Emily on Make it or Break It
May. 1st, 2012 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babydracoWell, I guess that’s what happened to Emily.
She sleeps with Damon and gets pregnant and loses her freaking mind. I thought it was fairly well and realistically handled, except for the fact that Emily’s mental implosion seemed to come out of nowhere (but maybe I just missed the episodes where it was foreshadowed). They had a difficult line to toe, since their audience is young girls, it’s a family network that is literally contractually obliged to pretend it has a large Christian demographic* yet these characters are not normal teenage girls, if they get pregnant, their sports careers are over and a lifetime investment of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of training and sacrifice from themselves and their families goes down the drain.
The NGO offers to pay for Emily’s pregnancy termination (no, the show never uses the word “abortion”, probably a Standards and Practices thing). This is amazingly generous of them, and demonstrates how far they’re willing to go for an athlete who will probably bring home a gold medal. If Emily is able to compete on the international stage, suddenly the NGO wants to have a say in her pregnancy because her ability to compete is a concern of the entire nation (in theory, since most people would never have found out either way). And naturally, the NGO rep assumes Emily will choose her career over a baby, which is a perfectly logical assumption to make at this point in her career.
She’s only six weeks along, so if she terminated, it would be like she was never pregnant at all.
Sasha (the coach), the NGO rep, Payson and Emily’s mother all wanted her to abort, while Summer is obviously on the opposite side. When Sasha tells her about Emily’s condition, Summer bursts into a heartfelt speech about how it’ll all be okay, Emily will feel better when she knows her friends at The Rock will rally around her and help her through the pregnancy.
This is actually a fairly accurate and typical reaction among contemporary right leaning Christians in North America. They feel terrible about how unmarried pregnant women were scorned and ostracized in the past, and realize how hypocritical and unchristian such attitudes are…so they try to extend a spirit of welcome and forgiveness to young women who make sexual mistakes. Of course, the caveat is that you actually have to want to carry the pregnancy to term. Because the unspoken underlying point is “well, you made a mistake and we can’t go back now so we all have to play the hand we’re dealt and good Christians will help you through it”. They’re thinking “a lot of girls abort because they’re terrified that their friends and family will be angry with them, or they’re terrified that they won’t be able to handle a pregnancy alone, maybe they’ll abort less if we show them that this isn’t true”. And this is sort of admirable, because obviously, unmarried pregnant girls shouldn’t be treated like dirt and those are two reasons why a lot of girls abort. But there are so many other reasons that just doesn’t help with and I don’t think trying to pretend there’s no reset button helps.
1) I can’t work and raise a baby at the same time and no one around me can afford to help even if they wanted to. Just that first nine months will exhaust their resources.
2) I don’t want anyone to know who the father is, because he’s someone who was not supposed to have sex with me (male relative, teacher, clergy person, political figure) and the mere fact that I am pregnant will cause people to start asking questions.
3) I was raped and do not want to spend the rest of my life looking at a miniature carbon copy of my attacker. And it’s not fair that I should have to, because it wasn’t my fault and you’re trying to extend my trauma by at least nine months.
4) I have a disease that will kill either me or my baby if I try to carry it to term.
5) The father of my baby is not someone who should be near children.
6) The father of my baby is someone I simply don’t want to be tied to for the rest of my life.
7) I am a dangerous or severely mentally ill person who should not under any circumstances try to raise a child. I know this, and want to take responsibility for preventing the problem myself.
8) I don’t trust any of my neighbors, family or fellow church goers to raise the baby (I have known well meaning Christian couples who are willing to adopt unwanted babies who just happen to also be terrible parents)yet don’t want to abandon it to the dubious care of Social Services or some strange couple who went through an agency.
9) What this will do to my body terrifies me, and so does the idea of giving actual birth.
10) I just don't want to.
11) I am one of the top names in my field, and I have spent most of my life so far, and thousands of dollars of other people’s money on training, and dragged my family away from their own lives (sometimes thousands of miles away to special training facilities) and gave up school and regular socializing and have starved myself and broken bones and ripped skin off my palms. And it’s all to get to the point where I am about to try out for the opportunity to try out for the most important event in my career, which comes along once every four years. They only take five girls and I am almost guaranteed to be one of them and if I am successful, my family will be set up for life. If I take nine months out to have a baby, even if I give it up for adoption, my chance to enter the event and win it will be gone. I’ll have missed more than nine months of training, which is bad enough, but pregnancy will change my body too much and I won’t ever be able to return to the shape I’m in now. Even if I managed it, four years from now I’ll be too old to try out again. I’m almost too old now and it was pure Divine Intervention that I even got this far.
Emily’s mother was an unwed pregnant teenager who didn’t abort, but Emily’s mother wasn’t a professional athlete. She says she’ll support any decision Emily makes, but it’s clear she would prefer Emily terminate the pregnancy so Emily will be able to earn for herself all the things her mother was never able to give her. Sasha and Summer break up for good (probably)because he agrees with Mrs. Kemetko.
Emily simply cannot handle the choices she has to make. She becomes convinced that the NGO is “trying to control her” by offering to pay for her abortion. And it’s sort of sad, but this is common with teenage girls, usually ones who feel like they have no control over their lives. Getting pregnant feels like a conscious, independent, adult way to get control over your body. Having a baby instantly upgrades you to “grown woman”, you get certain rights and knowledge of things your friends may not understand until they’re in their thirties…or so you imagine when you’re getting all that attention. And for Emily, having a baby means she doesn’t have to try out for the Olympics and fail…you can’t fail if you have an excuse for not even trying. We always thought the gymnastics was Emily’s idea, but when it came down to the moment of truth, perhaps the choice was too much for her, she’s in full blown panic mode because she thinks she is going to fail at the Olympics. And now, well, self fulfilling prophecy. She can't go to the Olympics now.
It’s weird. Tv and movies usually make a point of giving the character the option for abortion, but she never takes it unless it happens off screen and in the past, like Carrie Bradshaw’s college abortion. Sometimes she agonizes over the choice until it's too late to do anything about it, other times, she clearly states that it goes against her beliefs.
And I think I’m fine with that so far. Because The Right to Choose is the right to choose-which is what is so infuriating about anti abortion activists because they seem to believe that nobody would choose to have a baby if given the option not to have one. And that’s just frigging insulting to women’s intelligence and sense of morality. They seem to believe that all women are supposed to be genetically programmed to love babies and want them, but at the same time, they are sending the message that most women will kill their children if given that option because they’re too stupid and morally weak. If you don’t want your daughter to have an abortion, why can’t you trust her and believe that she’ll choose what you taught her was the correct path without you having to actively prevent her from doing anything else?
I think that occasionally, shows and movies should let a main character have an abortion in a current plot arc, but here’s the thing… it’d really only be for the sake of saying “look at us showing someone exercising their right to control their own body”. Abortion itself, as a plotline, mostly sucks. “Character A is pregnant. She aborts. Why did we write Character A as pregnant at all then?” It only works for Very Special Episodes on certain types of tv show and there isn’t much else you can do with it. “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”, for example, would’ve had an extremely short run if the heroine had aborted or use birth control. Most soap operas don’t go there because soap operas thrive on weird pregnancies. That’s at least nine months of extra plots, a lot more opportunities for comedy (abortions are not even mildly amusing) and a chance to accommodate an actress’s real pregnancy instead of suspending or firing her . Abortion is a good choice to have available in real life, but it makes for extraordinarily dull television.
Note:
*ABC Family used to be The Family Channel, which was owned by a Christian organization and largely known for showing reruns of things like “Growing Pains”. It actually started as the regional Christian Channel in the South, and took on a more neutral name and appearance to appeal to the rest of the nation. When they were bought out to become ABC Family, the old owners specified in the contract that ABC Family must continue to broadcast The 700 Club.
She sleeps with Damon and gets pregnant and loses her freaking mind. I thought it was fairly well and realistically handled, except for the fact that Emily’s mental implosion seemed to come out of nowhere (but maybe I just missed the episodes where it was foreshadowed). They had a difficult line to toe, since their audience is young girls, it’s a family network that is literally contractually obliged to pretend it has a large Christian demographic* yet these characters are not normal teenage girls, if they get pregnant, their sports careers are over and a lifetime investment of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of training and sacrifice from themselves and their families goes down the drain.
The NGO offers to pay for Emily’s pregnancy termination (no, the show never uses the word “abortion”, probably a Standards and Practices thing). This is amazingly generous of them, and demonstrates how far they’re willing to go for an athlete who will probably bring home a gold medal. If Emily is able to compete on the international stage, suddenly the NGO wants to have a say in her pregnancy because her ability to compete is a concern of the entire nation (in theory, since most people would never have found out either way). And naturally, the NGO rep assumes Emily will choose her career over a baby, which is a perfectly logical assumption to make at this point in her career.
She’s only six weeks along, so if she terminated, it would be like she was never pregnant at all.
Sasha (the coach), the NGO rep, Payson and Emily’s mother all wanted her to abort, while Summer is obviously on the opposite side. When Sasha tells her about Emily’s condition, Summer bursts into a heartfelt speech about how it’ll all be okay, Emily will feel better when she knows her friends at The Rock will rally around her and help her through the pregnancy.
This is actually a fairly accurate and typical reaction among contemporary right leaning Christians in North America. They feel terrible about how unmarried pregnant women were scorned and ostracized in the past, and realize how hypocritical and unchristian such attitudes are…so they try to extend a spirit of welcome and forgiveness to young women who make sexual mistakes. Of course, the caveat is that you actually have to want to carry the pregnancy to term. Because the unspoken underlying point is “well, you made a mistake and we can’t go back now so we all have to play the hand we’re dealt and good Christians will help you through it”. They’re thinking “a lot of girls abort because they’re terrified that their friends and family will be angry with them, or they’re terrified that they won’t be able to handle a pregnancy alone, maybe they’ll abort less if we show them that this isn’t true”. And this is sort of admirable, because obviously, unmarried pregnant girls shouldn’t be treated like dirt and those are two reasons why a lot of girls abort. But there are so many other reasons that just doesn’t help with and I don’t think trying to pretend there’s no reset button helps.
1) I can’t work and raise a baby at the same time and no one around me can afford to help even if they wanted to. Just that first nine months will exhaust their resources.
2) I don’t want anyone to know who the father is, because he’s someone who was not supposed to have sex with me (male relative, teacher, clergy person, political figure) and the mere fact that I am pregnant will cause people to start asking questions.
3) I was raped and do not want to spend the rest of my life looking at a miniature carbon copy of my attacker. And it’s not fair that I should have to, because it wasn’t my fault and you’re trying to extend my trauma by at least nine months.
4) I have a disease that will kill either me or my baby if I try to carry it to term.
5) The father of my baby is not someone who should be near children.
6) The father of my baby is someone I simply don’t want to be tied to for the rest of my life.
7) I am a dangerous or severely mentally ill person who should not under any circumstances try to raise a child. I know this, and want to take responsibility for preventing the problem myself.
8) I don’t trust any of my neighbors, family or fellow church goers to raise the baby (I have known well meaning Christian couples who are willing to adopt unwanted babies who just happen to also be terrible parents)yet don’t want to abandon it to the dubious care of Social Services or some strange couple who went through an agency.
9) What this will do to my body terrifies me, and so does the idea of giving actual birth.
10) I just don't want to.
11) I am one of the top names in my field, and I have spent most of my life so far, and thousands of dollars of other people’s money on training, and dragged my family away from their own lives (sometimes thousands of miles away to special training facilities) and gave up school and regular socializing and have starved myself and broken bones and ripped skin off my palms. And it’s all to get to the point where I am about to try out for the opportunity to try out for the most important event in my career, which comes along once every four years. They only take five girls and I am almost guaranteed to be one of them and if I am successful, my family will be set up for life. If I take nine months out to have a baby, even if I give it up for adoption, my chance to enter the event and win it will be gone. I’ll have missed more than nine months of training, which is bad enough, but pregnancy will change my body too much and I won’t ever be able to return to the shape I’m in now. Even if I managed it, four years from now I’ll be too old to try out again. I’m almost too old now and it was pure Divine Intervention that I even got this far.
Emily’s mother was an unwed pregnant teenager who didn’t abort, but Emily’s mother wasn’t a professional athlete. She says she’ll support any decision Emily makes, but it’s clear she would prefer Emily terminate the pregnancy so Emily will be able to earn for herself all the things her mother was never able to give her. Sasha and Summer break up for good (probably)because he agrees with Mrs. Kemetko.
Emily simply cannot handle the choices she has to make. She becomes convinced that the NGO is “trying to control her” by offering to pay for her abortion. And it’s sort of sad, but this is common with teenage girls, usually ones who feel like they have no control over their lives. Getting pregnant feels like a conscious, independent, adult way to get control over your body. Having a baby instantly upgrades you to “grown woman”, you get certain rights and knowledge of things your friends may not understand until they’re in their thirties…or so you imagine when you’re getting all that attention. And for Emily, having a baby means she doesn’t have to try out for the Olympics and fail…you can’t fail if you have an excuse for not even trying. We always thought the gymnastics was Emily’s idea, but when it came down to the moment of truth, perhaps the choice was too much for her, she’s in full blown panic mode because she thinks she is going to fail at the Olympics. And now, well, self fulfilling prophecy. She can't go to the Olympics now.
It’s weird. Tv and movies usually make a point of giving the character the option for abortion, but she never takes it unless it happens off screen and in the past, like Carrie Bradshaw’s college abortion. Sometimes she agonizes over the choice until it's too late to do anything about it, other times, she clearly states that it goes against her beliefs.
And I think I’m fine with that so far. Because The Right to Choose is the right to choose-which is what is so infuriating about anti abortion activists because they seem to believe that nobody would choose to have a baby if given the option not to have one. And that’s just frigging insulting to women’s intelligence and sense of morality. They seem to believe that all women are supposed to be genetically programmed to love babies and want them, but at the same time, they are sending the message that most women will kill their children if given that option because they’re too stupid and morally weak. If you don’t want your daughter to have an abortion, why can’t you trust her and believe that she’ll choose what you taught her was the correct path without you having to actively prevent her from doing anything else?
I think that occasionally, shows and movies should let a main character have an abortion in a current plot arc, but here’s the thing… it’d really only be for the sake of saying “look at us showing someone exercising their right to control their own body”. Abortion itself, as a plotline, mostly sucks. “Character A is pregnant. She aborts. Why did we write Character A as pregnant at all then?” It only works for Very Special Episodes on certain types of tv show and there isn’t much else you can do with it. “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”, for example, would’ve had an extremely short run if the heroine had aborted or use birth control. Most soap operas don’t go there because soap operas thrive on weird pregnancies. That’s at least nine months of extra plots, a lot more opportunities for comedy (abortions are not even mildly amusing) and a chance to accommodate an actress’s real pregnancy instead of suspending or firing her . Abortion is a good choice to have available in real life, but it makes for extraordinarily dull television.
Note:
*ABC Family used to be The Family Channel, which was owned by a Christian organization and largely known for showing reruns of things like “Growing Pains”. It actually started as the regional Christian Channel in the South, and took on a more neutral name and appearance to appeal to the rest of the nation. When they were bought out to become ABC Family, the old owners specified in the contract that ABC Family must continue to broadcast The 700 Club.
