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I’m not sure exactly when or how it happened, but at some point in my childhood I began to think I was a white guy trapped in the body of a black girl. And not just any white guy, either—a guitar player in a heavy-metal band.

gina gold is a writer and filmmaker who spent five years in San Francisco’s sex industry, starting out as a phone sex operator, then becoming an exotic dancer at the Lusty Lady, the Market Street Cinema, and the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater. Her first film, Do You Want Me to Stay?, grew out of an autobiographical one-woman show that she wrote, directed, and performed at the Luna Sea theater last spring. She is currently working on The Island of Misfit Toys, a memoir.

ah, movie magic. hollywood always manages to make difficult situations turn out well after two hours—and nowhere is this more apparent than with cinematic treatments of unplanned pregnancy.


Unexpected conceptions occur onscreen with surprising frequency, but filmmakers routinely play it safe, avoiding substantial discussions of a pregnancy’s pros and cons. They keep abortion out of plots and even out of dialogue, ensuring that movies end with a heartwarming birth. Female characters rarely feel any ambivalence about carrying unplanned pregnancies to term—and why should they, when life always works out so perfectly? An unhappy and unwilling dad-to-be will convert to a pro-baby stance in time for a happily-ever-after ending. If mom isn’t too crazy about dad and would prefer to parent by herself, she’ll soon find that single motherhood is a cinch. Although childrearing seems expensive in the real world, money isn’t much of an obstacle for film parents (and made even less of one by the fact that most movies feature middle-class women with plenty of resources).