How do the media portray adolescents? 16 and pregnant is a documentary series that covers the journeys of young women during their unplanned pregnancy. One of the main characters of season 2 was Ashley Salazar, a high school senior with a passion for writing. Salazar relies on her mom a lot, but she has big aspirations to move out soon, go to college in New York, and study to become a photojournalist. However, she may have to reconsider her dreams because Ashley is now pregnant.
And while she said she's "counting the days until graduation," she doesn't plan to leave high school without fighting back. She and her mother are preparing a lawsuit against her bullies and their parents. "I think parents can do their part by raising children who understand that there are all different kinds of people and it is in no way acceptable to bully any kind of person for any reason," the resilient student told CBS2. According to figures from the National Center of Education Statistics, almost one-third of students report being bullied in school. A new study from the Justice Policy Center's Urban Institute found that 17 percent of youths had been cyberbullied in the past year.
Harry Haynes The movie Juno is a film about two high school teenagers who decide to have unprotected sex. Two months later Juno (Ellen Page) finds out that she is pregnant and decides to put the baby up for adoption. It was an alright film in my opinion but, it was not very realistic. The film makes pregnancy seem so easy to go through. It does not show everything that a pregnant women has to go through.
In the movie Juno, teenage pregnancy is the main focus. Juno is not the boldly promiscuous sex-a-holic teenager that is typically portrayed on shows like Ricki Lake and Maury. Instead, Juno is a normal girl who feels slightly out of place in high school and finds the whole situation of adolescence a bit meaningless. She is wise enough to know she does not have the maturity to become a mother or to make some of the decisions she now must make, but immature enough to tell the struggling adoptive mother that she is “lucky to not be pregnant.” In the movie, Juno has to deal with the judgmental stares of adults and friends at school, insults by an ultrasound technician, and of course the painful decision to keep the baby and give it up for adoption rather than have an abortion. Although this movie does have its funny moments and is in some ways an excellent interpretation of teenage pregnancy, the fact that many of the more serious emotional and physical side effects are left out cannot be ignored.
In Time Magazine article, “Girls, Interrupted: Children Pay a Price When Childhood Ends Too Soon” written by Caitlin Flanagan, she addresses the concern for girls reaching puberty at an earlier age. In summary, Flanagan believes, “it’s cruel to expect adolescents to make the change from girl to woman without any special protections against the corrosive forces of the world, without sufficient time and privacy to work out the big questions of their lives” (Flanagan, 2011, p. 60). In a healthy father and daughter relationship, a young girl looks to her father as her protector, hero and Prince Charming. A little girl from the age 4-12 doesn’t think on sexual terms but more on fairytale fantasies when comparing the man she hopes to marry someday is similar to her own father. According to Freud, in the psychoanalytic theory, a girl’s sexual attraction to and intense love for her father is called the Electra complex (Hyde, 2007, p. 33).
They make it look like it’s fun and that other people should try it. TV shows have changed teenagers today by creating these horrible role models. “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” were supposed to show how hard life is when you’re pregnant at a young age, but it’s the exact opposite of what it’s really doing. Now that the first two seasons of “16 and Pregnant” are over, they are looking for a new group of pregnant girls to be on the new season. Girls recently are found to be trying to get pregnant to get on the show.
In Never Been Kissed produced by 20th Century Fox and Drew Barrymore's production company, Flower Films , director Raja Gosnell attempts to show how to move on from labels and bullying by telling the story of a young girl who is struggled though high school and how those emotions held her back. This film demonstrates the effects of bullying by showing how the main character Josie is hunted by her high school experience and encourages some self-reflection. Dork, dweeb, geek, freak, and loser are all labels that Josie was under. Dr. Suess first used the word “nerd” in 1950 it described a “small, unkempt, humanoid creature with a large head and a comically disapproving expression”. Later the word nerd was used to describe a person who is dull and conventional.
It characterizes teens in high school that are sexually active and having babies. On the show these teens are portrayed as sex craving kids that can’t wait until marriage to have sex. Some of the young girls become pregnant at the tender age of 14. Most times contraceptives were not talked about or even used in the script. I found it to be very humorous that the parents of the teens were more excited about the baby.
She says, “Women are taught form early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract notions of beauty, half realizing that such a pursuit is futile.” She also says she had a personal experience with trying to meet these standards. She says meeting these standards are impossible and often humiliating. “I should know, I spent my entire teenage years trying to do it. I was borderline bulimic and spent a lot of money I didn’t have on potions and lotions in hopes of becoming the next Cindy Crawford.” At the age of 21, she chose to wear the hijab which she says gave her freedom.
The movie ‘Mean Girls’ provides insights into the concept of belonging because throughout the film the director Mark Waters shows the journey of Cady Herring (Lindsay Lohan) trying to find where she belongs in the social ranking at her new high school. Her predilection to belong with the ‘popular groups’, this desire puts some of her very few friendships she has on hold and they slowly start to crumble. The film discusses how trying to belong does not always have a positive outcome and isn’t always a positive thing to achieve. In today’s society almost everyone is superficial; people are judged on their appearance, the brands of clothing they wear, weather they have the latest phone, laptop, the type of house they live in the area in which they live and if they have a high paying job. And if you don’t have all of these or most of these you are generally considered an outcast.