Molly Ringwald sat down with Vulture to talk about her new jazz album and they asked her about two of projects that dealt with teen pregnancy. She admitted she doesn’t like that the final products for For Keeps and The Secret Life of American Teenager are glamorizing teen pregnancy.
It’s funny, last night I did a story for the organization the Moth in Santa Barbara — I got home at 3:30 in the morning, so I’m a little foggy today [laughs] — but I actually talked about the movie that I did, For Keeps, in that, because I feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy. And the original script that I’d agreed to do did not. But whenever you do a movie, whenever you do anything, it’s a collaborative effort, and sometimes the script that you agree to do turns into something else. And I was pretty much a teenager at the time, and it was this runaway train that I didn’t know how to stop. And so I was very unhappy about that, and I felt like the movie was, I won’t say unfairly criticized, because I agreed. I really did feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy. And then I did this series, and in the beginning I didn’t feel like the series glamorized teen pregnancy, but then I felt like it ended up doing the same thing. So I feel like I have yet to be involved in a project that shows what it’s really like. They always seem to end up glamorizing it. And I guess when you have a movie star playing the teenager, it’s a temptation to make them look like a young movie star — I did it, and then Shailene [Woodley]. But, yeah, I feel like, unfortunately, both of them do kind of glamorize teen pregnancy.
I have to say that I so agree with her about Secret Life, but I don’t think For Keeps glamorized it. I fell that film showed the struggles of being a teen mom more realistically than most. When it comes to Secret Life, the show makes it seem like teens can live as an adults and yet still have their teenage lives. It started out as positive, but became a show full of bad messaging on all fronts. I wonder if this why we have barely seen Ringwald on the ABC Family in recent years. If it is, I wouldn’t blame her.
