Pregnancy fad

Sam Thomas
March 2, 2010
Filed under Opinions

The trend of girls being stick thin on television has rapidly switched to a trend of gaining forty pounds. All of the sudden, it seems that most TV shows consist of either a sixteen-year-old pregnant girl or women having surprise babies. Why? Because sex sells in the world of television, and apparently a little bit too much to the sixteen-year-old girls in Lifetime’s “Pregnancy Pact” who make a promise to all get pregnant before the end of their sophomore years.

These past few years, a lot of pregnancy shows have made their unnecessary debuts onto American television. Some of these shows include Pregnancy Pact, Teen Mom, Sixteen and Pregnant, I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Though occasionally entertaining, these shows portray the lives of girls who either leave their newborns to go party with boys all night, keep themselves in light-switch relationships with arrogant boyfriends, give birth to random babies they didn’t even know they were carrying, or sit and complain about their lives.

MTV airs two of these shows: Teen Mom and Sixteen and Pregnant. Both of which display girls dealing with their mood swings and with their boyfriends who won’t own up to the fact that they are half of the reason there is a child in the mix. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the open and honest discussions about sex, but most of the advice is coming from undereducated and dim-witted people who aren’t afraid of making the same mistake twice.

TLC’s I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant follows women who were unaware that they were carrying a child until they went into labor. This may sound interesting, but in reality it’s just disgusting. Gross to the reality of the situation, gross to TLC for wanting to film it, and gross to the mother who cradles her baby that she found in the toilet, smiling.

The reasoning behind why we want to sit around and watch girls cry over their relationships and then screw themselves over again is inconceivable to me. I cannot understand why a girl would want cameras following her around every second of the day and having a docu-drama about her underage pregnancy broadcast across America.

These shows have everything about pregnancy – from watching girls trying to get pregnant, to watching girls who didn’t know they were pregnant for nine months; however, none of it is worth watching. Rather than wasting your time watching shows about these girls, watch more practical TV, like Jersey Shore.