During last night’s Gossip Girl, The Candie’s Foundation ran a commercial addressing teen pregnancy. As the camera zooms in on two teens making out in a car, Jenny McCarthy suddenly appears in the window and asks, “What are you doing?”, before presenting the couple with one possible outcome of their backseat frolic.
It’s a powerful message for sure but what is it really saying? As there’s no real indication the couple isn’t engaging in safe sex, it would appear to be abstinence. And what reality is Candie’s selling us. It would seem the assumption, while true in many cases, is that upon the thought of teen pregnancy, guys always flee leaving the girl to handle reality on her own.
Abstinence hasn’t always been the best possible approach to handling teen pregnancy. The safe sex approach isn’t necessarily better. All teens do it anyway so we might as well happily give them a year’s worth of condoms when they enter a certain grade, right? By some, this condom-happy, safe sex approach could be seen as just another cop out by lazy parents who can’t (or refuse to) teach responsibility and judgment to their kids.
There’s no perfect solution, no one size fits all. Each situation is different. Abstinence will work for some and safe sex for others. It’s just not clear which direction Candie’s is pushing.
