The XX Factor: What women really think.

Levi Not a "Hands-On" Dad After All

We should have guessed it would end this way. Of course, Bristol and Levi have broken up. In America of 2009, stories that begin with the words pregnant and high school don't end in fairy-tale summer weddings. And I suppose if Bristol were going to become a poster girl for the Real Lives of Evangelicals, she might as well go all the way—pregnant at 17 and unmarried. In the semirespectable news stories that followed the tabloid stories, Bristol complained about people cashing in on her name and Levi complained about false Internet rumors. But those rumors were pegged to his own sister, according to Radar. Mercede, they reported, "says Bristol even told him that she hates him and, when she learned she was pregnant, wished the baby wasn't his."       

"Bristol's just crazy," said Mercede. "That's the nicest way I can put it. She and Levi actually broke up a while ago!" Then she debunked the whole "hands-on" dad thing—a soundbite from the Greta Van Susteren interview of last month. "Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible for him. She tells him he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash.' She treats him so badly!" (Wait until he applies for a state trooper job.)

Next on Jerry Springer, a Connecticut group is starting the first draft Sarah Palin group.
 

Where Bristol Went Wrong

Lauren B.'s essay on abortion that Rachael found so appalling may have been a bit crass, but at least it made a point. Which is good: As a writer, she has a responsibility to say something substantive in her piece. As an 18-year-old mother—even one with a celebrity mom—Bristol has no such responsibility. She can go about motherhood as quietly as the media outlets allow (and they have been pretty quiet since Tripp's birth), and the public would have no right to demand that she use her situation to promote safe sex or abstinence education or a pro-life or pro-choice agenda. But Bristol made the decision to call herself an advocate. At that point, I think it's fair to expect a little more.

So what was her mistake? Saying she wants to be an advocate against teen pregnancy but dodging questions about abstinence and safe sex. Well, that and the obvious mistake, if it's true that she wants to break out from the shadow of her domineering mother: naming her child Tripp.

Was Sarah Palin Wrong To Appear in Bristol's Interview?

Bristol, Bristol, Bristol—can we talk about Sarah Palin for a second, the public figure with whom we'll have to live for at least the next four years?

I thought her drop-in to Bristol's instant-classic Fox interview was creepy, domineering, and inappropriate. Greta Van Susteren established that doing the interview was Bristol's decision, and that she pointedly made it on her own: She didn't even tell Mom about it until the day before it happened. Agreeing to the interview—her first post-birth sit-down on national TV—had to be one of those major moments in late-adolescent life when a kid breaks off from his parents and dramatically establishes his authority to run on his own steam and do it alone. When I was 19, I unilaterally decided to move to Brussels and, for a reason I couldn't identify at the time, didn't tell my mother until after the plans were set in stone. She was upset, but she didn't buy a plane ticket and announce she was crashing my trip. That's what Sarah did by horning in on her daughter's interview. Even if Van Susteren asked Mom to come, she shouldn't have shown up.

And the way she showed up. Ick. Fast-forward to 8:20 in this segment. Sarah lumbers right into Bristol's frame and doesn't even sit down but rather hovers weirdly over Bristol, wearing a heavy coat, a bit like a subtly threatening mafia don. Obviously, any publicity Bristol gets complicates Sarah's already complex political image. But her responsibility as a mother was to stay clear of Bristol's moment, even if, as a (notoriously controlling) politician, she felt desperate to do damage control.

Bristol, the Poster Child?

Jessica, I don't think we're quite "piling on" Bristol Palin for either her interview or her teen pregnancy, but I do see quite a difference between Bristol and Rachael's examples of Lauren B. and Amy Richards. Lauren B. is a writer and Richards is an abortion rights advocate, and they both decided to make their stories public. Bristol, on the other hand, was thrust into the spotlight—had her mother not been running for vice president, the news that the governor of a noncontiguous state had a pregnant 17-year-old daughter likely would have escaped notice altogether or been acknowledged only in short news items. Bristol chose to do this interview, but she didn't choose to become a poster child for teen momhood in the first place. I applaud Richards and Lauren for frankly discussing their experiences with abortion, but, as I'm sure they would both agree, they offered themselves up for discussion and criticism—two things Bristol has certainly been subjected to without having the same opportunity to tell her story herself first.

I don't know what her primary motivation for the interview was—to fight misconceptions about being an uneducated high-school dropout, to piss off her mother, or to warn other girls against unprotected sex (her "abstinence or whatever" comment seemed to me like a veiled attempt to advocate for contraception without speaking the words). Perhaps she merely wanted an excuse to put on makeup and do something a little exciting after six weeks of mothering a newborn.

Independent Woman

I think Bristol's insistence that her pregnancy was her own choice is entirely consistent with the notion that her interview was a tacit rebellion, despite what Rachael thinks. Bristol was further asserting her independence by saying: "It doesn't matter what my mom's views are on it. It was my decision. And I wish people would realize that, too." As Rebecca Traister at Salon cannily points out, regardless of what Bristol's views on abortion are (and those are still unknown, thanks to Greta Van Susteren's softest of softball interviews), she's using the language of choice to describe her decisions. As Traister puts it, "Bristol's ability to make her own decision, without regard to her mom's views on the issue, is precisely the freedom for which reproductive rights activists fight, trying to ensure that no daughters surrender control of their bodies to their mothers or fathers or husbands or clergymen or governments."

And to Abby (hi Abby!)—I think choosing to do an interview on national TV was Bristol's only mistake. She had sex, she got pregnant, she dealt with the consequences. Seventeen-year-olds have been doing the same thing for eons. The idea that we're "piling on" Bristol by commenting on her nationally televised appearance is ridiculous. She's legally a grown woman and a mother. If Rachael can so harshly judge Lauren B. and Amy Richards for sharing the personal stories of their reproductive choices, I don't understand why we should be treating Bristol Palin with such a delicate hand.

Lost in Translation?

I'm afraid I have to agree that on the vapid-to-moving continuum, I’d put Bristol Palin’s interview a lot closer to the vapid side of the spectrum. It wasn’t just the likes and the ums; that’s standard-issue and I do it, too. But I don’t understand how someone who clearly wants to take on an advocacy role has given no thought at all to what it is she wants to advocate. As several of you have already noted, “wait 10 years” and “abstinence is not realistic” is just not a public service message. It’s confusing, if not totally contradictory. Now I don’t think I agree, Willa, that this is attention-seeking or career-planning on her part. Bristol mostly looks like she’d rather be pulling a dogsled through the tundra than giving this interview. I think she really does want her life to be an example to other teens. But since she doesn’t seem to know what her message is, the net effect seems to be completely unrealistic and chaotic. (“I take care of him all the time except when I’m at school"?!). And Gov. Palin’s glossy observation—that having a baby at 18 is very unfortunate but also very fortunate—only contributes to the sense that the only message here is: “Don’t do what I did. Unless you do.”

Seeking Out The Spotlight

My Two Cents on Bristol's Interview

My reaction to Bristol Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren falls somewhere between Hanna's "most honest and moving political interview" and Susannah's "mind-bogglingly vapid." Among the "ums" and the "likes" and the teen-speak—being a new mom is "awesome"—are a few moments of stunning honesty—telling her parents about her pregnancy was "harder than labor," for example. (Funny, to me, is that if this was a giant f-you to her mother, why she was so adamant to insist that having Tripp was her choice and not something her mother forced on her in the name of political expediency?) But mostly, she struck me as an average 18-year-old who is dealing with the pressures of unexpected motherhood. And yet so many are piling on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Web, we’re either supposed to celebrate or sympathize with, I’m still not sure, Lauren B., who has an essay on Nerve.com about the crimp that her abortion put on her relationships with men. Her story starts with her telling a man on their second date—and third drink that evening—that she’d had an abortion the month before. She told the first guy she dated seriously post-abortion about it on New Year’s Day because she was “too out-of-control wasted” (and later complained that he insisted on using condoms even though she was on the pill). Mixed in are the account of a friend who got pregnant after a night of heavy drinking, and insults directed toward abortion protesters and “teenagers in Utah practicing the pray-to-God-and-please-come-on-my-ass method.” All this from a woman in her mid-20s who really, it turns out, just wanted someone to be able to laugh with her about her abortion. Is this really how the pro-choice movement presents itself? I feel about as sorry for her as I did for Amy Richards, who gained notoriety for a New York Times Magazine essay about how she’d aborted two of her three fetuses when pregnant with triplets because otherwise “I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. … I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”

Maybe Bristol Palin shouldn't be a poster child for teenage pregnancy. But she's doing more for the pro-life argument than a bunch of narcissistic twentysomethings who get abortions because they're drunk and forgot their birth control are doing for the pro-choice side.

Like, Abstinent

I thought Bristol Palin came off as astonishingly dim and mind-bogglingly vapid. She reminded me of the random young women that show up on MTV's True Life documentary series, saddled at too young of an age with children they are neither psychologically nor financially able to take care of. I agree with Jessica that the interview seemed more like a f-you to her mother than anything else. When Sarah Palin showed up at one point, it looked as if she could barely contain her desire to climb across the table and throttle Bristol for having agreed to this ... interview? While watching "news" as substantive as cotton candy that made me wonder if it induced IQ point loss, I was most embarrassed for (by? on behalf of?) Greta Van Susteren, an obviously intelligent woman who for reasons beyond my comprehension has lowered herself to political coverage that has more in common with an E! Miley Cyrus profile than whatever this was supposed to be. My favorite Bristol sound bite: "Everyone should be abstinent or whatever." Whatever, indeed.

Smells Like Teen Spirit to Me

If You Can't Say It, Don't Do It

Hanna, that's interesting that we had such different reads on the Bristol Palin interview. I agree that she was refreshingly honest in her shock about being a mom, but I hardly saw her as a poster girl. Her refusal to talk about the details of abstinence or safe sex—or, for that matter, to have been the one to tell her parents she was pregnant—struck me as immature, not endearing. My mom's golden rule of sexual activity was always that if you're not able to talk about it, you shouldn't be doing it. It's admirable how well Bristol's soldiering through her unexpected hardship (and lucky, as Gov. Palin told Greta Van Susteren, that she has such a huge, supportive family to help her through it). But if I got to hold an audition for my ideal teenage screw-up poster girl, I would make sure she could say words like condoms and sex, instead of coyly talking around the acts and choices that accounted for her screw-up in the first place.

Bristol, Poster Girl for Truth

Bristol Palin Hopes "That People Learn From My Story and Just, I Dunno, Prevent Teen Pregnancy, I Guess"

Bristol Palin spoke to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about life as an 18-year-old mom. She looks beautiful (what cheekbones!) but nervous, her eyes darting as she delivers clipped responses—far from the rambling poetry of now-Grandma Palin. It's unclear why Bristol agreed to the interview (which, in true maverick fashion, she didn't tell her mom about until the day before). She doesn't seem to have any clear message she's out to deliver, and her thoughts on teen pregnancy—ostensibly one of the topics of the interview—are frustratingly vague:

I wish [getting pregnant] would happen in like 10 years so I could have a job and an education and be, like, prepared and have my own house and stuff. ... I hope that people learn from my story and just, I dunno, prevent teen pregnancy I guess."

Right. But prevent it how? And wait 10 years for what? To have sex? Or just wait to get pregnant, by, you know, using birth control? Bristol "doesn't want to get into detail about that," but says she thinks expecting abstinence is "not realistic at all." Van Susteren doesn't probe, and in a second clip featuring Gov. Sarah Palin, we find out why. Cutting Bristol out of the interview now that the real star is in the room, Van Susteren asks the governor:

Isn't the bigger story or the bigger issue how important it is for families to pitch in? It's not just an issue of abstinence. ... When you have the conversation about abstinence, I almost feel bad because there's this wonderful child here [presumably she means Tripp, not his mother], so talking about abstinence ... it doesn't sound very nice.

Well, it's not always a journalist's job to be nice. If Bristol wants people to learn from her story and to prevent teen pregnancy, as she explicitly said, then Van Susteren owes it to the audience to ask the obvious follow-up: How?