Glmaorizing Teen Pregnancy Essay Example for Free

Glmaorizing Teen Pregnancy Essay Media, specifically television has taken the issue of teen pregnancy to a whole other level. The shows 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager document the lives of young teenage girls facing the issue of being a pregnant teenager. Originally created to show the controversial subject of teen pregnancy, all of these shows soon began to change. As the seasons continued in all three of these shows, the controversial subject of teen pregnancy soon became a glorifying concept. What was first viewed as just a fantasy is now becoming a reality for many teenagers. Viewers of these shows are now seeing that teen pregnancy isn’t all that bad; it may even be considered normal according to MTV and ABC Family. The â€Å"teenage celebrities† on these shows are making it through life just fine; portraying that anyone else can too. Yes, these teenagers may have faced hard times in the beginning, but at the end of the day, their lives are unrealistically viewed as ordinary. Both MTV and ABC Family depict the lifestyle of being a pregnant teenager to be somewhat glamorizing. The reality television show 16 and Pregnant was first aired on MTV on June 11, 2009. This show follows the stories of four pregnant teenage girls [Farrah, Maci, Amber and Catelynn] that are in high school dealing with the hardships of teenage pregnancy. â€Å"Each episode follows a five to seven month period in the life of a teenager as she navigates the bumpy terrain of adolescence, growing pains, rebellion, and coming of age; all while dealing with being pregnant† (MTV. com). During the first few episodes of season one, the struggles of dealing with teenage pregnancy seemed difficult and nearly impossible. MTV portrayed each girl as if they were not going to make it through this crisis they were about to face, and their lives were soon coming to an end because being a pregnant teen was not acceptable. As the show continued and episodes passed, these so called â€Å"hardships†, no longer seemed to be that difficult. With all the support from their families and/or boyfriends that they received, these teenage girls were able to get through this bump in the road pretty well. Not only did they get support from people they knew, they received the most of their support from MTV. While teenage pregnancy might have started out rough, becoming an MTV celebrity could not have been too bad. According to Arienne Thompson, author of â€Å"16, Pregnant †¦ and Famous: Teem Moms Are TV’s New Stars†, â€Å"All four women are mainstays on USA TODAYs Celebrity Heat Index, which measures media exposure; Portwood [Amber] topped the list for October, beating out Angelina Jolie and Prince William. The moms are regularly on the covers of People and Us Weekly and have Facebook fan pages dedicated to them† (USA Today). Putting the stars of these reality shows on a magazine cover puts them in the same place as any other famous person. The message that is being sent out to girls is that if they get pregnant as a result of being sexually active, then they too can end up on TV or on a magazine cover. Being sixteen and pregnant may not be the most ideal lifestyle, but becoming more popular than an experienced, well-known actress at the age of sixteen is another story. Viewers of 16 and Pregnant now see that if they become pregnant at a young age, they also can have the chance to become famous alike Farrah, Maci, Amber and Catelynn did. MTV did not decide to stop there though. As if these girls were not famous enough, as a continuation of 16 and Pregnant, MTV aired Teen Mom on December 8, 2009, only six short months after the broadcast of 16 and Pregnant took place. This show takes the four teenagers from 16 and Pregnant, and documents their first few years of motherhood. Receiving more attention than before, MTV has millions of viewers watching Teen Mom each week, making these â€Å"teenage celebrities† even more famous. Teen Mom executive producer Morgan J. Freeman says, â€Å"The concern for teens, however, is what else they may see in the show. While the Teen Mom stars have their share of struggles on the small screen each week, paparazzi shots and tabloid covers manage to rip them out of the context of MTV and place them in the realm of celebrity† (USA Today). Even celebrities agree that the characters on these shows are becoming too idolized. â€Å"Kim Kardashian boldly states that â€Å"It seems like shows like ‘Teen Mom’ are all of a sudden making teen pregnancy look cool in the eyes of young girls. She even goes a step farther and says that the girls from the shows â€Å"have become almost like celebrities, but girls these are not people you should idolize! †Ã¢â‚¬  (Jadebt13). Along with MTV, ABC Family decided to air a show following the life of a pregnant teenager. On, July 1, 2008, ABC Family aired the show, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which became the network’s most watched series in the 12-34 demographic (McKay 1). This show follows the character Amy Jergen through her pregnant life, and also through her life of being a mother. In the first season, Amy realizes that she has become pregnant, and does not know how to tell her friends or family. This season shows the struggles that Amy faces while being pregnant, but as the season comes to an end, life become simpler to Amy. The Secret Life of the American Teenagers glamorizes her teen pregnancy by having the schools marching band play their instruments as Amy first returns back to school after finding out that she has become pregnant [which is a little unrealistic]. Not only does this event take place, but also Amy’s boyfriend, which is not the father of her soon to be son, proposes the idea of getting married and helping her take care of the baby. At the start of the second season, Amy has her baby boy, named John. With the birth of John everything soon turned into a fairytale ending, and her life completely turned around; her boyfriend problems fall into place, and she started to receive support from her family, friends and community. This season sent out the message to its viewers that if you become pregnant as a teenager, you will have support from surrounding people, when that is not always the case. In conclusion, television is glamorizing the lifestyle of pregnant teenagers. The shows 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager all have different story lines to them, but in the end, they all show that some good can come out of being a pregnant teen. 6 and Pregnant and Teen Mom are both reality television shows that idolize the glamour of being pregnant by the publicizing these girls not only on MTV, but also in outside sources such as magazines. The Secret Life of the American Teenager on the other hand, is a scripted television show that depicts teen pregnancy as being a joy, fun, and simple by showing how great life can be having a baby at such a young age. Both MTV and ABC Family chose to air similar concept shows around the same time period that glamorized teen pregnancy when r ealistic having a baby in your teen years is not ideal, nor a pleasure.

Chicagos Negro :: Free Essays Online

Chicago's Negro When studying urban living spaces, one question that always comes to mind is how a particular urban space or neighborhood came into existence. I have grown up on the South Side of Chicago for the past 19 years in a community known as Pill Hill. My neighborhood, a middle-class Chicago neighborhood, came to gain its name because of all the doctors and health-care professionals who resided in the neighborhood in the 1960’s. In addition, I have also had the opportunity to live outside of the city in a northern suburb known as Highland Park: Along the lakefront of Chicago are some of the most affluent communities in the United States. In both median household income and per capita income, Northbrook, Highland Park, and Wilmette and among the nation’s ten wealthiest communities with a population of about 25,000 or more. There are other salient characteristics of these three communities: they are virtually all white and they have virtually no subsidized housing. (Squires 117) The rigors and din of the city are all but removed from life in Highland Park. Nevertheless, Highland Park, IL has faced its own share of trouble in the past decade for the discrimination that the corrupt local government has plagued minorities with. The living conditions in Highland Park are drastically different from those of the South Side of Chicago in that the average property value of a home in the year 2000 was $662,755 while the average home in Pill Hill sold for $180,323. (Citizens United for Justice) Nevertheless, Highland Park is just a single example of Chicago’s many affluent northern suburbs that developed in the 1850’s. Growing up in the city my entire life and having lived in different socio-economic conditions, I have grown immune to the extraordinary degree of racial segregation present in Chicago. As an African American, I have always felt comfortable living on the South Side of Chicago and not until I had the opportunity to live in both Highland Park and a neighboring suburb, Lake Forest, did I truly know what it felt like to be a minority. Nevertheless, this was not always the case for most blacks. From the early 1900’s, blacks resided on the South Side of Chicago, not by choice, but because of strict discriminatory housing laws that forbade the sale of homes in certain areas to blacks.

The Lumber Room

The text under analysis is written by an outstanding British novelist and short story writer Hector Munro. Hector Hugh Munro was a British writer, whose witty stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. The author’s style of writing is satirical in a humorous way. He uses a witty tone to mimic characters in order to subtly criticize them. The criticism is done in a subtle way that is humorous. The excerpt is homogeneous. The story is narrated in the 3rd person. This allows the reader to access the situation and the characters in an objective manner, because the characters are having both positive and negative viewpoints. The third person point of view is impersonal which fits the impersonal atmosphere of the household. The plot of the story revolves around a little orphan Nicholas who was trusted to his tyrannical and dull-witted aunt. One day Nicholas was â€Å"in disgrace†, so he made his Aunt believe that he was somehow trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but instead had no intention of doing so but did sneak into the Lumber Room. There a tremendous picture of a hunter and a stag opened to him. Soon his aunt tried to look for the boy and slipped into the rain-water tank. She asked Nicholas to fetch her a ladder but the boy pretended not to understand her, he said that she was the Evil One (This metaphor shows author’s irony and essential clue to the character). The plot is ordered chronologically, each episode is given with more and more emphasis. The author’s choice of vocabulary and stylistic devices in this story emphasize a deep dissension between generations, to convey a thrilling power of child’s creative mind. The author uses a large variety of stylistic devices, such as epithets to show us the great difference between the Child’s and Grown-up’s world. Such epithets from Child’s world (grim chuckle, alleged frog, unknown land, stale delight, mere material pleasure, bare and cheerless, thickly growing vegetation) and the one from Grown-up’s world (frivolous ground, considerable obstinacy, trivial gardening operation, unauthorized intrusion) help the author to emphasize all the beauty of the childhood’s mind and the commonness of the adult’s mind. The text can be divided into several parts according to the change of the general slant: 1. The exposition, in which we learn about little Nicholas, his cousins and his strict aunt. Nicholas got into his aunt’s disgrace. So his cousins were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. The Aunt was absolutely sure that the boy was determined to get into the gooseberry garden because â€Å"I have told him he is not to†. The author uses irony and witty tone throughout the story. For example, Aunt's condescending tone in describing Nicholas’ prank: disgrace, sin, fell from grace. The author is obviously using the Aunt’s own word choice to reveal her self-righteous attitude. This is a subtle criticism of her arrogance which she is blind to. To lay stress on the Aunt’s narrow-mindness Munro uses such metaphors as â€Å"a circus of unrivalled merit† and â€Å"uncounted elephants† 2. The complication, when Nicholas got into an unknown land of lumber-room. Forbidden fruit is sweet and truly the lumber-room is described as a storehouse of unimagined treasure. Every single item brings life and imagination to Nicholas and is symbolic of what the adult of real world lacks. He often pictured to himself what the lumber-room was like, since that was the region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes. The tapestry brings to life imagination and fantasy within Nicholas, the interesting pots and candlesticks bring an aesthetic quality, visual beauty which stirs up his creative mind; and lastly a large square book full of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! They allow Nicholas to learn in a fun and exciting way. The author uses irony to poke fun and criticize the Aunt. For instance, trip to Jagborough which is meant to spite Nicholas fails. Instead of being a punishment for the child, it became a treat for him whereas it became a torture to those who went. The Aunt’s conception of â€Å"the paradise†. The real paradise is the Lumber-room not the garden. This reveals the irony that the ideal world of an adult is dull and boring to that of a child. 3. The climax of the text. While the boy was admiring the colouring of a mandarin duck, the voice of his aunt came from the gooseberry garden. She got slipped into the rain-water tank and couldn’t go out. She demanded from the boy to bring her a ladder, but he said her voice didn’t sound like his aunt’s. â€Å"You may be the Evil One tempting me to be disobedient† – said a little boy desiding the Justice must be done. The Aunt tasted the fruit of her own punishment on the children. She is accused of falling from grace, of lying to Nicholas about jam and thus termed the Evil One. She feels what it is like to be condemned. 4. The denouncement. The Aunt is furious and enforces in the house. She maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. Nicholas was also silent, in the absorption of an enchanting picture of a hunter and a stag.

Pollution And Its Effects On Humans - 1131 Words

Pollution 1. The Problem I. Pollution is killing Earth a. Smoke from cars b. Pesticides c. Toxic waste in water II. Air pollution a. Causes problems with Earth and Humans i. Allergies ii. Weaken immune system iii. Cause/ make asthma and bronchiolitis worse iv. Cause heart problems III. Water pollution a. Kill our source of food i. BP oil spill harmed many animals b. Flint water crisis i. No clean water to drink, shower, or cook with c. Causes diseases IV. Ways to clean up planet a. Change the way things are made b. The Ppp i. Holds conferences to discuss ways to create a more sustainable development V. We can all make a change and help Earth flourish 2. The opposing view I. Pollution is not a real problem a. Air pollution levels have been and continue to decrease b. Environmentalist exaggerate the facts II. New technology a. New technology in cars and factories help reduce air pollution III. Pollutions decreased by 40% and is still decreasing IV. EPA’s water program a. The world is envious of our water system b. Water has to be tested every day to ensure safety V. Our food source a. Half the seafood eaten is farm- grown b. Farm growing seafood helps give marine ecosystems a chance to rebuild where there has been over fishing 3. Rebuttel I. Serious problem a. You can see all the garbage in our waters killing the animals II. We have an amazing water system a. Why is the flint water crisis taking place III. Air pollution is not real a. In Beijing the people have wear masksShow MoreRelatedPollution And Its Effect On Human Health1776 Words   |  8 PagesPollution is a widespread issue, affecting every part of the world mercilessly. Pollution’s main target is human health. It can impact human health in many ways as the forms of pollution are nearly endless and ever-present. Pollution is versatile and has many categories and subcategories as well as impacting everything around us. 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