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Jamie Lynn — Wake Up and Smell the Frappuccino — This Baby Backfired!
If Jamie Lynn Spears somehow thought that having a baby would be a good career move for her — boy has that backfired!
While Nickelodeon hasn't committed to any course of action on the Jamie Lynn front, aside from wishing her the best, her audience is speaking loud and clear.
"Fire her!" That's the message from Star magazine's readers. In a poll on Starmagazine.com, 93% of them are emphatic that she should be fired from the network or that her show, Zoey 101, should be canceled. Over 91% believe it was irresponsible of Jamie Lynn to get pregnant, and 80% say that she never should have broken her baby news by appearing on the cover of a magazine that often pays big bucks for stories. On the contrary, 80% feel that she should have kept it quiet for as long as possible.
I don't believe that Jamie Lynn and her mom, Lynne, anticipated that there would be a virulent lack of sympathy for her situation. They didn't take into account that as the star of Zoey 101, Jamie Lynn was considered a role model for the teens and tweens who watched her show. Overtaxed parents counted on Zoey to deliver wholesome entertainment and even moral lessons. Now those parents feel betrayed and so do their young daughters — Jamie Lynn really let them down!
And Jamie Lynn has no excuse that her fans can empathize with. She isn't underprivileged and she certainly had access to information about birth control. If anything, Jamie Lynn was over-privileged — she had the world at her feet. How many young girls would have loved to be a star on Nickelodeon and would have appreciated that opportunity!
Then there is the issue of appearing to be profiting from the pregnancy — Jamie Lynn and Lynn — I think this is a blaring public relations boo boo! Even if you weren't paid to divulge the scoop, people think you were. The New York Post reported that a publishing source told them that Jamie Lynn was paid $1 million for revealing her news.
All of this makes your audience even less sympathetic. "Get out of show business" — that's what 83% of the Starmagazine.com poll respondents say the Spears family needs to do.
Now of course Jamie Lynn may not really have misguidedly conceived this baby as a career move, though she may have somehow thought that her sister Britney's notoriety was a career plus. After all, Britney seems to think that having a pack of paparazzi on your tail is a better way to promote your new album than the old-fashioned method--touring and making personal appearances.
Instead, the sad truth could be that Jamie Lynn may have been desperately seeking attention by getting pregnant. "She wants a little bit of me" attention, with everything that's going on with Britney like it is," her aunt Chanda McGovern told the New York Post. Another source told the paper that Jamie Lynn is just a child with not a "lick of sense." Boy, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of sense in the clan and those Spears girls sure are "look-at-me" addicts!
The Spears women may also not exactly be telling the whole truth about how "shocked" they were to find out about Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The official interview version is that they were both "shocked," "shocked" when they learned the news. Hmmm!
#1 How could Jamie Lynn be shocked when she must have known she wasn't using a reliable method of birth control or any birth control at all. And #2, Star magazine ran a story in our August 6th issue saying that Jamie Lynn had had a pregnancy scare and that Lynn Spears had been telling friends in Louisiana that Jamie Lynn thought she was pregnant.
Now, at the very least, if I'm Lynn Spears and I read in Star (and she had to have been made aware of our story) that my 16-year-old daughter had had a pregnancy scare, I would definitely have used this as an opportunity to have a heart-to-heart about what my daughter might be doing with her boyfriend of two years. And I might have noticed that my daughter who lived with me was having morning sickness — she revealed that in her interview. I would have been very concerned about the possibility that she was pregnant on every level — how it would affect her personally and how a pregnancy could also be a career killer. After all, no 16-year-old is properly prepared to raise a child and no 16-year-old with a career as a teen heroine on a teen network is likely to keep her day job.
The fact is that two-thirds of teen moms never even finish high school and only 1.5% get a college degree by the time they are 30. Teen pregnancy in general is far more likely to hurt a girl's career than help it, no matter how many cover stories are written about you.
Follow Bonnie Fuller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bonniefuller
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One aspect of communication which has definitely been worsened by the internet is the natural human tendency to pile on.
I am reminded of the dog fight sequences in Jack London's "The Call of the Wild."
Weren't you people having sex when you were 16?
Just tell me Lynn Spears has no more daughters to screw-up in the pipeline.
Star Magazine? The dumb leading the blind...
With Brit bit splashed all over the news like a train wreck she is and her sis looking like the wallflower with the sweet teen smile all cute and pure Jamie Lynn had to do something. Unfortunately I am sure the parent of both have to look at what has happened and think as to why the kids are now both so screwed up in public. So sad that they have it all played out in shining lights. That the mom was going to write about parenting when Britney was being a such a total freak head was sorry enough but for the mom but with the preggers baby having a baby.... no book deal for her unless it's how I handle two immature girls over the age of reason.
Sorry, Bonnie, but I wouldn't choose to live my life based on what the readers of STAR have to say. Besides, any "news item" that isn't completely fabricated in that rag is certainly embellished to the hilt. Since when did throwaway gossip sheets like STAR and ENQUIRER become legitimate sources of information anyway?
As for her show, the sooner Americans learned the difference between fictional characters and the actors that play them, the better. She is a human being with urges and she made a mistake. Why aren't we at least applauding her for taking responsibility for her actions and not killing the fetus? She is not a typical teen mom to be; her earnings from ZOEY will put her in a much more financially secure position than most.
As for Nickelodeon, they've already completed filming the final ZOEY season anyway. They'll simply wait for the publicity to die down and run the episodes at a later date, along with some public service style specials on teen pregnancy.
Jamie Lynn Preg rumors have been floating around all summer.
I think she just so loved the publicity that a little light bulb went off in that dark cave of a head and she went, well, hell yeah, that works!
The apple-scented candle doesn't roll far from the trailer
Jamie Lynn is not shocked. She probably did it deliberately in order to "trap her a man." She knew, like all girls/women know in this day and age, that having unprotected sex results in getting pregnant.
There is no shame these days associated with teens getting pregnant.
See Steven Weber's Profile
Abort the parents.
There's still the issue of rape. I wonder what's going to happen on that front?
she is a poster child why the current strategy for combating hiv-aids (sex-ed and protection) isnt working, and will never work!
I have no dog in this fight, but I would think in this day and age, where middle school children are having sex, that a young(19 year old) man in college would have the brains to know not using a condom may very possibly cause not only a child, but also a drain on college funds, a possible child support claim, a "sex with an underage child" charge. He is just as responsible for this situation.
Too much money, uncontrolled notoriety at a young age and not being taught to accept personal responsibility by parents that do not know how to do it either. Now we will hear from all those who have no personal accountability on how anyone with a brain or ounce of maturity just doesn't get it.
The rumours about a wedding make me wonder about a pre-nuptial contract. Usually, a minor can't make contracts unless it it for a necessity of life. Any contracts they enter can be unilaterally rescinded upon the minor reaching the age of majority. So Jamie could make a contract with the babbydaddy, then if she decides later that it was a bad deal, she could renounce it.
Personally, if she were my daughter I would not agree to a marriage. The relationship probably won't last, and her custodial rights are stronger if the child is born out of wedlock and they don't live together. He can establish paternity if that is what they want to do.
I bet fifty percent of Americans do not know who is the President of China, but they can tell you exactly when Jamie Lynne conceived.
She is a throwback to the 60s mantra:
If it feels good, do it.
Oh, please. If this kid doesn't bring in even more millions for that white trash family, I'll be shocked. They can sell pregnancy photos, perhaps naked teen pregnancy photos, baby photos, and all manner of soap-opera b.s.
The money is what matters to that family; all else is p.r.
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