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OH MY GOD, I just saw a commercial that made me want to kill someone.

Okay, so this woman is looking at a pregnancy test and looking really nervous with her husband in the next room. Text comes up on the screen that says something like "These People's Lives Are About to Change."

Woman sets the pregnancy test down on a table and continues to examine it nervously, crossing and uncrossing her arms, fiddling with the collar of her shirt, covering her mouth with her hands, etc. She's obviously stressed out. Her husband peeks around the door looking worried. Screen Text: "There Is Going To Be An Addition To Their Family," or something.

Man and Woman look at each other with scared, helpless expressions on their faces. Screen Text: "They Are Going To Be The Youngest Grandparents In Town." The woman steps aside, and behind her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, is a girl who looks about fourteen and is wearing an ugly three-quarter-sleeve shirt with a big navy blue star on the front, and way too much eyeliner. Mom rushes over and tearfully gives her a huge, at which point the little announcer person comes on to give you the PSA, and what do you think she says? "Talk to your children about sex"? Of course not. Instead, she grimly informs us that "smoking marijuana impairs your judgement," implying, of course, that this poor innocent little girl went to some party or something where some evil boys gave her some evil marijuana and then had sex with her, hence the pregnancy.

Now obviously we all love to bash the Anti-Drug commercials, and there's not a whole lot that I could add to the already impressive collection of bitching that has been done by various people on various websites in regards to the subject. I will, however, say this: I eagerly await the commercial - which is, no doubt, already being batted around in the little brainstorm sessions they have for new commercials over at the little Anti-Drug office or whatever - which shows a fat kid, sitting there being fat for fifteen seconds, before sadly informing us that smoking marijuana causes people to overeat.

What I really hated about that pregnancy commercial was the implication of that last line of text before the announcer came on. I don't know exactly how to explain this, but I'll try my best. If the three people in that situation were mentally and emotionally healthy, the last thing that should have been on their minds was what other people were going to think of them as a result of the daughter getting pregnant - specifically, how their status "in town" was going to change. That was what really upset me. Oh sure, they played it up with that "new addition to their family" bullshit like that was what it was really about, but obviously the whole commercial had overtones of "what a scandalous, shameful thing to have to deal with socially," and that just makes me fucking sick.

Like okay, we'll say for the sake of argument that the girl shouldn't have been smokin' the dope. Certainly she shouldn't have been smoking it around boys that she didn't know or trust. But she did do that. She did it, it's done, and unfortunately, something bad happened. Now then, also for the sake of argument, let's say that she was a "good girl" who would have never, ever, ever done anything remotely sexual with any boys ever if not for the influence of the Demon Weed. Not like us bad girls who actually have sex drives, and occassionally get caught up in the moment and do things we regret.

I'm not saying that the whole "impairs your judgement" thing isn't true, because it certainly can be, to a degree. Speaking from experience, however: I've been pretty stoned before, but I have never been so stoned that I would have been willing to fuck anybody that I wouldn't have fucked while I was straight. Maybe that's just me, though, so I'll once again give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, that's a little off-topic, but what I'm trying to say is that in a situation like that, the weed is an easy scapegoat. "I didn't know what I was doing because I was stoned" is a much easier thing for some people to deal with than "he lied to me and I was fooled" or "I was really horny and I did something stupid." But that is, once again, beside the point, the actual point being that if this situation really did happen (and I'm sure that it really does happen sometimes), it would be damn sick and disgusting for them to be thinking first of all about about the shame and humiliation of having a pregnant teenage daughter.

I just hate that the advertising people would even try to play that card at all. Societal prejudice against female sexuality is always the enemy, and if I may hop up on a soapbox for a moment, people have been putting a lot of their time and energy into fighting it for a very long time, because it's wrong. Sending the message "Don't do drugs, because then you'll get pregnant, and we all know how humiliating that would be" just cheapens the entire issue from both angles.

In short, for a commercial like this to work, the viewer is forced to rely on outdated and unhealthy ideas about female sexuality, specifically that for a teenage girl to have sex and get pregnant is something for her to be ashamed of. If she was sexually exploited, then that's one issue, and if she's pregnant and has to deal with raising a child before she's finished with school, that's another issue. And both of those issues are very serious. But bringing up issues about the negative ways in which our society views teen sexuality and teen pregnancy, and trying to use those attitudes in this manner as a crude weapon against teen drug use, is not only counter-productive, it's also hitting below the belt.

And on a side note: Really, people. This is not 1952. If your teen or preteen daughter is date-raped and she gets pregnant, take her to the goddamn hospital and get her an abortion. Tell the neighbors that her appendix ruptured. They'll never have to know that your teenager is having Evil Sex with boys.

On another side note: THIS IS NOT 1952. I don't know where these people are supposed to live, maybe it's some magical town where everyone is UberNormal or something, but I sincerely doubt that they are going to be the youngest Grandparents in town. She's a teenager for fuck's sake, I'm sure that she would have been getting married and popping out brats in a more respectable fashion in five or six years anyway, as is the way of life for the fine young ladies of UberNormalville. Besides which, are we really supposed to believe that this girl is the only teenager in this whole town who has ever gotten pregnant?

This person wrote some stuff about this that you should also read, if you happen to be as cheesed about it as I am.

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