Over the past few weeks, Milwaukee teens have seen and and heard promo after promo for the horror film 2028. There’s blood, screaming, creepy lighting, gravelly voice-over, the works. Over time, though, it became clear that these weren’t trailers for a movie, they were trailers for YOUR LIFE. Your life, that is, if you’re young and knocked up. While the first round of previews ended with “in theaters January,”  subsequent edits closed on the following message: “Get pregnant as a teen and the next 18 years could be the hardest of your life.” Then, a Web address flashes on screen: BabyCanWait.com. Oh, snap!

According to Broadsheet, this is just one of at least 15 anti-teen pregnancy campaigns presented by the United Way’s Healthy Girls program in Milwaukee. “Past print ads included images of teen boys with pregnant bellies and a baby diaper with a brown “scratch-‘n’-sniff” spot. The ads’ creator says the aim is to offer a contrast to high-profile young mothers like Jamie Lynn Spears and “deglamorize” teen pregnancy…and credits the decline in the state’s teen pregnancy rate in part to their “aggressive and provocative” approach.” Note: BabyCanWait.com provides information about contraception and STD’s. This is not an abstinence-only campaign.

But, as Broadsheet’s Tracy Clark-Flory asks, “Are these shock-and-awe tactics the best way to reach kids?” While I sympathize with the goal, and appreciate the clear and creative commitment to it, something about the trailer didn’t sit well with me.

For one thing, horror movies are “glamorous,” too. (Older) teens — and women — like Saw, say. Not saying it’s aspirational, but the genre itself is seen as a double-dog-dare lark, not a cautionary tale about (say) losing your virginity at summer ca — REE! REE! REE! You know? So there’s that.

There’s also something about it that contributes to an ugly stigma. Teen mothers as screaming bloody victims. The baby as some sort of evil spawn. Or something like that. Ick. Not helpful.

Finally, I don’t think kids are running around getting (people) pregnant because Bristol and Jamie Lynn made it look so, like, cute. Or even just because ADULTS ARE LYING TO THEM ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL, which they are. There are so many naive, misguided, melancholy, ironic reasons that teens want to get pregnant, be parents. They’ve seen their sisters and brothers and friends do it. And it’s hard hard hard. But — based on what’s become normal to them — it’s not a horrorshow. I’m not sure you can convince them it is in a one-minute trailer when the rest of their life says otherwise.

See for yourself. What do you think?

Well, boil me in beer and ship me to Sheboygan — it’s an update from Chris the Lonely Bratwurst! When we first met Chris, he wondered how he could translate his confidence as an improv performer into smoothness with the laydees off stage, one on one. Later, he wrote back wondering how he could get his all-partnered-up friends to for God’s sake stop calling him The Single One or, at one fateful barbecue, “Chris the Lonely” … yeah.

Here’s what he has to say!

This is Chris, aka Chris The Lonely Bratwurst, aka Chris the Improvising Bratwurst… aka now Chris the Married Bratwurst.

After writing a few times in 2000, getting published in your column, and taking your advice to heart, I figured out a lot of things and actually started dating. In 2003, I met the girl I would eventually marry in 2006. We now live in the midwest and are absolutely loving life.

I can honestly tell you that in the long process I went through to overcome my shyness, you were a difference maker. And I wanted to make sure you know that you can add that tally to the board.

Thank you a million times over, and continue to pass on the good word!

Peace, Love, and Sausages,
Chris

Thank YOU, Chris!

Love,

BG

Scott Simon:

…[G]ays could begin getting married in Iowa in just three weeks.

“If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification,” the Iowa justices wrote, “they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.”

Whatever the final result may be, it seems to me that the decision reminds us that gay life in America is not confined to certain zip codes of lower Manhattan, West Hollywood, Miami’s South Beach and Chicago’s Lakeview. It is as American as Iowa.