By Kelsey Thomas
While washing my hands on the second floor of Franz and silently praising UP for the rare opportunity to use soap on a Friday afternoon, I was accidentally privy to a conversation between two stalls.
Girl one: So a girl from my high school was supposed to come to UP next year, but I just found out she got herself knocked up.
Girl two: Seriously? Is teen motherhood becoming trendy or something? Some people are so idiotic.
That same day, I had read an article about Victoria's Secret marketing their racy PINK brand to increasingly younger girls.
Am I the only one seeing the glaring hypocrisy?
From receiving their first Barbie to idolizing flirtatious pop stars, girls are subtly but pervasively instructed with a very clear message: Be sexy.
Being sexy is glorified, but when girls actually engage in sex, and for whatever reason, possibly even despite best efforts at prevention, it results in a pregnancy, suddenly it's shameful.
Whether she keeps the baby, gives it up for adoption or has an abortion, judgmental stares and whispers behind bathroom stalls are inevitable.
Isn't there something wrong when a 13-year-old girl is encouraged to purchase strappy leopard print underwear with the words "Feeling Lucky?" on the back, but when that same girl gets pregnant a few years later everyone is raising eyebrows and pointing fingers and gossiping behind bathroom stalls?
Isn't it time we recognize the double standard? Isn't it time we stop encouraging increasingly younger girls to hyper-focus on their appearance? Isn't it time we realize that the pregnant girl in high school or even at UP might not deserve to be labeled "idiotic"?
At the very least, can we recognize the hypocrisy?
Kelsey Thomas is a junior English major. She can be reached at thomask15@up.edu.
