Pause before you play: teen pregnancy and privilege
Oh, man. Some people are not happy about the new Candie’s Foundation PSA featuring Bristol Palin.
The Candie’s Foundation, founded in 2001 by Candie’s, a shoe/apparel/fragrance brand, was started to “shape the way young people in America think about teen pregnancy and parenthood.” and “…educate America’s youth about the devastating consequences of teenage pregnancy.” My snarky side can’t help but wonder if this foundation carries an air of overcompensation about it, considering the fact that Candie’s has drawn heat over racy ad campaigns in the past, such as a print ad photograph of Jenny McCarthy sitting on a toilet, and this fragrance ad (see right) that had to be modified to a “tamer” version for certain publications by removing the condoms and butt crack (because, you know, depicting an unsafe sexual situation is much tamer), but remains hypersexual and (to some) disturbing in either iteration.
I don’t disagree with the Candie’s Foundation’s purpose. They state on their website that the “only 100% way to avoid pregnancy is to not have sex. If you do have sex, you need to use protection every time.” And guess what, urban legends about semen-laced bullets notwithstanding, they’re right! Their discourse is abstinence heavy, but stops short of advocating abstinence-only education. I have no problem with promoting abstinence to a point. After all, many teenagers aren’t ready for sex, and it’s perfectly okay to try to encourage them to wait until they are ready. Candie’s Foundation has used spokeshotties like Hayden Panettiere, Beyoncé, Usher, and Hillary Duff, people that their target audience might look up to, as well as famous cautionary tales like Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin, to drive this point home.
One aspect I dislike about the Candie’s Foundation’s methods is that they promote a “Don’t be a slut! Be a tease!“ message. This is not their only message, but it is very well-represented in their campaigns. They offer t-shirts and tank tops that have “I’m SEXY enough… to keep you waiting.” emblazoned on the front. I don’t think it’s wise, helpful, or empowering to pressure young women to try to be sexy (i.e. an object of someone else’s desire), while telling them that if they actually act on their own sexual desires they’ll be devalued.
The foundation’s new PSA features Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin and single teenage mother of some kid with a name that’s just about as weird as hers, saying “What if I didn’t come from a famous family? What if I didn’t have all their support? What if I didn’t have all these opportunities? Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty. Pause before you play.”
I’m assuming that “pause” here means to either stop and obtain birth control or stop and think, inclusive. I don’t interpret it as a strict “no sex until marriage” message, but you can watch it below and come to your own conclusions.
One argument is that the video tells teens that getting pregnant is fine… as long as they’re rich. And it’s a pretty good point to raise. Sometimes it’s a fine line between acknowledging privilege and appearing to try to make special rules for yourself based on that privilege. Okay, maybe not super fine, but fine-ish. It’s not always wrong to say “I’m privileged, so ________ is easier for me” provided you’re not bragging about it. The purpose of the PSA isn’t to say “Yucky poor people shouldn’t breed, but it’s fun to have babies when you’re rich and famous and special!” I think it’s specifically trying to present something like this: “I, Bristol Palin, am experiencing an exceptionally easy form of teenage motherhood. In that sense I am a pure anomaly. God forbid anyone look at me and think, ‘If she can do it, so can I!’ because odds are that it will be nowhere near as easy for you as it has been for me.” And that’s actually pretty true (ignoring the fact that she has endured very public criticism on a scale that few teen moms will ever face, and I doubt any of us can honestly envy her that). Does this PSA flaunt her privilege? To a point, I think it does. The people who wrote those lines obviously didn’t intend them that way, but that doesn’t mean they don’t come off as offensive and classist if you look at things from a certain perspective.
But, more precariously, people criticize Bristol’s career as a spokesperson against teen pregnancy as hypocritical. Really? I don’t see it. It’s not “Do as I say, not as I do” as much as “…not as I did“. She’d be a bad spokesperson for the purity movement, but she’s not horrible as a walking baby-making deterrent. However you or I feel about her mom, the girl’s been put through hell for making the mistake of getting knocked up at a strategic time in her mother’s life. It’s not fair to hold her to the standards of the Religious Right, especially if you’re not part of it. Richard Dawkins always says that it’s ridiculous to claim that any child belongs to a religion, since joining one is an independent adult’s choice. Similarly, it’s hard to determine where Bristol’s true voice is revealed (although, by the way, if her true voice disagrees with you she’s still a human being). She’s 19 now, but still very much in the power of her family. In this sense, she’s still a kid. It’s difficult to say whether her recent public comments about abstinence (apparently in the past she’s described it as unrealistic, but lately has told the press that she intends to remain chaste until marriage) amount to toeing the family line or her own personal, deeply held beliefs. Either way, it’s not hypocrisy to regret her past actions that had catastrophic consequences and wish to avoid making the same mistake twice.
Is she a good role model? I’m going with no, and it’s fair to question the wisdom of choosing this girl as a poster child for anything. Maybe if she’d slouch out of the spotlight and we all left her alone it would be better for everyone. But it seems like this PSA is trying, in some weird way, to keep teen girls from trying to emulate her. I have no idea whether there’s any actual threat of that happening or not. Maybe the PSA will be effective. The mind of the average American teenage girl is a mystery (see: Twilight).
Should we hate Bristol Palin because she decided to collaborate with the Candie’s Foundation (whom I’m suspecting paid her money, but I don’t know for sure), because she said the lines they gave her, and is trying to navigate being a teenage mother while hoping to maybe dissuade others from getting knocked up too young? Hell no. Even if the PSA does drip with privilege, I don’t really expect a 19-year-old girl to get that when the Candie’s Foundation people don’t, and then try to change their entire campaign.
It would be nice if more social conservatives understood that they might indeed come from a place of privilege, and maybe realize that sometimes birth control and abortion and gay rights and all those other “sinful” things they loathe so well are necessary and positive for some people, even if they in their privilege don’t need or want them. And of course many of those same fortunate people insist, if for some reason they do need to transgress in these ways, that it’s different in their case. If they could cut that out, it would be super. That’s what I wish we could all take away from this PSA. Also, that teenagers should use condoms and fake cramps to get on birth control pills if they want to experiment with sex.
Otherwise, what do I know about teens and sex? I lost my virginity when I was 20.
Her “rich version” living room looks really cluttered. I’d rather be poor if it means I can walk to the door without climbing over a stack of furniture.
My problem with this kind of ad, actually, is that it never distinguishes when I can stop being celibate. You say you don’t understand because you were 20, but–were you fully prepared to raise a child at 20? By Palin’s logic, you needed to pause before you played even then. Even now. Shit.
If you play by “don’t have sex unless you’re prepared for the possibility of a baby” rules, I think most people would lose their virginity at about 30.
@Holly Pervocracy Maybe in Alaska they use furniture as currency. Maybe.
It’s not a great ad (I can’t argue that I love it and think it’ll do great things for society, I just think that full-on vitriol against it mostly boils down to misdirected hatred for her mommy), but it doesn’t explicitly say to be celibate. Telling teenagers to pause before participating in any activity is definitely never tantamount to forbidding it. Kids– or adults, really– don’t give up that easily. Bristol Palin’s personal statements about abstinence might lead one to think that this is an abstinence directive, but I don’t think it necessarily is. It doesn’t explicitly say “don’t have sex unless you’re prepared for the possibility of a baby” (although, I guess if you have heterosexual sex you probably should be at least a little prepared for the possibility of a pregnancy), it leaves room for a more realistic interpretation, and I think that’s intentional.
When I was 20 I wouldn’t have sex until I was confident I was minimizing my risk of pregnancy. I think of the “pausing” thing as similar to doing a mental check: “Did I take my pill today?” or the literal pause it takes to put on a condom. I still do that mental check, even though these things are more second nature now than they were at the beginning. For other people, pausing means stopping at over-the-clothes groping for a prayer break. I think the ad’s supposed to be vague so they can encourage both (admittedly maybe preferring the latter).