In the movie, “Grease”, are we to believe Rizzo was really pregnant or did she fake it for attention? If not the attention of the crowd (which she seemed to want to hide it from, but the gossip spread)…was she out to prove something to “Kenickie”? Your thoughts?
I think Rizzo was too grown up to play games like that. But just taken at face value, her and Kenickie had unprotected sex and then she missed a period. She really thought she was pregnant.
I’m curious what makes you think she might have been doing it for attention?
She thought she was pregnant.
It was the 50s, women had less options on pregnancy prevention. And more stigma surrounding the unwed Mother to be. Yea, I bet she thought for sure she was.
On top of that she was a slut ; )
She 100% thought she was pregnant. You don’t sing a song like “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” if you’re trying to pull something over on someone. 
I saw the Broadway musical of “Grease” in the Seventies (hated it, absolutely loathed it). In the stage show, Rizzo definitely thinks she’s pregnant with Kinickie’s baby. It’s not a ploy.
Beckdawrek:
She had enough options. She asked Kenickie if he had a condom and he did, but it was damaged (heat damage, I guess?) because he’d had it in his pocket for years. She could certainly have said no until he gets a good condom. She was clearly aware of the risk and the options available to mitigate that risk.
Yeah, I know about condoms. I was being silly. It was a pretend show about pretend people.
If we’re talking about the movie, it takes place over an entire school year, so I’m not sure Rizzo’s late period can be blamed on Kenickie’s broken condom. That happened very shortly after school started, and the pregnancy scare seemed to be in the spring. I thought the potential father was more likely to be the Scorpion who took her to the dance-off. Either she had spite sex with him, or she had to put out just to get that date, and whatever happened was more than a month since her last time with Kenickie. She did tell him, “It’s somebody else’s mistake.” Some people think she’s lying to let him off the hook, but it could have been true.
astorian, what was in the stage show dialogue to make you think it was specifically Kenickie?
Something I wondered about Rizzo ever since I was a kid and first saw the movie:
Was it a thing back then for girls in high school to be known by their last name?
I don’t remember any girls from my high school (2000-2004) being referred to chiefly by their last name, but it was very common with guys. Basically, if your last name was more memorable than your first name, you were likely to wind up being called by your last name. At sports practice and in gym class, you’d be known primarily by your last name, and I guess it just carried over from there into the rest of school. But girls also played sports and had gym class and I can’t remember ever hearing them casually refer to each other by last name alone.
When RIzzo tells Marty that she feels like a defective typewriter, Marty asks her if it’s Kenicke’s; Rizzo says a dismissive, “you don’t know the guy” that was pretty clearly a lie to keep her quiet. (Yeah, good job on that with Marty!)
Similarly, when the news gets out to Kenicke and he tells Rizzo “I don’t run away from my mistakes,” she snaps “it was another guy’s mistake.” This, too, comes across as a way to distance herself from him because she’s scared, stubborn and spiteful–the latter 'cause she’s jealous that Kenicke took Cha-Cha to the dance. I never once thought her cracks about “some other guy” were intended to mean that she’d slept with Crater-Face, the skeezy leader of the (much more believable) tough gang from the other school.
Of course the real question is, if Kenicke was carrying that condom around for a billion years, does that mean he was a virgin until that night in the car?
The movie changed several things from the stage musical- for instance, it gave Danny Zuko some of Keneckie’s musical numbers (including “Greased Lightning”), to make Travolta’s part bigger.
After 40 years, I still remember Sandy asking Rizzo if she was even a little upset or afraid about being pregnant with Kenickie’s baby. Rizzo answered by singing “The Worst Thing I Could Do.”
I think Rizzo/Riz is probably gets used because it’s a cooler or tougher name than Betty. Whether she chose it for herself or the pink ladies/t-birds decided to use it, I don’t know. It certainly goes better with her personality than Betty. That sounds like someone that should be wearing a poodle skirt.
But only keeping quiet about who. She obviously needed to tell someone that she missed her period. It’s my understanding that in the stage show she slept with one other person (not crater face), but they got rid of that in the movie to close a minor plot hole.
I kinda wondered that too. On the one hand, regardless of how they acted around each other, they weren’t that old, so it very well could have been the case. OTOH, he may have just been holding on to it in case a girl wanted him to use it. I suppose it’s also possible it was just an old one that had been there forever and he normally had others but that was the only one nearby.
Trivia: I found out the other day that Crater-Face’s name is “Leo”.
choie:
Absolutely. He threw around a lot of swagger, but inside, he was still just a teenager.
Condoms and abstinence vs condoms, IUDs, the Pill, implants…
I’d say that qualifies as “less options”, which is what Beckdawrek said. And the story makes it evident that the condom was bad, but it’s not as if they’re magical, they do have a failure rate (slippage, unnoticed rips, etc.).
I never got the idea she did it for attention. Her joy at the end when she’s not pregnant seemed genuine. (Due to it being a song I actually liked to sing along with, I’ve rewatched the end a lot, so I remember it more. Same with “Tell Me More” and “Greased Lightning,” and, to a lesser extent, the Sandra D. song.)
FWIW I agree with those who argue:
- It was Kenicke’s first time, which is why his condom was so old.
- Rizzo believed she was pregnant.
- She also thought it was Kenicke’s baby. She was not as much of a slut as was her reputation.
- She lied to him about it not being his because she was scared and wanted to be tough.
- “The Worst Thing I Could Do” is not as catchy as “Summer Nights” or “You’re the One That I Want” but it is the best song in the movie (I never saw the stage production).
The story takes place in the fifties, so the Pill and and IUDs weren’t options.