I’ll admit it: I love MTV’s Teen Mom. I’ve been addicted since season one of 16 and Pregnant, thinking that the show would be exactly the mind-numbing hour of reality television I would need to carry on with my life. But three seasons later, I’ve come to appreciate the show in more than the normal, so-bad-it’s-good way that MTV is famous for. And according to the ratings, I’m not alone. The premiere of Teen Mom in December 2009 attracted over two million viewers, making it MTV’s highest debuting show in almost two years. Last week’s season two finale drew 5.5 million viewers, making it one of MTV’s highest ranked shows of the season along with Jersey Shore. It seems odd that two shows with so little content or form in common would become MTV’s newest hits, and their stark differences show a clear divide in viewers themselves.
On the surface, Teen Mom is your average documentary-style reality TV show. There’s the dramatic editing, staged yet informative conversations, and of course, lots of crying. But the show is also different from its reality TV siblings. Unlike Laguna Beach and The Hills, Teen Mom doesn’t portray luxury as a given and having a job as a backdrop for drama. Instead, the show features a decidedly anti-glamour aesthetic and aims to depict a more “real” version of the lives of American teens.
In a time where 10 per cent of the American population is unemployed and nationwide morale is at an all-time low, it makes sense that people would gravitate toward TV that doesn’t romanticize the position of people struggling to make rent and pay bills, while Snooki and The Situation get paid thousands of dollars to show their faces in Miami clubs for 10 minutes a night. Teen Mom also doesn’t seek to romanticize the idea of teenage pregnancy and the complications that go along with it. More often than not, the “confessionals” of these girls often include the same phrase: I love my child, but I wish I had done things differently.
In an age of aggressive abstinence-only education in many American high schools, “conscience clauses” that permit pharmacists to deny girls the ability to fill their birth control prescriptions based on moral opposition, and the continuing importance placed on girls’ virginity, it’s fascinating to see how teen mothers navigate a world in which they appear to have broken every rule laid out for them. MTV doesn’t exploit or shame these girls because of their situations, rather the show is a venue to promote contraception and comprehensive sex education. The teen moms are given the chance to tell the world how they feel in the face of intense scrutiny and judgment from those around them, and they implore their audience to think before they act—something young adults rarely hear from people their own age.
It’s unlikely that Teen Mom’s exposition on the difficulties of teen pregnancy will lead to social change or less depressing statistics about teen parents, their education, and lack of work, but it promotes a stronger position on acceptance of sexuality and the importance of education in preventing life changing events that can be easily avoided. While Teen Mom’s highest viewer demographic is women aged 18-34, more men have been tuning in as well, making it one of cable television’s biggest hits this season. Here’s hoping MTV keeps up with Teen Mom, because it’s more than just another reality show.
