This post was my Wednesday post, which I opted to move to Friday for more important things. Let’s hope the people we “elect to speak for us” do their job and listen to us not wanting SOPA. Go team and sign a petition if you haven’t already.

I laugh sometimes when I sigh and think of what we get on TV. We have shows like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant which aim to show kids how difficult it is to be a teen parent, and hopes to make them think a little about consequences. What I see are spoiled brats that can’t raise kids, but get more money to support their family for being on television than I do. I don’t think its aim is to glorify the life of the teen mother, but considering one of them is pregnant again and one of them had a friend that was so inspired she wanted one too; it’s hard to wonder if it “accidentally” glorifies that life.

Even worse than that, we realize that there are still a lot of societal challenges these teen moms have to struggle with. On one hand, we have these teen moms on television making money for being teen moms and possibly inadvertently glorifying it a little but on the other, in the real world teen moms struggle with discrimination. I have a lot of difficulty with this, I can’t understand a society where they glorify something but tell you it’s completely wrong. At least when you watch a hoarders show, you don’t sit there going, “hey, living in a place where I need to climb a mountain of junk to get to my room is fantastic”. You sit there and go, “what’s wrong with those people?”

I was a mom at 18, and I still to this day remember dirty looks I got at the grocery store, or how I was treated by doctors that weren’t my son’s normal doctors. I remember how I was treated in the hospital when he was born, and that still sticks with me today as a 28-year-old woman with another on the way. I remember having to lie just to get him christened. Most of all, I remembered losing a good job opportunity as a result, and ended up picking up slack where I could making it so I worked from sunrise to well after sun down. The life of a single mom is the most demanding thing a person can do; when you’re a teen single mom, you have a lot more to deal with.

The point of this was simple, a friend mentioned on her Facebook that her niece was denied entry into the Colleen Contest on the grounds she was a teen mother. I think it’s incredibly distressing to me that with everything I’ve stated before about the society we live in, that such an outdated rule exists. In fact, I think they should be honored to have her because she sounds fantastic and anyone who does what she does and raises a kid too should be given a medal. In fact, all moms deserve a medal for the things they need to deal with daily. I hope the contest changes their mind, because as an Irish-woman, I’d be honored to have her represent me.