Dear Media: You're Not Helping

Warning: ranty post ahead.

The media has never really been kind to infertility. Then you get movies like Baby Momma and the ever horrifying The Backup Plan that kind of muck things up once in awhile. Only recently have we started seeing more empowering coverage such as Self Magazine's ground-breaking infertility article last August and shows like Giuliana & Bill. That said, we still have a long way to go.

Which leads me to my first point. Dear Media: Leave Guiliana and Bill Rancic alone.

Hang in there, Guiliana.

I realize that's a loaded statement given the fact that they've created a reality show based primarily on their infertility experience. Also, in full disclosure: I haven't watched their show, but I've followed along in online updates. They did something pretty brave by putting their infertility struggle in a very bright public light, and I applaud them for their courage and resolve. I can't even fathom coping with a miscarriage on national television.

So I was rather annoyed when I read an interview with Giuliana, titled "Giuliana Rancic: We Are Done With IVF For Now." The not-so-subtle spin there? The Rancics are quitters. When I clicked through and read the interview, I was even more infuriated that the question immediately following "how are you handling your miscarriage" was "Have you considered adoption?"

*facepalm*

No! Gosh! What is this "adoption" you speak of, oh wise media outlet? The thought has never crossed the minds of couples who can't have children. Goshemgollygeewhiz what an idea!

Why - why - is that always the first question other people ask in the wake of infertility? It's insensitive and just plain rude. I'm not knocking adoption by any means, but man - give this woman a break. She just lost a pregnancy following an aggressive IVF treatment. Have some respect.

It doesn't matter if Guiliana and Bill Rancic have a TV show or not. If they want to take a break from IVF, so be it. IVF is no walk in the park and no couple should ever feel like they're quitters just because they want to take a break, whether it's IVF, DE, IUI, or even natural conception. Sometimes you just need a break from the babymaking madness - and that deserves respect, not rejection.

. . .

Seriously. Please close your mouth.

Rant #2. Dear Media: Stop perpetuating the idea that getting pregnant, especially as a teen, is super easy and sort of cool.

Kim Kardashian: let me just file this under "topics I never thought about which I'd blog." But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You may have heard that there's apparently something in the water in at Frayser High School in Memphis, Tennessee: 90 young women are currently pregnant or have had a child this academic year. Granted, the school has a program for teen moms, so the superintendent claims it's a "magnet for pregnant teens."

Let's all just have a moment to scream silently: "90 pregnant teens in one high school and I can't score even one positive pregnancy test ?!"

Sweet, I feel better. You? Fab.

So then Kim Kardashian opens her big fat famewhore mouth (I know, not the most feminist-empowering or politically correct word I could use but let's face it: I'm callin' it like I see it) and blames the whole mess on MTV's Teen Mom. Two of the women from the show rightfully fire back at Miss Kimmy's holier-than-thou stance, reminding us that: "she made a sex tape when she was younger and she wants to bash the girls on Teen Mom?"

Word, Teen Mom lady, word.
 
On the other hand, I can understand where Kim "Wait, Why Am I Famous Again?" Kardashian is coming from. Much like the "pregnancy pact" drama of last year up in my neck of the woods, teen pregnancy is a subject the media loves to glamorize. Exhibit A: the film, Juno - because having babies at 16 is all iconic t-shirts and cheeseburger phones.
 
The issue I take is that there is a media perpetuated and culturally dictated message that if a young dude so much as breathes on a young lady, BAM! Teen pregnancy. (That's been one of my biggest gripes about abstinence-only sex ed in high schools.) At 17, I was super paranoid about pregnancy... and I was still a virgin! That's how paranoid I was. So, color me shocked when just a decade later, I'd like to get knocked up and I find out that all of those media messages and the borderline-Puritanical tone of high school health classes are a lie. That no, it's actually not that easy to get pregnant and millions of twenty and thirty-somethings have this idea that they'll land a bun in the oven on the first few tries.
 
And then millions of us wait another month or two longer to talk to our doctors because, it's just a little horizontal mambo, how hard could this be? Everybody (media, society) said this would be easy. Birds, bees, and all that jazz.
 
It's irresponsible, The Media. It's just fucking irresponsible.
 
We need the media to talk more responsibly about young women's health, not stories that turn babies into damned matching accessories. We need young women to a) thoroughly understand what's happening in their bodies and b) to recognize when things aren't right. We need young women (and men) to know that 1 in 8 could be them in 10 years, 5 years, next year- but they didn't even know it because they didn't feel empowered enough to talk to their doctor. We need high risk young women and men to think about fertility preservation - they might not know at 16 if they want to have children, but they should still have the chance if they want to later in life  and so they need to know how to talk to their parents and doctors about it now.
 

Because seriously? I should never have to agree with Kim Kardashian on anything. Ever.