The Secret Life of the American Teenager

Lessons learned from the show:

1. If you have unprotected sex, you WILL get pregnant.

2. If you have protected sex, you WILL get pregnant.
3. If you use condoms, they WILL break.
4. If you are on the pill AND use a condom AND have lots of sex, you WILL get pregnant.
5. Girls don't know what masturbation is until they're fifteen.
6. Having an abortion at fifteen is a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE THING.
7. Having a baby at fifteen will make you SO HAPPY. 
8. Being a teenage mother will totally unite your fighting parents AND attract lots of cute guys! 
9. Women belong into the kitchen because they're just GOOD at it.
10. Having a baby at fifteen means your friends will be dying to spend more time with you.   
11. Divorce is WRONG and you WILL get back together. And the best thing about this: you'll have another child! 
12. You cannot keep a secret in High School, EVERYBODY KNOWS EVERYTHING.
13. Teenage dudes will fight tooth and nail to keep their children and get custody, so don't worry, you won't end up raising the kid alone. 
14. It is less likely for people to have a baby if they are married adults taking the same steps to avoid pregancy as teenagers. 
15. If you sleep around a lot before you have a child, your child will be a stillborn preemie. 

Who is funding this show?

I suppose it's good that there is a show that focuses on how having a baby at fifteen is NOT the end of the world and that there are teenage boys who really enjoy fatherhood, but seriously? Having an abortion at fifteen is fine, too, if you don't feel you can handle the responsibility of raising a child just yet and want to focus on, you know, not being a child yourself. 

In the real worlds, babies are not magical plot devices who can fix everything that's wrong in your life story. 

Pome.

Immortality


In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords 
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

-Liesel Müller.