The “16 and Pregnant” Reality TV Show Essay

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16 and Pregnant is a reality show that follows the plight of teenage girls due to give birth in the coming months. 16 and Pregnant focuses on financial issues, drugs, and relationships with teen parents. The show raises questions of acceptance, humility, and maturity of different people facing a situation considered shameful in most societies. The show in question fits perfectly into the key characteristics of the genre, inviting ordinary people to participate and not focusing on their appearance. The key elements of the show are plot, language, emotions, and characters. The show is dedicated to the everyday life situation of early pregnancy and related problems. The TV series demonstrates not only the preparation for childbirth but the process itself and the period after childbirth. The heroes of the episodes often do not have any specific knowledge. 16 and Pregnant is a great part for the reality TV show genre, as it focuses on everyday problems and uses key elements that are typical for most programs in this genre.

The key elements of 16 and Pregnant are similar to those that make up classic dramas, for which the audience loves this show. The first such element is the show’s plot, which consists of several parts without changes. The audience gets to know the characters and sees part of the pregnancy, preparation for childbirth, the process of birth, and the postpartum period. These plot points allow the audience to know the storyline clearly and not worry about missing something in their eyes (“The First Time We Met Kailyn | 16 + Pregnant”). After all, this show is watched to relax and sympathize with the characters, not for the sake of puzzles. The second element is the emotional tension and conflict at the heart of every series. These are conflicts between teenagers in love, between families of teenagers, or between parents and children. The tension, tearfulness, and emotionality of each episode are the most significant element and success factors.

The third element is the characters, which canonically be disassembled into details. Young fathers demonstrate irresponsibility, misunderstanding of the problem, and alienation from series to series and mothers demonstrate ignorance about their health, hysteria, and fear. It is noteworthy that such a seemingly frivolous show presents hundreds of stories of different real people how much in modern society, the problem of contraception and pregnancy is a problem exclusively for women. Due to emotional tension, the audience does not remain indifferent to this significant social problem.

The fourth element is the language the characters usually speak. It is an undeveloped language with jargon, slang, and profanity, familiar to most people who watch the show. The language and presentation of speech without its purification allow the audience to understand the characters and see themselves, their friends, or their relatives. In the episodes, the audience hears speech amid uneven camera placement and sometimes slightly blurred shots that intersect with professional photographs when the characters are being interviewed. It gives the show an atmosphere of hyper-reality, which is transmitted through the screen online, which seems as if a person sees the ins and outs of not strangers but his neighbors.

A recognizable element of the show was the inclusion of animation, both in the opening cutscene and the description of the characters; this animation still made the characters partly fictional. The style the creators decided to use is attractive: a pencil image of inscriptions, objects, or people on white paper. It was all reminiscent of the school atmosphere and showed the audience that we are now talking about children who are in a difficult situation and trying to get out of it.

As for the integrity of the material, the stories are presented believably and without attempts to deceive the viewer. However, the main thing in this show is not deceit but embellishment and emphasizing only the right moments. Due to the emotional intensity, the authors and screenwriters were able to build an unfair system for presenting a pregnancy story. There is a lot of condemnation and betrayal in this story; sometimes, after watching the episodes, there is a negative feeling about the pregnancy experience. If the authors deliberately tried to show such an effect, this is positive; assumably, it can affect the demotivation of adolescents to have unprotected sex. As a result, it is possible to say that the events are transmitted truthfully, in principle. However, emotional underlining sometimes makes it difficult to assess the situation in which the girl finds herself soberly.

As for creating changes, over the years, the overall story system has been kept for the convenience of filming and the audience. This scheme was suitable for authors and screenwriters who adopted the experience of their American colleagues to create an analog of 16 and Pregnant. The show’s plot became marked a decade later and is now recognized by many Internet users as a classic.

16 and Pregnant is a popular TV show where real people talk about their teen pregnancy problems. The authors made the show extremely entertaining due to the language of the characters without intentionally becoming emasculate. At the show’s center were conflicts and betrayals, which were deliberately emotionally presented to the audience. All this makes the audience perceive the story as completely real; however, due to the intensity of the drama, it is not entirely sober to evaluate it.

Works Cited

YouTube, uploaded by MTV’s Teen Mom, 2020.

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IvyPanda. (2023, May 25). The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-16-and-pregnant-reality-tv-show/

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"The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show." IvyPanda, 25 May 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-16-and-pregnant-reality-tv-show/.

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IvyPanda. (2023) 'The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show'. 25 May.

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IvyPanda. 2023. "The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show." May 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-16-and-pregnant-reality-tv-show/.

1. IvyPanda. "The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show." May 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-16-and-pregnant-reality-tv-show/.


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IvyPanda. "The "16 and Pregnant" Reality TV Show." May 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-16-and-pregnant-reality-tv-show/.

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