Long before I first watched MTV’s "Teen Mom," or "Riding in Cars with Boys" with Drew Barrymore, or "Fifteen and Pregnant" with Kirsten Dunst, I’d already seen my fair share of cautionary tales about life as a young mother. Afterschool shows floated the consequences of teen parenting, while old school specials warned about a peak in high school pregnancies: It’s 10 p.m. — do you know where your children are? There were teen pregnancy ads plastered everywhere, from magazines to posters hanging on the walls of high schools across the country. I got the message loud and clear: no babies, at least not anytime soon.
None of these warnings, however, shook me to the core quite like "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." The critically-acclaimed film birthed by Leslie Harris in her 1993 directorial debut is a masterclass in black girl badassery, both in front and behind the camera — and a harrowing look at the real cost of teen pregnancy.
It was time to hear a feminine stance on what was going on in America’s marginalized communities.
I was a few months shy of my fifth birthday when "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." hit theaters. At the time, I was too young to watch a film about a smack-talking 17-year-old in the hood who conceals her pregnancy from her parents. Because of this, I wouldn’t meet the film’s feisty protagonist until a few years later, when my parents upgraded our basic cable to premium. I was around 9 years old when the movie aired on HBO, a channel that my parents forbid me to watch — which only made my viewing of the R-rated classic more exciting (a demonstration of my own rebellion).
The moment I laid eyes on Chantel Mitchell (Ariyan A. Johnson), I was enamored of her. I recognized her as Aisha from "The Steve Harvey Show," but in this starring role, she played the polar opposite of the black girl next door from a WB comedy. Chantel’s culturally aware first-person POV, accompanied by a quick-witted, IDGAF attitude, allowed audiences to see the world through the raw yet intimate perspective of one of the most silenced voices of any era: a black girl. We’d met the "Boyz in the Hood" just two years prior, and now it was time to hear a feminine stance on what was going on in America’s marginalized communities. Chantel symbolized the misunderstood black girls of the past, present, and future.
Chantel comes from a tense yet loving home, with self-inflicted pressure applied as the eldest child to contribute to the household. Seeing her parents struggle to make ends meet fuels her desire get into college early and start her pursuit of becoming a doctor. Chantel is hell-bent on escaping a cycle of poverty in the projects, and quickly makes it clear that she cannot be contained; not by her teachers, her parents, boys, or the world. She knows exactly what she wants, when she wants it, and how she plans to get it — not once entertaining the idea of anything getting in her way.
And then she gets pregnant.
Though the film is fiction, Chantel’s world was plagued by the real issues of the early 1990s, which were a cause for concern, especially for black communities. From 1993-1995, the CDC reported 257,262 people living in the U.S. with AIDS. That was up 7 percent from the previous period, with nearly 98,000 of the cases being among African Americans. And between 1991-1994, birth rates were higher for black teens than any other group.
Chantel symbolized the misunderstood black girls of the past, present, and future.
Chantel and her friends are ignorant about safe sex. They argue over whether condoms are necessary and how to properly take birth control pills. Through their black girl kinship, Harris sends a strong message about the striking number of miseducated sexually active young people. And despite the fact that Chantel’s dad warns her about boys from the projects, she never gets "the talk" from her parents.
So when Chantel meets Tyrone, aka Ty, a dapper young brother with a handsome face and a fancy Jeep, she throws caution to the wind — and somewhere between an invisible condom and a missed period, she gets pregnant. Suddenly, the over-confident Chantel we’re used to seeing is lost and confused for the first time in her life. Yet she doesn’t ask for help, because she doesn’t know how to: Black girls are often told it’s better to put up a facade and pretend to be OK rather than display vulnerability, risking our own well-being for the sake of the comfort of others in the world around us.
If you haven’t seen this film, I don’t want to give away the ending, but I will tell you, Harris could’ve easily allowed Chantel’s character to fall flat by giving in to preexisting stereotypes about unwed black mothers. She leaves no room to be pigeonholed. While Chantel makes several missteps in the film’s final act, she proves that babies aren’t a sign of doom and young mothers have the right to pursue their goals. Her "all is lost" moment isn’t really a loss. Chantel’s self-awareness doesn’t fade with a baby; if anything, it’s heightened. She owns her body and finally acknowledges the errors of her ways. Her focus is readjusted and her path realigned.
Years after watching the movie, I’d play the scenes in my head of Chantel’s premature labor and the stress of contemplating an abortion. Her experience wasn’t out of the ordinary — and it still isn’t. Black children are often forced to grow up prematurely, with girls quickly labeled as "fast" and frequently hypersexualized by older men.
Fortunately, teen births have declined in recent years, but Generation Z is consumed by a number of issues, including gender identity, social media, suicide, and school shootings, just to name a few. So what would "Just Another Girl in the I.R.T." look like in 2018? It’d look like Nia Wilson. It’d look like Little Miss Flint and Marsai Martin. It looks like every black and brown girl with a story to tell. Our girls can slay fantasy and reality when given opportunities to occupy rooms where they are often left out of the conversation.
Hollywood has its fair share of "Sixteen Candles," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and "Lady Bird" narratives, with white girls front and center. I watched them all growing up; I even laughed and cried at them — inspired by the fate of the protagonist but also feeling extremely invisible, because these stories were not mine. These girls did not reflect my life or the people around me.
Black creators have proven... the mass appeal of stories with black women and girls at the center.
But "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." did. And this story of a gutsy black girl living in Brooklyn would soon open the door for other films of its kind and caliber; "Crooklyn" (1994, Zelda Harris), "Our Song" (2000, Kerry Washington), "Akeelah and the Bee" (2006, Keke Palmer), "Pariah" (2011, Adepero Oduye) and the highly anticipated "The Hate U Give" starring Amandla Stenberg, based on the New York Times's Young Adult bestseller of the same name.
Black creators have proven time and time again the mass appeal of stories with black women and girls at the center. Yet we’ve always had to fight harder to get them made: Harris completed this film with minimal resources, an issue that’s all too familiar even for black filmmakers today. With a self-funded $130,000 budget, she ran out of money in post-production — but Harris told The New York Times in an interview published earlier this year that famed author Terry McMillan and filmmaker Michael Moore pitched in to cover additional costs. Harris went on to win the special jury prize at Sundance.
"Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." is one of the first original films proving that black girls are not monoliths. We are entitled to be dreamers, even when the world refuses to listen. There’s a deeper message in "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.," aside from its cautionary teen mom in the hood tale. It’s a story about controlling your narrative told through the lens of a gum-popping, slick-tongued, A-student who just so happens to be black. Twenty-five years later, we need these stories more than ever, and I’m thankful Harris paved the way for them.
Tyler Young is a former news producer turned comedy writer. You can follow her blog, GirlTyler.com and keep up with her moves on Twitter, @sheistyler.
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