How brave and smart is this girl?

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

Astoundingly. I wish I had had the nerve to do something like that in my teens.

Dittany I know you'd take the same approach to a man doing this, but I'm not sure other people would...

TBH I think that the article doesn't give us enough info about how and why the experiment was conducted.

I would like to know how her fellow students responded to her afterwards. No-one likes to be cast as a bit player in someone else's life do they. And I do share the reservations others have, that she can cast off her pregnancy and reveal herself to be a "good girl" all along while other girls who are genuinely living it can't but it is true that people won't listne to other people who are genuinely living it, they only start listening when someone they identfy with, like a sleb or journalist or in this case this girl, talks about whatever issue it is that is being dealt with.

What I want to know (apart from what impact this is going to have on all her relationships) is if she's going to use that voice she's commandeered, in the interests of the girls who are going through what she pretended to go through who don't have a voice.

I'm quite astounded at the level of vitriol being directed towards this girl.

I have seen programs on the television where people have pretended to be things they are not in order to find out what's it's like "on the sharp end" - from pretending to be homeless, to pretending to be disabled, to pretending to have a facial disfigurement etc etc. People are at it all the time and it's always reported in a "how laudable" fashion.

If I'm completely honest I really can't see why so many of you are upset about this. It was an interesting experiment, nothing more, nothing less. It was a pretty "big" idea for someone that age to have and took a lot of effort, so I'm impressed on that score.

Apols for the things about her being white - I picked that up from SGBs post. Insert high achieving straight A student or whatever you like - the sad fact is that because she's not actually pregnant she is free of the stigma and assumptions attached to young women who get pregnant (not least that they must be stupid) and so people will listen to what she reports more than if she were actually pregnant. It's depressing but there you have it.

These ideas being thrown around that she is narcissistic, attention seeking, on what grounds are these accusations made? So what she did wasn't to your taste, it doesn't mean she's unstable or insane. Aren't they accusations often thrown at women who do things that others don't approve of? Without any evidence that that is the case, it seems strange to assert that she suffers from these conditions, apart from simply to back up that people just don't approve.

I agree with SGB about the prom dress.

I think it's partly because a lot of the people taken in by her would themselves have been children/ under 18's isn't it SQ? And also, they aren't just random people, they're personal friends of hers. That's one of the reasons why people are slightly disturbed by it I think.

But yes I agree tha to call a 17 year old narcissistic because she conducted a controversial experiment, is OTT. And I do think that a boy who had conducted a similar experiment, like pretending to be a drug user or something, wouldn't get quite the same outraged betrayal response.

I guess. I just can'y bring myself to get really worked up about it one way or another, and while I understand the objections they're just not making me feel that what she did was as outrageous as the majority seem to think. A first on this topic

I think the difference between pretending to be a drug user or pretending to someone is pregnant is that by that stage in the pregnancy most family members/friends would want the baby and it would be a shock to find out she isnt. It would be sort of like the baby 'died'.

When I was at school a fewof my friends were pregnant and by that stage in their pregnancies they had been bought cots, buggies, clothes etc from friends, relatives and the dads family. I think I would be very upset if my son got someone pregnant and then I found out that far along it wasnt real.

I don't think I made any mention of the girl's ethnic background.
It does seem to me that a lot of the squawking on this thread is about how women have to consider the impact of their actions on everyone else's feelings (ie you are a woman, put yourself and your wishes last, always) in a way men do not - please bear in mind FFS that many if not all experiments and research on social issues and human behaviour depend on the people being tested not knowing what the test is about.

I don't think this experiment was ethical and I am worried it may have had some long-term effect on this student's psychological or emotional state she is not yet aware of, and it would have been unsettling for the teachers as well. I would not have signed it off as Principal.

Yes, yes that's exactly what I'm getting at SGB.

You've put it more succintly.

I certainly would react he same way to a man deceiving his own ad his girlfriends family in this way. I find that suggestion bizarre.
I think if somebody lied to people who loved them about becoming disabled, disfigured or made homeless it would be equally wrong. I think the programmes you are talking about put people in a new location with people who don't know them, not their own family!
I wouldn't describe her as narcissistic or even particularly attention seeking, just very naive to the feeling of others and the bond that others can feel to a baby in utero.
I think any fight back against discrimination is laudable however the means don't justify the end in this case. IMO.

I also found this study dodgy, where a university professor pretended to be a student at her own institution for a year.

www.popmatters.com/pm/review/my-freshman-year-by-rebekah-nathan/

I do think there's an issue about what effect it will have on her thoguh. I do wonder how it will affect her relationships with her peers and I wonder what support she'll get to deal with the fall out.

Bollocks - SGB I meant to put that SGM mentioned the white middle class thing not you, but must have erased it. Can't understand how I got your initials mixed up though

Oops cross posted with BoffinMum

And as for the suggestion that because she is a woman she should put herself last, no, I hope to bring my son up to see other people as human beings with feelings, to be respectful of them and not to deceive others.

I think it is the same issue where someone pretends to be something they're not - eg a wheelchair user - goes out and mixes in the community, forms friendships etc etc and then goes "TaDa!!!!!!" I'm actually perfectly mobile, springs out of the wheelchair and waltzes off,back to a privileged non-disabled lifestyle leaving their new friends aghast and a friend down, with possible feelings of betrayal and resentment. I don't see at all why this experiment is so much "worse" than other things of this type that are done.

In the thing it says that she got a standing ovation when she did her talk in assembly. So she must have said some pretty powerful things. Otherwise she would have got an aghast silence, interspersed with faces, and some anger.

LOL SQ have just thought of Little Britain

Yes I think the report really hasn't given us enough info to go on. What did she say? Why was everyone enthused? What's going to happen now?

I don't think if somebody lied to people who loved them about becoming disabled, disfigured or made homeless it would be equally wrong. This is worse because people were expecting to welcome a new person into the world at the end of the pregnancy.If a relative had a still birth, you would naturally be upset and mourn the loss.

" So was 19-year-old Angel Jalomo, a 2010 Davis High School graduate and Gaby's niece: "I didn't know what to say. I just started crying"

All for a social experiment.

And she can't have been the first bright teenager to have got pregnant at her school. Surely she could have found someone to have a talk to about it.An actual pregnant teenager will have faced so much more than her, as well. She's only touched on the surface of what it is to be pregnant, IMO.

I'm wondering what other stunts teenagers are going to think up to get themselves a college place.

Do you think that people don't mourn the loss of friends?

There was an experiment my dad told me about, where some medical students pretended to have severe psychiatric problems to gain access to psychiatric hospitals as residents and find out what they were really like, how the patients were treated. It sounds like a film storyline but my dad is a doctor and I don't have any reason to think that he made it up!

Anyway it's reasonable to assume that they might have formed relationships with the people they met in there, who would have been terribly upset when they left. Assuming that they would have their friend there with them for quite some time.

People do these things, I don't see why this girl is coming in for such a terribly hard time. I genuinely don't understand.

BTW the interesting thing about the psychiatric experiment (and the reason that my dad told me) was that some of the students had real problems getting out. Because of course when they said "TaDaaaa! I'm actually completely sane and a medical student please let me out", the answer was "Don't be silly you're delusional, take these pills and go and have a nice sit down..."

I think it was thoughtless at best..
Cruel at worst.

Her Mother was 'in' on the secret but the BF's was not.

What if the paternal GPs had spent money they could ill afford on the couple and the Grandchild.

They may have been happy about it.

Why did the so called experiment exclude her own Mother's reactions?

SardineQueen wrote - "There was an experiment my dad told me about, where some medical students pretended to have severe psychiatric problems to gain access to psychiatric hospitals as residents and find out what they were really like, how the patients were treated."

I think that was probably the Rosenhan experiment.