The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] Bristol Palin: Porn Star

In a world where teenagers get busted for sexting and sex is, supposedly, everywhere on the web, why is abstinence-only-educatrix übermädchen Bristol Palin telling People Magazine:

“Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex. Think about the consequences  . . . If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody.”

As the owl is fond of saying in chat rooms, “ORLY?”

I trust a lot of people, Bristol: Dentists, airline pilots and the handlers of nuclear waste chief among them. Many of them I trust reluctantly. But I don’t generally trust girls whose education, apparently, didn’t tell them how babies are made. In fact, Bristol’s sex education seems to have left out a lot of things.

Or maybe it didn’t. What it seems to have included is something rarely part of a sex-positive age-appropriate education, but apparently big in Alaska. Her education taught Bristol Palin that being a knocked-up hottie can be a long-term career choice, once she put aside her opinion, stated earlier this year, that abstinence for teens is “not at all realistic.” Now that she’s an abstinence-only spokesperson with her “expenses covered,” she seems to have changed her mind.

Abstinence-only sex education also informed Bristol how to look fabulously sexy. Bonnie Fuller wrote last week in Huffington Post about the fascinating idea that, as Bristol tells People, this “harried” single mother barely has time to sleep but had plenty of time to tart herself up like a hot, sexy nun for the magazine’s photo shoot:

The . . .article, with dreamy full page photos, might as well be titled, “I’m 18, a mom and HOT . . .and you can be too!” There’s not one photo of an exhausted, haggard, harried, unkempt-looking Bristol, reeling under the enormous responsibilities of raising an infant, working part-time — which she is — and hoping to somehow continue her studies. Instead, Bristol appears tanned, rested and already fitting back into her skintight jeans.

And while we’re at it, is it just my imagination, or is Bristol wearing chickens in this photo? And this one? Is looking hot a requirement for an abstinence-only spokesperson — putting out the message that you can be as pure as the Virgin Mary and still look fabulously, devilishly sexy?

Since any ass-clown tall enough to reach the keyboard could reasonably Google “dirty diaper” and get a vivid representation of “the consequences of sex,” as Bristol so charmingly puts it, it’s clearly that Bristol was missing some piece of the puzzle. What condom was she handed that gave her and futurebabydaddy Levi Johnston “permission” to “go all the way” without it? What non-abstinence-only educational forces conspired — in that compelling way that we do, between planning Satanic orgies and having interracial threesomes while wearing cowboy hats and/or David Bowie’s hair — to convince Bristol that the potential “consequences” of sex were things other than physical pleasure, a good time, increased social status, a profound sense of closeness in your relationships, a greatly enhanced sense of self and/or a few orgasms, plus quite possibly an STD or two, HIV infection, or a baby, not to mention a lingering sense regret at how the fuck you hooked up with that loser?

Or that which of those consequences you get playing Teen Sex Roulette depends not just on whether one has sex, but on how one has sex, and with whom?

Who, I ask you, who lied to Bristol Palin about what happens when you fuck!?

If I sound like I’m making a joke of this, I am and I’m not. Bristol Palin is selling sex, and in doing so preaching that giving it away is wrong. The girls looking to Bristol Palin to help them decide whether or not to have sex are not her fellow 18-year-olds, but the 12, 13 and 14 year olds who are just now developing how they feel personally about that choice.

Or, more accurately, those choices, since the message Bristol gives — that having sex is a binary, an either-or — is total bullshit. In fact, Palin is proof positive that sexuality is a continuum or a series of them, because she is expressing her sexuality just by showing off in these pictures. This is a display of exhibitionism in its most damaging fashion. I cannot overstate the destruction that can be wrought by this kind of age-inappropriate influence, which too-young-to-drink Palin is wielding willy-nilly over younger girls just now figuring out where they stand on sex. Palin’s message, that you choose either YES or NO when you “have sex,” is exactly the kind of crap that leads girls to just close their eyes and let shit happen, when a sex-positive harm reduction model could not only teach them what “shit” is likely to get them into trouble, but to encourage them to make choices, to not “let” anything happen to them, but to make choices based on rational evaluation of potential consequences, both positive and negative.

These images of Bristol Palin are totems of sexuality. They are important guides to future behavior. Teen girls even now are looking at these pictures and thinking “Wow, she’s so cool!” The photos, and Palin’s whole media portrayal, embrace sexual desirability while rejecting sexual activity, not specific sexual activities, but all sexual activity. But only one sexual activity can result in what Palin calls the “consequences” of sex.

Bristol is now employed in looking hot while preaching that desirability must remain untouchable — or at least untouched. Meanwhile, while complaining about how hard it is to live as a single mother, she’s cashing a giant check from People — yes, they pay people for starring in their glam photo shoots. In fact, Bristol’s making more per hour, I’ll wager, than any other 18-year-old girl except possibly an actress, musician, model or — wait for it! — the very top tier of porn star.

How many 16-and-17-year-old girls will be “saved” by appealing photos of the glamorous Governette, having abandoned her pre-pregnancy dream of becoming a nurse, trading it in for being an international famous person with nothing to say but lots of room to say it in?

I can guarantee you one thing: Most of them won’t be next year’s abstinence-only spokespeople. They’ll be too “harried” to hang out with the cheerleader from “Heroes.” And they won’t cash any huge checks from People.

Thomas Roche blogs about fairies, zombies, and 18-year-old skanks at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 26 May 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.