jamie-lynn spears

i was commenting on my friend amber's blog, because she posted about jamie-lynn spears announcing her pregnancy at 16 in ok magazine today, and because of course i love britney spears and follow her religiously, i had enough to say that i realized i was way exceeding the blog comment etiquette.

so below is my original comment, plus my additional commentary below that.

ok, i never comment on complicated issues, i but i have been especially following the saga of britney over the years, and there are definitely a few things that are bothering me about this. and it isn't the teen pregnancy thing i don't think. my parents were really young when i was born, and i also enjoyed having younger parents and i appreciate that my grandparents were in their early 40's when i was born, and that because of that they and i are very close. that said, 1) about ten years ago, britney and her mom were all over the press on the sex before marriage is wrong issue. remember? britney and justin never did it, because they were church-going folk? that has certainly helped britney a lot. and the abstinence only kids are the ones who are likely to make mistakes, not use birth control, and regret things. 2) the ok article says a lot about lynne spears' adorable grandchildren and jamie-lynn's adorable nephews and doesn't mention that they don't really see them because britney has been ruled by the state of california unfit to spend anytime with her own child without a court appointed parenting supervisor. 3) in all this talk about unplanned pregnancy, no one has mentioned that there are way, way worse consequences to unprotected sex than pregnancy. and as a former louisiana safe sex worker, really, it's the kids who don't use birth control because they figure babies are cute anyway are kids who get sick. and this last point is what is really bothering me. because 16 year olds should use condoms because they don't want to end up hiv positive. ok, end of rant, thanks for listening.

the ok article was creepy. both jamie-lynn and lynne answered "we just need to focus on the baby right now" to every single question. britney was never mentioned except to say how cute her babies are, except of course she has no idea how to parent them. and let's not mention the father very much, because he's clearly going to bale at some point.

jamie-lynn said something about needing to find work she could do to stay home with the baby, except of course the one million dollar deal with ok magazine for the story plus the exclusive rights to photos of the newborn would really be enough for most single moms with one infant to live off of for a while. and i don't even care that she sold the story, because, yeah, way to be an kick-ass single teen mom and make yourself a million dollars. whatever if she's exploiting the baby. i wouldn't care myself if i'd been in a goossip magazine as a baby. but don't pretend that's not what your doing.

and still the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of connection of stds to unprotected sex in any of this. because really, pregnancy is an ok outcome, because that won't kill you. i spent a depressingly long time doing hiv/aids statistics for the state of louisiana public health department, and it makes me mad that jamie-lynn won't say, "even though i got pregnant by accident, i am happy that i'm going to keep my baby and i think everything will be fine, but unprotected sex is still not cool, because everything would not be fine if i had ended up hiv positive and not pregnant, or worse, both hiv positive and pregnant. and at the health department in louisiana i used to deal with the case files all the time of teenagers much younger than 16 who were both hiv positive and pregnant and that is why i now work for whole foods in customer service and make much less money, because i couldn't fucking take it anymore.

and on a lighter note, how could they have named that girl jamie-lynn (dad=jamie, mom=lynne), come on, please be more southern white trash.

i wish both britney and jamie-lynn could just get it together and collect their children and go live in an awesome punk rock lesbian feminist mothers' collective. that would be wonderful.