV shows, are themselves, responsible for increases in teenage pregnancy. Shows such as The Hills and The corporeal World both portray the baseless sexual morals of a junior generation, which eventually leads to an adoption of those ideals from the shows junior viewers. Re hunt clubers at the Rand Corp. say they have documented for the first time how such characterisation to sexual content on TV can influence teen pregnancy rates.They found that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV are twice as likely as teens watching less of this clob ber to become pregnant before they put on age twenty. This means that if teenagers think having sex is the norm they will continue to submit in it. The relationship between exposure of this kind of content on TV and the risk of later pregnancy is evenhandedly strong, says Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist. Even if it were bony by other contributing factors, the fellowship still holds (Bellafante 2009).So, is it in fact MTV who is esponsible for the teemingness of pregnant teens it is helping to exploit? ane thing for sure is that such a program like 16 & Pregnant is endorsing and sanctioning teenage girls as hyper-sexed individuals. So, why does a television show have such an immense impact on the female identity? Sociologist Chris Barkers study of British Asian girls television viewing practices in the U. K. suggest that easy lay operas provide early women with resources to discuss issues that may not be sanctioned within some of the religious and cultural spaces the y survive (N&K 2008).Nayak and Kehily, authors of Gender Youth & civilisation (2008), would argue that this theory could be employ to teenage girls and reality television shows in the U. S. By watching these shows the conceptualization of get hold of femininities are derived. These shows allow young girls to make moral and ethical judgments about what they see and refashion gender determine to typeface their own identities (N&K 2008). The girls in 16 & Pregnant largely conform to the values of normative femininity in their search for romance, marriage, and long term happiness with a male partnerIn the end, MTV is glamorizing the life of a teen mother and cementing its identity in a society where sex at a younger and younger age is already becoming the norm. 16 & Pregnant is perpetuating the normalization of traditional gender roles by portraying young girls who have already been forced to take on such general notions of femininity and female identity. The young, unwed mom has now become a new identity for young girls to aspire to. Popular culture and the ways in which it is consumed forms a key situate for the learning of gender identities, and MTV is the designated teacher.