Local teen will star on MTV reality show

A Colorado Springs resident stars in Thursday night's episode of "16 and Pregnant," a new MTV reality show that seeks to tell "very real, true stories" about teen pregnancy and motherhood.
 
Ebony Rendon, 17, now a Mitchell High School graduate, said that MTV contacted her through The Pregnancy Center, a local Christian organization that assists young mothers who decide to keep their babies.

"I wanted to tell them my story," said Rendon, who was in the first semester of her senior year and in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps when she found she was pregnant. "I think I had a very interesting story...."

One of the most interesting things about her story may be the amount of support she's received from her family, her boyfriend (they're now married and he's about to enter the Air Force) and Mitchell High School, where a guidance counselor helped her finish her schooling at home.

 "I just wanted them to know that you can still go through school because a lot of teens drop out when they get pregnant or they think about abortion or adoption," she said. "But I kept my baby. You have to make plans real fast or your life will get off track in a very big way because a baby is so much work and you need to be prepared."

Lauren Dolgen, vice president of series development at MTV, was also impressed with Ebony's story.

 "Her story was unique in that she's a military brat," she said. "She and her boyfriend were in ROTC. It seems like her high school was very supportive, and that's not the situation we've had with all the girls."

Telling at least some of the positive side of pregnancy and young-motherhood was one of Dolgen's main objectives in producing the show, when she initially learned how many young teens get pregnant.

 "About a year ago I had read an article about pregnant teenagers and it had this statistic that 750,000 teens of the age from 15 to 19 get pregnant each year, which I thought was completely staggering. It inspired me and I got this idea to do this doc(umentary) series about this subject matter. Obviously, it's something that happens to our audience. So we moved on this right away. This was pre-Bristol Palin and right when ‘Juno' came out."

But make no mistake, says Rendon, deciding to keep your baby as a teen isn't like "Juno."

 "A lot of people said I'm a lot like ‘Juno' in a way. I loved the movie to death, but you can't base that on real life, you know. I went through a lot for my little girl."

Dolgen says "Juno" was definitely part of the inspiration for the feel of the show, but wanted viewers to be able to see both sides.

"We absolutely talked about Juno and how that took a different approach on a subject matter that was pretty serious. So that was part of the inspiration, but not the full inspiration. We wanted it to have an attitude that wasn't completely dark and hopeless. It's a very dark subject matter and we wanted it to feel a little bit lighter. ... Stylistically, we wanted it to not feel as heavy as some of the stories were."

With her baby, Jocelyn, now two months old, Rendon says she's happy about her portrayal on MTV and seems realistic about the road ahead. "It's real life. It's the real us. It just shows how hard it is to be a teen parent. It's really hard to be a teen mom. But it's just life I guess."

TO VIEW: 8  p.m. Thursday on MTV