Hi there! I’m going to be trying a new thing where I post a “Very Special Movie” each month. This month’s movie is “Fifteen and Pregnant,” starring Kirsten Dunst. 

Fifteen and Pregnant 

This movie starts with them having sex, so like wow we are seriously getting down to business here. During foreplay, Kirsten Dunst is also talking about how bummed she is that her dad doesn’t live with their family anymore…so if you weren’t already thinking that this was a bad decision, you should probably be pretty sure of that now.

It’s okay though because Kirsten gets her period in the very next scene. Only, it’s probably not okay because this movie is called Fifteen and Pregnant. The next time Kirsten sees her boyfriend, he tells her that he is too busy to date her during football season. Kirsten immediately runs away to see her friend and her friend asks her if she’s pregnant as soon as she tells her that she and her boyfriend broke up. This strikes me as odd.

However, in the car ride home we see that her friend has a baby and maybe is a little hyper vigilant because of it. And it turns out that her questioning was warranted because Kirsten missed her previous period. Plus, the pastor at her church said it was bad to use contraceptive because then it meant that you had already thought about having sex…what??

As a teen, I was always paranoid of teen pregnancy, which does not really makes sense because I’m pretty sure you have to be having sex to get pregnant. But I watched a ton of lifetime moves and it seemed like pregnancy was a very contagious head cold and that pretty much everyone who had sex got pregnant or maybe you just got pregnant anyhow due to proximity to hormones or whatever. But now that I am no longer a teen, I’m like looking at Kristen’s mom and thinking “what the hell. She’s got a child who is going to have a child??” That seems very overwhelming because you still have to be a parent to your kid (and maybe their kid) no matter what they decide.

Kristen’s friend suggests that she have an abortion and Kirsten yells at her and is all like “THAT’S THE MOST HORRIBLE THING EVER. I WOULD NEVER DO THAT.” And that’s fine if you believe that, but I kind of want her friend to ask her why. I know that she has to be pregnant for the plot of this movie, but I wish that someone could at least have a real conversation about her options. Oh wait, just kidding this is a Lifetime movie. How silly of me to expect anymore than this. 

There’s also a strange scene where Kirsten and her younger siblings have a shouting almost unintelligible argument about the shame Kirsten has brought upon their family while the music she lost her virginity is playing in the background. Ugh. Well ugh for two reasons 1. That’s a nasty juxtaposition 2. I wish there was some other phrase that I could have used in that paragraph instead of “lost her virginity.” I’m pretty sure she didn’t misplace it and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t stolen or given away. But yeah the same music that played when she first decided to have sex is also playing when she’s arguing with her siblings about her pregnancy. I think this is meant to highlight the consequences of her actions?

The mom’s of the two teen mom’s end up going to the gym and have a more in depth discussion about Kirsten’s choices than Kirsten does. God forbid anyone like actually talk to the pregnant teenager here, right? The absentee father shows up (oh sorry, absentee from the original nuclear family—not from the one Kirsten is starting) and says that Kirsten and her mom can “probably” raise the kid on their own (“probably” that’s great) and that if they decide to go down that path he hopes they’ll consider letting him help. And Kirsten’s mom yells at him and is all like No, I hate you! So…she sounds like she’s going to be a great grandma.

Kirsten has to go to school in a trailer now on the edge of the public school property. I can’t believe this is legal. I used to work at a public high school and there were unfortunately many pregnant teens wandering around. But at least they weren’t hidden away, I suppose. This feels sort of archaic. What backwoods town does she live in? Or am I just uninformed?

Eventually, no one shows up to her baby shower and it’s very sad. After the party, Kirsten and her mom have this heart wrenching conversation in which Kirsten says that she wanted to know what love feels like from the inside, and that she finally has something that belongs to her that she can look forward to. It’s actually one of the most depressing things I’ve seen in a while, especially because her mom looks so horrified and baffled as to how her kid did not know how much she loved her. Thank goodness her family gets back together and rallies around her before she gives birth because I could not  have handled it if things got more depressing in this movie.

Here are my favorite quotes from this movie:

“I just want to be a good wife and mother and make my husband happy.”—Kirsten Dunst as dumb teenager

“It’s bad enough being pregnant without having to look like a total loser.”—Kirsten Dunst as dumb teenager shopping for maternity clothes

“Well you should have thought of that before you had sex.”—Kirsten Dunst’s fictional mom who is oversimplifying the issue while shopping for maternity clothes

“I’m not doing that much with my life. Might as well have a kid, right?”—The teen father-to-be.

“We can grow up together. The three of us.”—Also the teen father-to-be.

Very Special Lesson: Condoms.

I know the issues here are so much more complex, but oh my God it would be so much easier to deal with those if someone hadn’t condom-shamed poor Kirsten Dunst before this movie started.