WTFlocka?! If you don’t watch Mtv or care for reality shows…you may walk through the point-of-sales at the grocery star and see tabloid magazines with headlines like “Teen Mom Fights Back” and the next time you go you see the same girl with a different headline…and still not recognize who they are. That’s because you are not the demographics. Yeah, that was me.
ABC’s Nightline begged the question: “Teen Moms: The New Celebrity?” The story interviewed teenage moms in Rome, Atl. where the teenage pregnancy rates are quarter higher than the national average. I was surprised to see that all the girls were Caucasion.
The staggering statistics shows that teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S. are two times higher than the U.K. and three times higher than Canada. Why because teens like Whitney Purvis of 16 & Pregnant have become celebrities. Purvis got paid $5,000 to be on the reality show but passed on the Teen Moms spin-off because she didn’t what Mtv was making her do. She felt that they were inciting conflicts to boost ratings and she felt guilty because copycat teen moms were trending around her.
Mtv’s Teen Moms producers defend their show saying that their cameras document the teens as they are and that, “82% of teens who watch Teen Moms say that it helps them to ‘better understand the challenges of teen pregnancy…parenthood and how to avoid it.'”
Jessica Coen of Jezebel.com says, “Mtv can be as objective as they want about it But once these young women are being followed by tabloids, and on TMZ and on the cover of US weekly it’s hard to view them as documentary subjects. They’re reality stars.”
Watch Nightline’s episode “Teen Moms: The New Celebrity?”
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