When we were shooting “The Gloucester 18,” there were a lot of high-profile teenage pregnancies in the news. Juno was a hit movie. Jamie Lynn Spears had her baby the same week the Gloucester story broke. And as the story wound down, teen pregnancy even hit the presidential race as Bristol Palin announced her pregnancy.
Parents often worry about the effects that celebrities and entertainment have on the psyches of their kids. It’s why I wasn’t allowed to watch Beverly HIlls, 90210 until it was in reruns. Aside from the sudden visibility of celeb teen moms last year, there has been the ongoing increase in celebrities going it on their own as mothers, even when they are of an older age (Bridget Moynahan, Angelina Jolie in her pre-Brad Pitt days and, next spring, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi). If Hollywood leads the way, single motherhood and young motherhood certainly are becoming more normalized in society.
When we were filming the documentary, the celebrity influences were top of mind. We asked all of the girls whether they were affected by Juno or Jamie Lynn, and without fail, each of them told us that they weren’t. In fact, their answers were so universal that the issue barely made it into the film. When I asked experts about the potential phenomenon of celeb culture leading to the national increase in teenage pregnancy, most said that there just wasn’t any influence pointing towards conclusions one way or the other. So it seems we’re still going off our gut–much like my parents went off their guts that watching a bunch of overindulged teenagers drive mustangs around in Hollywood wouldn’t make my teenage years any easier for them.
So it’s no surprise that the latest teen pregnancy offense–the pregnant teenager on the cover of Teen Vogue–caused a minor stir on the news and in the blogosphere. The teen wasn’t visibly pregnant on the cover, but people questioned whether elevating a pregnant teen to cover girl status was morally questionable. I don’t have the answer. Do we keep pregnant teenagers from things like magazine covers, or do we let girls who have earned the privilege of being cover girls take it despite their pregnancies? It’s a difficult conundrum, and it feels like a Catch-22, especially without evidence that celebrity influences are actually pushing up the teenage pregnancy rate or making teens’ attitudes towards single motherhood increasingly casual.
What do you think? Do the pregnancies of celebrities normalize pregnancy for teenage girls? And where do we draw the line–is a girl who is pregnant, but not visibly so, on the cover of Teen Vogue too much?
Tags: celebrity pregnancy, Gloucester, hollywood influence, teen moms, the gloucester 18, the gloucester pregnancy pact