My Journey in New Media Journalism...

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Teen Girl Faked Pregnancy for School Project...


"17 year old Teen girl named Gabi Rodriguez from Toppenish High School, Wash. fakes pregnancy for six months."

In order to graduate seniors have to complete a social experiment, and Gabi wanted to do something different!.  She mentioned that she thought about this project during her sophomore year during her Biology class. Her project consisted on stereotyping and people reactions toward pregnant teens.


The only people who knew about this were the school principal, her parents and her boyfriendHer boyfriend admitted he was afraid Gabi's project might have caused some problems with her brothersGabi's due date was going to be July 27th, two months after graduation.  


The project came to an end this past Wednesday, April 20th.  When Gabi Rodriguez took her fake belly out in front of the entire school at an assembly.  She was a little anxious on how the crowd was going to react.  After all, she did lie to most of her classmates for such a long time.  

Before she revealed the truth though, Gabi started giving a presentation on stereotyping, rumors and statistics.  Gabi also mentioned that many things were said about her and most of them came back to her.  Therefore, she asked a couple of teachers and students to read some of the things people said during her experiment.

Her best friend, Saida Cortes who knew about Gabi’s project read one of the cards that said.  "Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby, or she was always this annoying, and I never realized it."

Gabi’s project not only got the attention of her High School.  She even got "Good Morning America" calling.

Below are some tweets that were passed through social networks to spread the news...
 
@nydailynews Psych! After surviving 6 months of high school with baby bump, teen delivered big news: She was never really pregnant.


@daylelynne  Gaby Rodriguez fooled her whole school ~ "Breaking Stereotypes: Teen Girl Fakes Pregnancy".

@ME_Leclerc1776 Teen girl fakes pregnancy to test reactions...interesting.

@jezebel, teen fakes pregnancy for school project to expose stereotypes.

"I'm fighting against those stereotypes and rumors because the reality is I'm not pregnant." Gabi added.          

Hispanics teens have a greater percentage to become pregnant among other ethnic minority groups in the country.  According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.  Approximately 51percent of Latina teens will become pregnant before age 20, compared with about 30 percent of teens overall.

Gabi Rodriguez wants to attend Columbia Basin College in the fall and plans to study social work or sociology. Evidently, she's an extremely devoted student, as most teens wouldn't dream of exposing themselves to months of criticism for a social experiment.




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