So you’re saying you don’t think the experiment can be done? Because it’d be pretty pointless if everyone knew she was faking it.
:smack:
[del]their[/del] they’re
That is all.
Where did she act in need of pity or any form of support? She was high-achieving academically, involved in many advanced programs, and had all the apparent parental/family/boyfriend support a pregnant gal could want. I do not believe she was particularly poor either. Not wealthy, but fine.
Why would you be saying “poor girl, she needs baby things” at all? See, this is already interesting. You believe a pregnant teen would be the subject of charity, regardless of any apparent neediness being shown.
The article does not indicate she was the subject of any charity.
I’d like to know how she collected the data on the rumors. Did she have accomplices recording conversations or taking notes? (And kept identities confidential?) There could be something to learn about rumor, but I think it’s be pretty hard to document.
Also, if she was going so far as to fake the pregnancy, she should have “faked” an abortion, too. She should have informed all of those with a concrete personal stake from the start (though the cat probably would have escaped from the bag soon enough), and focused the “experiment” on how third parties regarded both her and the boyfriend.
But that variable is the only one which really matters. They were reacting towards someone who was pretending to be pregnant - a variable in and of itself - not someone who actually was pregnant.
It is kind of interesting and how jerkish it is depends mostly on what the BF’s parents were like - maybe he was barely in touch with them or something?
I also don’t see why she had to carry this ‘experiment’ on for so many months.
It’s just occurred to me: the next girl who really does fall pregnant at her school is going to have to walk around brandishing a doctor’s letter and an ultrasound picture, constantly trilling ‘no, I’m not another social experiment! Honest! Feel my bump!’ 
And some of her classmates will still be suspicious rather than supportive or congratulatory, which is less :D.
I guess that’s not a big deal compared to the huge deal of becoming a parent, but it’s not exactly a plus point.
I’m not saying I would, but I think a lot of people might want to lend support. Pregnant teens are more likely to be impoverished and uneducated and their babies do a lot worse medically than the babies of older women so I could see bystanders thinking that a pregnant teenager would need all the help they can get. Or even if someone made a comment like, “Oh, she’s so brave/strong,” and I knew she was faking, my first response would be to eye roll.
It probably didn’t do the relationship between the boyfriend and his parents much good at all for him to lie to them like that. They’ve just spent 6 months thinking he seriously screwed up his life and that of a girl, only to be told it was all a lie.
People buy stuff for babies. It’s pretty routine regardless of the mother’s income level. Some people even spend lots of time sewing baby quilts or special little outfits. The deluded grandparents might well have spent money on big-ticket items like a crib. All that is normal for any pregnancy.
But this is exactly what she did.
Actually, I was thinking that this could point to the one area where the experiment might actually have some value–if she were to have avoided “acting” any particular way at all, as much as possible. I think of Black Like Me, which is interesting to the extent that Griffin doesn’t change anything but his skin color.
The difference is that Griffin was dealing with people who didn’t know him as a white guy (or didn’t recognize him as a black guy), whereas Rodriguez was lying to a lot of people who knew her personally. She wasn’t just experimenting with general social attitudes about “pregnant teenager,” she was experimenting with perceptions of herself pregnant.
I wouldn’t assume that BF’s parents’ (or potentially others’) feelings would be easily reducible to positive or negative.
I know some folks who were appalled to learn that their teenage daughter was pregnant, and encouraged her to have an abortion, but when she chose not to they completely embraced the idea of becoming grandparents. Not becoming grandparents at that point, say because of miscarriage, would have been emotionally devastating, even as it would have been a “relief” from some of their concerns. And if the whole thing had turned out to be an elaborate lie? I can’t really imagine how messed up they would have felt, having been yanked between such heavy extremes.
I’d have been seriously pissed off at this girl if I was just a casual friend she was lying to; I imagine it must have been much worse for BF’s parents.
yes but there is no evidence that this occurred, or that BF’s parents had any inclination in that direction. You’re hypothesizing about what might have happened, based on a fairly generic view of parent-child relationships. She and her BF may have had good reason to know that nothing of the sort would happen. As is obvious from the article, the BF approved not telling his parents. Its certainly more his call than it is hers.
Except for the boyfriend’s parents.
I guess it’s feasible to say that the parents of a 20-year-old boy don’t have any concrete stake in their putative grandchild’s future, and I don’t think they have any legal rights, but except for estrangement or abuse (both possible, though the ‘they thought it would be a boy’ comment makes estrangement less likely) they are definitely involved. They’re not like some kid she shares study hall with.
She didn’t inform her boyfriend’s family, who clearly have a concrete stake in that he would be responsible, and is a minor (I assume). Also, I was specifically talking about a faked “abortion,” too.
Actually, the boyfriend is 20. You think the fake abortion angle makes the experiment less controversial/less assholish? Interesting.
No. I think that removing the fake baby on stage was unnecessary theatrics, and that if she was going to go to all that trouble of faking a pregnancy, it would probably be worth it (and more informative) to find out how people would have gossiped about an abortion, as well, and how stereotypes played in. Providing it could even be documented.
Abortion obviously would be more controversial, of course, but let’s assume all of those who had a stake would have known it wasn’t true. A pregnancy in high school alone is not such a big deal (It happened to my assistant, and she just had to transfer to the high school in LA Unified especially designed for such students.) As for the ashholishness, I wasn’t even commenting.
Of course at that point she’d be faking a late-term abortion.
If she was going to make a production of removing it on stage, she should at least have gone to the trouble of rigging up some sort of spring loaded Alien style “chestburster”, or belly-burster in this case…
What was the point of her study? The article appears to be more focused on her deceit than the conclusions she derived from her study. There’s a brief mention of stereotypes and rumors.
So is the point that people aren’t supposed to attribute negative attitudes towards irresponsible teenagers that get pregant? Good luck. :rolleyes:
I’ve got no issues with it. Maybe it could have been handled better in some aspects, but she’s in high school - she’s not a trained scientist.
And growing up in the Yakima Valley, I know that teen pregnancy rates there are pretty bad. If the girl accomplishes nothing more than making a couple other teen girls think twice about sex and pregnancy, then she’s done a real service.