Lacey Gets Something Right

Though it's axiomatic that a TV series will handle the topic of teen and/or unplanned pregnancy poorly, I had thought that Awkward. might be different. After all, the series began with a pair of teenagers happily getting it on, and though there was unfortunate emotional fallout for one of them, at least neither of them got pregnant or an STD...so far. Because, sure enough, last night's double-sized Season 3 premiere found Jenna (Ashley Rickards) dealing with a pregnancy scare.

And though the option of abortion was (obliquely yet supportively) raised by her mother Lacey (Nikki DeLoach), a former accidental teen mom herself, Jenna decisively dismissed the idea: "There is no decision, Mom. I'm here because of you. And if this is history repeating itself, then this baby is going to be here because of me." So teenagers who get pregnant should not only carry said pregnancies to term but keep the resulting babies because they exist "because of" the teenager? It's one thing for that premise to animate the Teen Mom franchise: at least there every episode reinforces the unrelenting shittiness of generally single teen parenthood. In a fictional show, where producers can write any outcome they want, a shrugging acceptance of unplanned parenthood feels not just reactionary but irresponsible.

And while normally I would be using this space to expound further upon yet another instance of TV pretending that abortion isn't legal, safe, and -- particularly in suburban California, where Awkward. is set -- pretty accessible, the show's producers did decide that Jenna's scare should be just a scare, and use it as the impetus for Jenna to avail herself of contraception. As she and Lacey wait to be called into the exam room, Lacey seizes the moment to tell Jenna some shit:

It's our burden, as girls, to be the vigilant ones, because it's our bodies that bear the fruits of labour....If you want to have sex, then you, as the girl, have to take all the risk precautions. The safety checks are yours and yours alone. And it doesn't mean that you have to stop being young or loving Matty. It just means you have to take control of your destiny and your body, because boys don't get pregnant. Girls do. Always protect yourself.

Part of me doesn't want to commend Awkward.'s producers for this speech, because it shouldn't be true. In a sexual relationship, both partners should be equally concerned with preventing pregnancy and mindful of the consequences if they're not. But since that's not even true in many adult relationships, pretending that it might be among teenagers is just magical thinking. In fact, "magical thinking" is a pretty good way of describing a lot of teenagers' notions of pregnancy prevention, particularly in this country, where abstinence is often the primary plank of the sex education platform. Not to keep citing the Teen Mom/16 And Pregnant franchise, but those shows are a catalogue of dumb ideas pregnant teenagers have about conception; I remember one on 16&P who said that because she and her boyfriend had had unprotected sex once and didn't get pregnant, she assumed she was infertile and didn't worry about condoms after that.

This is not to say that Jenna, as we've come to know her, is that ignorant -- she says in the episode that she and Matty (Beau Mirchoff) have only skipped condom use one time -- but a lot of the show's viewers may be, and though Lacey's speech is fundamentally sexist, it is also...true? It's true. Teen mothers are single mothers, almost all the time, and even if they technically have the legal option of terminating their pregnancies, the logistics of exercising that right can be, thanks to legislators across this country, so onerous as to be effectively impossible. So if girls' parents or teachers or friends are not, because the subject is so touchy and uncomfortable, going to speak to them honestly about what goes into preventing pregnancy in a realistic fashion so that termination never even has to come up, then at least this fictional character can. I wish Lacey's speech wasn't so accurate and that girls could realistically depend on their partners to share in the burden equally. But since they can't, I'm glad she laid it out there and I really hope the show's younger viewers were paying attention.