The Secret Life

Ok, so I had a little mini-addiction involving a tween soap opera, but it’s about to come to an end.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the buzz about the new show, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” on ABC family. I know most of you will have issues with the subject of abortion in it and how it’s portrayed (see previous post “On Abortion and Mainstream Television: Why is a Woman’s Right still taboo?”), but my beef is with the show’s blatant sexism and and anti-woman undertones.

Here are two good examples:
The episode from a few weeks ago was about how Grace, the typical “good girl” was in the middle of this “scandal.” She had gone out to meet her boyfriend behind her parents’ back, and he ended up leaving her on a street corner. After dark. She called a male friend to come pick her up, but as she was waiting, two male predator-types drove up, leering at her, sexually harrassed her, and then threw a beer bottle at her. Then one got out of the car, proceeded to chase her, and then even grabbed her, all while making crude sexual comments. Grace kneels down, sees the beer bottle, and then breaks the bottle and holds it out to her attacker in a threatening way to get him to back off–just then, her male friend drives up and “rescues her.” Now the “scandal” here is not that this girl was attacked–instead, Grace faced public ridicule and humiliation on the news, at school, and elsewhere in the community for THREATENING HER ATTACKER WITH THE BOTTLE!!!!!! There was virtually no mention of the attack–just that she was this “good girl” doing something “bad.” I could not believe it.
Example number 2: Amy, the pregnant 15-year-old, has this uber-awesome, yet completely unrealistic boyfriend (NOT the father), who is very sweet and is very supportive up to this point. Amy is having a rough day, puts her head on his shoulder, and says “I’m such a whore.” One would expect his response to be, “no you’re not; or, “don’t say that,” or something similar, but he doesn’t. What does he say? “Yeah, but you’re MY whore.” Granted, he says it in jest, and they have a chuckle, but I kept waiting for him to follow up with “but really, that doesn’t make you a whore.” Never happened.
What do you think about this show, and can you offer any other good examples? I understand that sometimes people make mistakes or don’t get it right away, but the anti-woman sentiments in this show are not even remotely hidden! (As an aside, I’d like to have a conversation about these issues rather than the abortion issue in itself, since that is already covered on a previous threat referenced above).