Jenelle (
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MTV’s harrowing new series “Teen Mom 2,” which takes up where “16 and Pregnant” leaves off, will leave you breathless.
Or maybe that’s just unable to breathe.
It’s that scary.
The lives that these teenage moms live is enough to break anyone’s heart — which is why it’s riveting TV.
But the very nature of the show also begs the question of whether the sudden fame — no matter how terrible it makes these kids and their situations look — encourages, rather than discourages, the behaviors that got these kids in their terrible predicaments in the first place.
Take the dreaded Amber Portwood from Season 1 of “16 and Pregnant,” who is still on the original “Teen Mom” (some teen moms featured on “16 and Pregnant” graduate to “Teen Mom”).
This week’s In Touch magazine has a story claiming that, in the wake of Amber losing custody of her baby for assaulting the baby’s father — in front of the baby — she’s trying to get pregnant. Again.
To achieve that goal, she’s had sex with eight guys in two months, the magazine claims.
Why? Friends say she was always a sex addict, and now she’s apparently a fame addict as well. You can’t be on “Teen Mom” if you don’t have a baby to care for, and if you can’t be on TV, then you won’t be famous — and the gossip mags won’t report your every move as though you’re Angelina Jolie.
Forget a double-edged sword — this one’s triple-edged. Irresponsible behavior led these girls to unwanted pregnancies, which, in their cases, led to fame. And that added a whole other dimension to their lives that they couldn’t ever have imagined.
Now, the loss of that fame may cause them to not just repeat, but outdo, the horrible behavior that caused all this misery in the first place. Whew. As a friend used to say, “Fame — ain’t it a bitch.”
In the new media world, misery loves company and tabloid headlines.
Now comes “Teen Mom 2” (premiering Jan. 11 on MTV), which picks up on the lives of four other girls who were followed on “16 and Pregnant.” There’s Leah, who has twins; Chelsea, who shares a house with a roommate and baby Aubree; while young Kailyn is reduced to living alone in one room with baby Isaac in the basement of her former boyfriend’s mother’s home, while family life goes on upstairs.
Then there’s a 17-year-old new mom named Jenelle, who is thrown out of her mother’s house because she won’t quit her partying ways. Her mother keeps the baby.
By the end of the first episode, Jenelle and her mother are in a screaming, violent, cursing match, and Jenelle — in a bratty rage — actually shoves her mother, calling her a “f- – -ing bitch” — in front of the baby. Truly immoral, crazy, and disgusting.
But don’t fret. With behavior like that, Jenelle could lose her baby — but end up the next big MTV star.