Moms Wear Flats: I will one day have to have the talk with my daughter and I'll tell her what my Grandmother told me "close your legs or I'll close em for you."
So, SHOCKER, Jamie Lynn Spears is 16 and having a baby, I don't know if you've heard. I couldn't help but notice what with her on the cover of almost every magazine, every day time show bringing it up and the blogs, oh the blogs, man the blogs. Sign on San Diego even cares about this one, what are parents to do now that there is a 16 year old girl having sex and getting pregnant? And she's on TV?! And she's related to Britney Spears who we all know is so sane and level headed. Such a SHOCKER.
Jamie Lynn apparently stars in some teen show on Nickelodeon. I've never seen it (but I do remember back in the day when Nickelodeon was COOL and played cartoons like Ren and Stimpy). Opinions are flying about what to do with this "role model" who is now a pregnant 16 year old role model.
Truth is she's not the first "role model" to do something that people disagree with and she really won't be the last. The View has weighed in and old crazy train Sherry Shepard is just disgusted and thinks the girl should be punished. Perez Hilton, well, he's dubbed her a ho AND is about ready to string her up in the barracks and make an example out of her. Even the morning show with Mike and some girl (I can't remember her name) went and discussed with their panel of experts (a magazine editor and an 18 year old virgin) what we should do to take care of the Jamie Lynn problem.
It seems to me what parents may be most worried about, is the same thing they have been worrying about since Cheerleaders were getting kicked off the squad for getting pregnant and teenage girls were getting put into "special" classes where they could hide their bumps from the influential eyes of those around them: if the kids see it they will do it and then we've just got a whole bunch of pregnant little kids running around and not going to college and that will not be good for the student loan industry.
I get that kids are impressionable, heck I remember buying my pearls, crosses, laced bottom tights and short skirts during my Madonna phase (I remember briefly toying with the cone bra idea but skipped it). I remember the girl that came to our junior high from Los Angeles (oooo big city) who told us (in the sixth grade) that we needed to start french kissing or we'd just be such dorks forever. Kids are impressionable, but do you want to know who impressed on me the most, my mother.
I had a lot of cousins who had kids relatively young. In fact there was a point where I was the oldest kid in my generation who hadn't spawned anything from my loins (I was nineteen). At the ripe old age of nineteen there were people concerned because I hadn't had a kid, nor even contemplated marriage or children and therefore I was probably going to die alone. I was surrounded by Jaime Lynns, girls who realized their new path in life and walked down it, girls who had to take responsibility for their actions and reacted, not surprisingly, with a little trepidation and a lot of curiosity.
But it didn't make me want to run out and get pregnant and a lot of that had to do with my mother. My mother wasn't spending her time yelling at my cousins about what bad examples they were, she wasn't trying to protect me from the big bad television or living in fear that I would somehow pickup how to be a total ho from something I saw on the movie screen, my mother was concerned with me. She talked to me, she listened to me (a lot of the time she disagreed with me). She told me about the risks and what you give up when you have a child (not just at 16 but at any time). She told me about sex before marriage (use a condom) and casual sex (use a condom) and sex with someone you are just dating (use a condom) and sex with someone you love (use a condom). She talked about sex so much I just started tuning out because at that point I was sex educated and NOT having sex (perhaps because I would only think of my mother, which just turns a girl off). She was a believer in birth control, education, and taking the blinders off, but most of all she was someone who told me that "those people you see on TV are not real."
People can argue that Jamie Lynn is in fact a real sixteen year old girl, but you know what she's not. We don't know her, we don't call her at home. We only get the image of her, plastered on the magazines, transmitted over the television, gossiped about on websites. We are not her friends, her family, her co-workers or her mother. We don't have to teach her anything and like wise, she shouldn't really be teaching us about anything either. She's a character as most people who have flash bulbs in their face and crazy sisters on their family tree must be. We get snippets of who she might be, but really, Jamie Lynn Spears, OK Magazine cover girl is not a real person, she's a semi-famous character who got knocked up and decided to keep the baby and now we wait for the next step of the drama which is finding out the repercussions of her decisions, next on Lifetime. Jamie Lynn Spears the real person, well we don't know a lot about her.
Tell your daughters (tell your sons too, by the way) that Jamie Lynn is just a person on TV and she has nothing to do with their real life. She's a distraction, a character, a sixteen year old girl who will now have to raise a baby with a bunch of people talking crap about her on the Internet. And then after your very rational explanation go ahead and listen. Yes, listen to what they have to say.
It's hard because most kids that age are just talking crazy... but it's a start.
So, SHOCKER, Jamie Lynn Spears is 16 and having a baby, I don't know if you've heard. I couldn't help but notice what with her on the cover of almost every magazine, every day time show bringing it up and the blogs, oh the blogs, man the blogs. Sign on San Diego even cares about this one, what are parents to do now that there is a 16 year old girl having sex and getting pregnant? And she's on TV?! And she's related to Britney Spears who we all know is so sane and level headed. Such a SHOCKER.
Jamie Lynn apparently stars in some teen show on Nickelodeon. I've never seen it (but I do remember back in the day when Nickelodeon was COOL and played cartoons like Ren and Stimpy). Opinions are flying about what to do with this "role model" who is now a pregnant 16 year old role model.
Truth is she's not the first "role model" to do something that people disagree with and she really won't be the last. The View has weighed in and old crazy train Sherry Shepard is just disgusted and thinks the girl should be punished. Perez Hilton, well, he's dubbed her a ho AND is about ready to string her up in the barracks and make an example out of her. Even the morning show with Mike and some girl (I can't remember her name) went and discussed with their panel of experts (a magazine editor and an 18 year old virgin) what we should do to take care of the Jamie Lynn problem.
It seems to me what parents may be most worried about, is the same thing they have been worrying about since Cheerleaders were getting kicked off the squad for getting pregnant and teenage girls were getting put into "special" classes where they could hide their bumps from the influential eyes of those around them: if the kids see it they will do it and then we've just got a whole bunch of pregnant little kids running around and not going to college and that will not be good for the student loan industry.
I get that kids are impressionable, heck I remember buying my pearls, crosses, laced bottom tights and short skirts during my Madonna phase (I remember briefly toying with the cone bra idea but skipped it). I remember the girl that came to our junior high from Los Angeles (oooo big city) who told us (in the sixth grade) that we needed to start french kissing or we'd just be such dorks forever. Kids are impressionable, but do you want to know who impressed on me the most, my mother.
I had a lot of cousins who had kids relatively young. In fact there was a point where I was the oldest kid in my generation who hadn't spawned anything from my loins (I was nineteen). At the ripe old age of nineteen there were people concerned because I hadn't had a kid, nor even contemplated marriage or children and therefore I was probably going to die alone. I was surrounded by Jaime Lynns, girls who realized their new path in life and walked down it, girls who had to take responsibility for their actions and reacted, not surprisingly, with a little trepidation and a lot of curiosity.
But it didn't make me want to run out and get pregnant and a lot of that had to do with my mother. My mother wasn't spending her time yelling at my cousins about what bad examples they were, she wasn't trying to protect me from the big bad television or living in fear that I would somehow pickup how to be a total ho from something I saw on the movie screen, my mother was concerned with me. She talked to me, she listened to me (a lot of the time she disagreed with me). She told me about the risks and what you give up when you have a child (not just at 16 but at any time). She told me about sex before marriage (use a condom) and casual sex (use a condom) and sex with someone you are just dating (use a condom) and sex with someone you love (use a condom). She talked about sex so much I just started tuning out because at that point I was sex educated and NOT having sex (perhaps because I would only think of my mother, which just turns a girl off). She was a believer in birth control, education, and taking the blinders off, but most of all she was someone who told me that "those people you see on TV are not real."
People can argue that Jamie Lynn is in fact a real sixteen year old girl, but you know what she's not. We don't know her, we don't call her at home. We only get the image of her, plastered on the magazines, transmitted over the television, gossiped about on websites. We are not her friends, her family, her co-workers or her mother. We don't have to teach her anything and like wise, she shouldn't really be teaching us about anything either. She's a character as most people who have flash bulbs in their face and crazy sisters on their family tree must be. We get snippets of who she might be, but really, Jamie Lynn Spears, OK Magazine cover girl is not a real person, she's a semi-famous character who got knocked up and decided to keep the baby and now we wait for the next step of the drama which is finding out the repercussions of her decisions, next on Lifetime. Jamie Lynn Spears the real person, well we don't know a lot about her.
Tell your daughters (tell your sons too, by the way) that Jamie Lynn is just a person on TV and she has nothing to do with their real life. She's a distraction, a character, a sixteen year old girl who will now have to raise a baby with a bunch of people talking crap about her on the Internet. And then after your very rational explanation go ahead and listen. Yes, listen to what they have to say.
It's hard because most kids that age are just talking crazy... but it's a start.
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