{"id":235194,"date":"2010-01-27T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/26\/based-a-false-story-lifetimes-the-pregnancy-pact"},"modified":"2010-01-26T23:10:59","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T04:10:59","slug":"based-on-a-false-story-lifetimes-the-pregnancy-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/235194","title":{"rendered":"Based on a False Story: Lifetime’s “The Pregnancy Pact”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n"The Pregnancy Pact," a hokey
\nLifetime dramatization of a non-existent "pact<\/span><\/span><\/a>" between a group of pregnant teen girls
\nin Gloucester, aired Saturday as basic cable’s most successful original movie in years<\/span><\/span><\/a> even though the film’s premise is based on
\nrumors and even blatant lies<\/span><\/span><\/a>. Still, given that the movie was made with
\nthe blessing of the National Campaign for the Prevention of Teen and Unplanned
\nPregnancy, whose work in the dramatic
\ndepartment<\/span><\/span><\/a> I’ve written
\nabout before, I thought I’d tune in and see whether the movie made any
\nworthwhile points. To help pick through the hackneyed dialogue and earnest
\nacting, I got the insight of feminist blogger Veronica Arreola, who blogs at Viva La Feminista<\/span><\/span><\/a> and was vigilantly tweeting<\/span><\/span><\/a> her way through
\nthe film’s premiere on Saturday night.\n<\/p>\n

\n"The Pregnancy Pact" opens with a nurse (played with a brisk air of
\nconcern by Camryn Manheim) administering a pregnancy test, telling a young girl
\nher test has come back negative and watching the teen’s face fall in disappointment. As
\nshe leaves the office, she is greeted and comforted by her friends, many of
\nwhom have lanky, thin limbs and swollen bellies. After administering 150
\npregnancy tests in one year and having 18 come back positive, the nurse
\nthreatens to resign because the school isn’t offering contraception to its
\nstudents.\n<\/p>\n

\nRight from the outset, the naivete of the pregnant girls is thrown in our
\nfaces: "This is the most amazing feeling," one squeals. "Oh my
\ngod,\u00a0 I have a tiny baby inside me… a little girl to hang out with and
\nbe my best friend." This was the first of many egregious examples of
\ndemeaning these teenage girls as naive idiots with self-centered reasons for
\ngetting pregnant. The point is meant to be that they’re too young–but these
\nkids are such caricatures it’s hard to see any teen viewer identifying with
\nthem.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of our pregnant heroines, Sarah, has a boyfriend with professional-baseball
\ndreams and a family-values mom who abhors premarital sex and is leading the
\nfight against the nurse’s push for contraception. Neither of these facts is
\ngoing to stop Sarah from following the pact she’s made with her girlfriends
\n(yes, in this movie the pact is real). "We thought you were going to
\nchicken out," her friends tell her, when she at last triumphantly reveals
\nher positive pregnancy test.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe movie’s focus on the "Pact" belies its supposed message. As
\nVeronica notes, "If I had seen this as a teen I would have thought, ‘That
\nwon’t happen to me!’… An unplanned pregnancy looked almost okay whereas the
\npact was vilified." Indeed, the devious, purposeful way the girls get
\npregnant renders many of the issues at hand–the role of honesty, the role of
\ncontraception, the role of knowledge–moot.\n<\/p>\n

\nEnter Thora Birch’s character Sidney, a blogger, a feminist, and an alumna of
\nGloucester high, who wonders why everyone is focused on Jamie Lynn Spears
\ninstead of Hillary Clinton. Birch’s character points out that "teen birth
\nrates are up all over the country"–an assertion that’s been reinforced in
\n2010 by this week’s data<\/span><\/span><\/a>. She goes back to her own high school to
\ninvestigate–but in a twist that was hinted at a mile away, her past is waiting
\nfor her back home (hint: this past allegedly involves an abortion.)\n<\/p>\n

\nAs Sidney struggles to find out the root of the girls’ decision to get pregnant
\nat the same time, the media picks up on the story, and we’re treated to two
\nhours of platitudes and truisms about the birds and the bees, in a movie that
\ntries so hard not to offend anyone that its message of prevention, education
\nand caring for teen mothers is totally diluted into, well, a Lifetime movie.\n<\/p>\n

\nGender roles throughout the "Pregnancy Pact" are painfully
\nstereotypical and the teenagers are basically all hormone-driven morons. Every
\nsingle woman in the film is revealed to be a liar when it comes to her own
\nsexuality. Sarah lies to her parents and her boyfriend, swearing there was no
\npact when there was–swearing she’s pregnant accidentally instead of on
\npurpose.\n<\/p>\n

\nSidney lies to her high school boyfriend, now the assistant principal
\nat the school, and tells him she’s had an abortion when really she gave their
\nbaby up for adoption. Somehow, the fact that she didn’t get an abortion
\nultimately absolves Sidney’s character in the eyes of her ex and the film. "I was
\nangry that the ex-boyfriend seemed to have redeemed her as not being a
\nbaby-killing slut," says Veronica.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd Sarah’s mom has lied to her
\ndaughter by swearing she herself waited until marriage to have sex, when she
\ndidn’t, giving her daughter an unrealistic standard to live up to. Meanwhile,
\nno responsibility seems to be pinned on the various boys who went all the way
\nwithout condoms. "All the teen boys
\nseemed to have plans & dreams for the future. The girls were so dumb they
\ndidn’t have dreams outside of marriage and babies," adds Veronica.
\nMeanwhile, the film does nothing to counteract the assertion that teenage boys
\nare entitled to act on their lust all day, every day, and that it’s up to the
\ngirls to be gatekeepers.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBy the end of the film, Sarah, Sidney, and Sarah’s right-wing mom have all
\nlived through a media firestorm, learned some feel-good lessons and come
\ntogether to agree on–well, I’m not sure exactly what. While the film seems to make
\na pitch for the availability of contraception–the Christian mom comes around
\nand agrees contraception should be distributed at school even though it’s
\nagainst her values–it demonizes abortion and swears that "just handing
\nout condoms" is not enough–that parents and kids have to have an honest
\nconversation about sex. But what that conversation entails is never clear.
\n"<\/span>While the idea of condoms was thrown
\naround I don’t think it effectively got the message of safe sex, family
\nplanning, etc., through," Veronica says.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSidney delivers the lines that sum up the message of the National Campaign for
\nthe Prevention of Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and "The Pregnancy
\nPact": "When you get pregnant that young, there are no good options:
\nadoption, abortion, keeping it, they’re not going to turn out exactly as you
\nthink. They’re going to be painful. Your life will be changed forever." <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSo
\nthe message is, don’t get pregnant to begin with. But this scare-tactic message
\nis patently false, as is the movie’s portrayal of teen sexuality. While we can
\nbe thankful that the film halfheartedly endorsed contraception, it’s another
\nsupposedly educational film that ends up being there to shock and titillate and
\nmake us feel better than those stupid girls in Gloucester. As Anna at Jezebel wrote this morning<\/span><\/span><\/a>, "we as a culture are fascinated with
\nteen pregnancy \u2014 just not with teaching kids real ways to avoid it."<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"The Pregnancy Pact," a hokey Lifetime dramatization of a non-existent "pact" between a group of pregnant teen girls in Gloucester, aired Saturday as basic cable’s most successful original movie in years even though the film’s premise is based on rumors and even blatant lies. Still, given that the movie was made with the blessing of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4705,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4705"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}