I watched about five minutes of this when I was flipping through the channels the other day. The dialogue in the part I saw was so bad, I swear the two characters just stood there saying "Those are lies. This is the truth. What are lies? What is the truth?" over and over for about five minutes.

Then, the guy said he wanted to come over to the girl's house so she could "witness" to him, because she's such a good person and "obviously having Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour has made you a good person." I think the implication was supposed to be that the guy was just trying to get into the girl's pants, but I've never heard anyone talk like that that wasn't already way into Jesus and constantly talking about Jesus and trying to convert others. That was all I could bear to watch.*

*Disclaimer: I have lots of awesome Christians in my family. Its only some Christians I can't stand, and I doubt there are any of those kind of Christians here anyway, so I hope my disgust doesn't offend anyone.

I started watching the secret life too and I was horrified at how women were portrayed.

Ricky treats women like meat... his excuse was that he was sexually abused as a kid.

Ben seems genuinely in love, but I'm waiting for puberty to fully kick in and he'll want to leave Amy.

Even though Ricky (the guy who got Amy pregnant) goes through a new girl every week Amy still seems to have a weakness for him.

Grace, the good little religious girl, is a model of sexual abstinence, but she tries to defend herself and they tease her mercilessly about it until she feels that she needs to PUNISH HERSELF by quitting cheerleading.

There's also Adrian and her mother who ... both have whore-ish sexual tendencies. Adrian is always trying to get Ricky to spend the night, but ends up giving in to his late night calls for sex while her mother has numerous "friends" that end up spending the night. One of which is Amy's adulterous father.

Amy's little sister, 12, dresses in black with mini skirts and her mid drift hanging out the majority of the time. She's the only one that actually seems to have a good head on her shoulders, but she's portrayed as a little attention craved whore.

Throughout the show the girls play on typical stereotypes, but not a single one seems to be able to express themselves without someone else's help. Everyone comes in pairs! Grace, who has just broken up with her boyfriend, immediately flees to Ricky naively thinking that he's just a good ole boy. There isn't a single example in the show of a model independent woman. The women are gossipy, oblivious, promiscuous, and downright stupid at times. The show makes it appear that women NEED men to be happy. Of course it's nice to have someone...but come on! Can't we have one good female role model, maybe a single mother that isn't sleeping with eight men in one month? It would be lovely to see someone girls can look up to in their time of need...especially in Amy's time of need. It's just disgusting.

Yeah, I have real issues with Adrian, too. Not because she is promiscuous (I mean, I'm not into promiscuity, but I deplore the whole idea of whore/slut labeling just because a woman has sex when she feels like it), but because the things she does are aimed at proving that she's a "bad girl" and are directed at pleasing a man, not herself. I can't remember the exact line that gave it away, but if I think of it, I'll post it.

I think having a show that address the issue of teen sex/pregnancy is a good idea, and I'm quite disappointed that it was approached in this way.

Oh, and just to clarify, please don't assume I was watching this show because I was looking for depth or anything--I admit it was a guilty pleasure, much like Dawson's Creek or the OC.

And I appreciate the disclaimer, wax ghost :)

Lol at single mom sleeping with 8 men a month. Never saw the show but it sounds awful. Just cracked me up cause I am a single mom and I'm thinking its been about 8 months since I had sex with one man! Still the stereotype that single moms are whores is definitely in the mainstream consciousness and that sucks because after working all day, paying bills, cleaning and taking care of the little one I don't have TIME to be a whore. What do these tv writers think single moms do, nothing?

I love to hate this show. I've watched every episode and I've always come out fuming, whether it's the preposterous biblical imagery (in one episode where Adrian is seducing a Christian boy, she takes a big bite out of an apple just before she convinces him to come over later and "do something"), the examples you mentioned above, or the parents in the episodes acting like complete assholes. I have to say at first I loved Adrian though (especially when she would tell people off), but I wish she was having sex for herself and not portrayed as someone who constantly has sex because she doesn't get enough love or attention from her mother. The most frustrating thing about this show is that there is no middle ground whatsoever. Honestly, it comes off to me as a really shitty rip off of Degrassi: TNG. I would say it's the Americanized, Bush-ized version of Degrassi: TNG, complete with gender stereotypes, heteronormativity, and subtle slut/abortion shaming.

The not-so-secret-pro-life-message of the secret life of the American teenager.

Brenda "Cookies" Hampton is the culprit behind this show. What's mind boggling is that over give million viewers tune it to see it.

The episode that really pissed me off is when Amy's best friends older brother tries to convince his younger sister that she shouldn't hang around "girls" like Amy because she's pregnant. WTF?!?

Just for the record, there is not one character on this show that I would not joyfully slap across the face.

Also, why does salsa music play every time Adrian walks through the hallway?

Lilly, do you post at TWoP? That's where I first heard about Brenda "Cookies" Hampton!

I wrote an angry e-mail to ABCFamily about the episode where Grace is attacked. Basically it said "Rape is not funny." They didn't even have a police investigation going to try to find the attackers! I have to move on, getting angry this close to bedtime isn't good. Other things wrong with this show include Amy and Ashley's creepy father, who was mad at Ashley for dressing provocatively . . . then equally mad when she dresses conservatively. In last week's episode, Amy's 15-year-old boyfriend (not the father of the fetus) proposes to her in a scene that is not a dream sequence. He regularly calls her "my woman," he told her he loved her after dating for all of two minutes, and he initially asked her out because "I'm a 15-year-old virgin and I've got to start somewhere." And he's supposed to be the sweet one?

Lilly, do you post at TWoP? That's where I first heard about Brenda "Cookies" Hampton!

I wrote an angry e-mail to ABCFamily about the episode where Grace is attacked. Basically it said "Rape is not funny." They didn't even have a police investigation going to try to find the attackers! I have to move on, getting angry this close to bedtime isn't good. Other things wrong with this show include Amy and Ashley's creepy father, who was mad at Ashley for dressing provocatively . . . then equally mad when she dresses conservatively. In last week's episode, Amy's 15-year-old boyfriend (not the father of the fetus) proposes to her in a scene that is not a dream sequence. He regularly calls her "my woman," he told her he loved her after dating for all of two minutes, and he initially asked her out because "I'm a 15-year-old virgin and I've got to start somewhere." And he's supposed to be the sweet one?

"Lilly, do you post at TWoP? That's where I first heard about Brenda "Cookies" Hampton!"

Ha ha, no. I do go on twop to read the re-caps of seventh heaven which is also written by Brenda Hampton. One of the writers of the recaps called Brenda "Cookies".

"In last week's episode, Amy's 15-year-old boyfriend (not the father of the fetus) proposes to her in a scene that is not a dream sequence. He regularly calls her "my woman"

Were you pissed of when Amy's dad and Ben were bonding over their hate of democrats and Al Gore?

Dammit, I've really been wanting to blog about this but I'm one of the people who's having ridiculous amounts of trouble posting to the community site. I'm glad somebody brought it up, though, and I'm pasting in my analysis (which is out of date, since it was only about the first two episodes) below.

Has anyone seen ABC Family's new show "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"? I have, and I'm nearly foaming at the mouth. Proceed with caution if you think this show, as it was advertised, is actually a new way of looking at teen sexuality.
I was all excited when I heard about it for the first time. So naive! The radio commercial I heard made such pretty promises. This show was going to talk about teen sexuality in a frank and "real" way, so much so that there has to be a "viewer discretion" advisement flashed before each 8pm showing. Wow! Maybe we're going to see something realistic, teenagers struggling to make decisions by weighing responsibility and desire, teenagers portrayed as complex human beings with depth!
Ha! No.
They shouldn't have even bothered to give the cast of characters their own names. Here, I'll run them down for you: the jock, the Bible-thumper, the band geek, the good girl, the slut, and the pre-frat boy. (And, although this is the least of my frustrations with the show, they all suffer from Dawson's Creek dialogue disease. You know, witty and multisyllabic ad nauseum.)
*spoilers below, if you actually care*
In the first episode, we discover that the good girl is pregnant, courtesy of the pre-frat boy and an awkward encounter at summer camp. She makes sure to tell us, via a conversation with her best friends (the fat one and the black one, in case you were wondering) that sex wasn't fun or romantic like you see on TV. It seems like the fact that she didn't enjoy it was put there purposely to make us more sympathetic to her pregnancy situation. But she's a good girl! She didn't ask for it! The mean frat boy took advantage of her!
So are any of the girls on the show actually interested in sex? Yes! There are two. One is a statistics-obsessed Asian geek girl, who makes a point of telling us in the first episode that she doesn't actually want to HAVE sex, she just has a hobby of memorizing statistics about sex. (That's all Asians do, right? Memorize statistics. It's fun!) She's hardly even a character- more of a vehicle for random, decontextualized facts that I think are supposed to give the show an air of legitimacy and impartiality. The attempt fails, miserably. All it does is take sexual agency away from another teen girl.
The one girl who's actually having sex? The slut, who by the way is Latina, a fact that's played to the hilt in every scene she graces. Camera shots zoom in on her full, pouty lips as she seduces every guy in sight. After sex (which is more than implied but never shown beyond the kissing stage), the camera pulls back and the background music gets sadder, as we see her sitting alone while the boy makes an excuse and leaves. The second episode made DAMN sure we knew that she has sex and pretends to enjoy it, but really it's to make up for her low self-esteem and what she really wants is to be liked and loved and oh my god I'm going to vomit.
Not one single girl or woman in this show is interested in sexual exploration on her own terms. Oh, and guess which girl seems to have the most self-esteem and personal agency of the entire cast? Ten bucks for anyone who said "The Bible thumper whose Dad gives her a purity ring in the first episode." Of course, when I say she has agency, I mean she seems able to stand up for herself when discussing sexuality with her boyfriend. Conversations with her Dad are a whole different story- they casually chat over dinner rolls about how she's saving herself and all seem to be in agreement over it (creepy, inappropriately timed agreement) but when she has a fight with her boyfriend (the jock, did you guess it?) Dad mows down her opinions and storms off. But he pops his head back in the room to remind her that he loves her, so it's all ok.
Where are the young women with sexual agency? Where, for that matter, are the lesbians? Probably part of some exciting plot twist down the line, deliberately marginalized and sensationalized outside of the core cast of characters. I have plenty more issues with this show, but the way they treat young women's sexuality really pisses me off the most.

Even if your comment was dated from only the firs few episodes I wholeheartedly agree sociologicalme. I started watching the show thinking that they were going to tackle real teen issues. Somehow I thought that Amy would be strong-willed or at least somewhat capable of making decisions for herself, but I was dumbfounded by how wrong I actually was. I was also pissed by the fact that the only woman who seems to be able to stand up for herself is the "bible thumper". So what? Only girls who idolize God can make their own decisions? Well..truthfully she can't even do that because her Daddy makes her mind up for her. I'm all for listening to your parents and respecting them, but what parent, in their right mind, would want to punish their daughter for protecting herself against attempted rape?! Come on, give me a break! If her parents cared so deeply about her being out late one of them would have gone to pick her up, regardless of the circumstances. I'm also wondering where the lesbians are. Homosexuals make up a great deal of teenagers, and if it's the "Secret" life why don't we see that struggle? All we see are heterosexual couples, but if the show wants some social stigma all they've got to do is throw in a few gay couples. Also, where's the feminist? There has to be someone in that school who can stand up to the societal restraints of male dominance. We need someone who's going to take the reigns and show the world (or at least the tv show audience) that women can make decisions for themselves without having to worry about God's vengeful wrath or what other people will think... I could go on forever with this show...it makes me so furious. The saddest thing, I think is that my fiance (oblivious to the core) gets pissed at the way women are portrayed. He said that the way women are shown there disgusts him, but he's used to being around headstrong women. I think that we really need some shows for teens about pregnancy and all the issues...but if you're going to make a modern show about teenagers then we need some modern views in there, not the middle-age motto that women can't do anything without a man.