Today in bad priorities
Jul. 31st, 2011 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupWeirdly, the only part of Teen Mom that seemed exploitative was the reunion special, run by Dr. Drew, a man who has no psychiatric training aside from addiction medicine, but was on a dating advice show with someone who would go on to found a show where the main draw was women jumping on trampolines. Dr. Drew is an idiot.
He seems to buy into the mothers-love-their-children-in-a-way-men-never-can myth, but also automatically takes the side of everyone but the girls. Now, with the exception of the girl that put her child up for adoption, all of the women seem to suffer from significant errors in judgement (and not just because they decided to be parents at 17). But it's not okay to tell a woman that if you just had a bit of time, you could fix her relationship with her completely unengaged boyfriend who refuses to work or do childcare, and calls her lazy when the demands of childcare force her to drop her college classes. And that she shouldn't expect so much help from him because women naturally love their children more than men.
There's another girl who treats her parents poorly, but clearly because they're so awful to her. Dr. Drew may not have known that the mother would go on to be arrested for assaulting her daughter, bu the signs were there such that it was incredibly inappropriate for him to yell at her for falling short in the obedient and dutiful category. But then, I wrote her parents off when they used the existence of her baby as proof she shouldn't get birth control. Apparently in a later episode he sides with a mother who tried to get her recovering-anorectic daughter to diet with her.
...and yet, barely a word on the girl who assaulted her boyfriend in front of their daughter. So in conclusion: Teen Mom is surprisingly good, Dr. Drew needs to not be on television
He seems to buy into the mothers-love-their-children-in-a-way-men-never-can myth, but also automatically takes the side of everyone but the girls. Now, with the exception of the girl that put her child up for adoption, all of the women seem to suffer from significant errors in judgement (and not just because they decided to be parents at 17). But it's not okay to tell a woman that if you just had a bit of time, you could fix her relationship with her completely unengaged boyfriend who refuses to work or do childcare, and calls her lazy when the demands of childcare force her to drop her college classes. And that she shouldn't expect so much help from him because women naturally love their children more than men.
There's another girl who treats her parents poorly, but clearly because they're so awful to her. Dr. Drew may not have known that the mother would go on to be arrested for assaulting her daughter, bu the signs were there such that it was incredibly inappropriate for him to yell at her for falling short in the obedient and dutiful category. But then, I wrote her parents off when they used the existence of her baby as proof she shouldn't get birth control. Apparently in a later episode he sides with a mother who tried to get her recovering-anorectic daughter to diet with her.
...and yet, barely a word on the girl who assaulted her boyfriend in front of their daughter. So in conclusion: Teen Mom is surprisingly good, Dr. Drew needs to not be on television
