Kudos to Zits

Teenage pregnancy is a tough topic to discuss.  That’s even more true when your medium of discussion is a comic strip.  So I want to take just a brief moment to highlight today’s Zits strip.

Pregnancy-related humor often relies, sadly, on making the pregnant woman the butt of the joke.  I am happy to see that the authors of Zits did not take that pitiful shortcut.  The pregnant student is not portrayed as an oddity or an object of ridicule.  She is not portrayed as a slut.  She is not portrayed as “ruining her life” (implication: she should have had an abortion).  She is portrayed as a regular person doing her classwork. 

As I interpret this, the butt of the joke is the school, for failing to provide her with a decent desk.  Hello, it’s 2012!  Don’t you know that some of your students are going to get pregnant?  (And stay pregnant?)

Well done, Zits.  Well done.