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This is a great article!

She didn't even touch Dirty Dancing or Better off Dead. Let me know if you can think of others.

Here's the article:

TEEN MOVIES: RISKY BUSINESS

Or movies I wouldn't want my teens to watch ...

By Martha Brockenbrough
MSN Cinemama

Becoming a part-time high-school teacher isn't the easiest way to find good baby sitters, but it's better than, say, hanging out at the mall and hitting on everyone younger than 20 who's not riding a skateboard.

There's another fringe benefit: By the time my own girls are teenagers, I will have had 10 years' experience understanding kids that age. Now that the embarrassing "tight" pants incident is behind me -- the one where I learned that kids today do not mean the same thing that we do when they say tight -- I'm even working on my ability to say "puberty" out loud.

Puberty, puberty. OK, still not ready.

One thing I already know, however, is to not give my students or my offspring unfettered access to teen movies made in the '80s.

I'm not saying all these movies are bad. Some, of course, rank right up there with my favorites of all time: "The Princess Bride," "Say Anything ..." and "The Sure Thing," to name a few.

It's just that some of these movies -- even ones I enjoyed at the time -- are appalling when it comes to the messages they inadvertently send teenagers.

Take "Grease," for example. Yes, this came out in 1978, but it wasn't until the 1980s when impressionable teens like me popped the video for this inside a VHS player the size of an ottoman.

Back then, "Grease" seemed like a fine love story. Never mind that the so-called "teenage" actors were closer to membership in AARP than the debate club. It had a happy ending! Sandy and Danny got together! Rizzo wasn't pregnant after all!

What my young mind failed to register was that the movie glamorizes smoking and drinking, mocks virginity and requires the girl to do all the changing to get the guy she wanted.

Yes, John Travolta's character did put on a letterman's jacket, but that came off faster than a greased prom dress. Sandy 's perm, on the other hand, would have taken years to grow out -- if the split ends didn't require a total shave-down. (Here, I speak from painful experience.)

"Grease" could have been a contender. Sandy and Danny fell in love during the summer, while free of all that high-school pressure to join cliques with firmer borders than East Germany before David Hasselhoff worked his magic on the Berlin wall.

Danny and Sandy could have made a case for love that transcends social strata and respects differences. But no ... they didn't "shape up," as the song said. In the end, Sandy was reduced to spandex pants and stilettos. It could never last. (Bunions, you know.)

For girls, anyway, a much more inspiring movie in the cross-clique romance category is "Say Anything..." There, at least, the female lead gets to be a genius and go to college in England , while her boyfriend follows along, holding her hand when she needs it.

Another movie that needs a loyalty advisory along with its PG-13 rating is "Pretty in Pink." Molly Ringwald plays Andie, who makes her own clothes and dresses like Annie Hall after a rough fight with a doily collection.

I favored this look myself and routinely destroy all photographic evidence of it. Now that I'm old and sensible enough to have stepped away from the sewing machine, I notice things about "Pretty in Pink" that are not so pretty, after all.

Let's take how Andie treats Duckie, her best friend of eight years. Whereas it's true that Duckie wears an inexcusably tiny hat, and whereas he tends to set off one's gaydar, he thinks he's in love with her.

All it takes for Andie to shove him aside is the mild flirtations of a rich boy who has no taste in music. Granted, he's an intelligent flirt: A full decade before instant messaging technology hit the mainstream, he sent her photos, which meant he was destined to become a billionaire in the mid-'90s. He probably wouldn't have been a bad choice, all things considered.

But for Andie to toss aside her best friend for this "Blane" character, and for her to declare her love for him after just the slightest bit of tonsil-hockey, though, is ridiculous. This isn't love, and teens don't need to be tricked into thinking otherwise.

True love is what Duckie did for her at the prom. He showed up to escort Andie after her rich boy backed out. And what did Andie do? She ditched Duckie once again after Blane apologized, making "you had me at hello" sound like the Spanish Inquisition.

In defense of John Hughes, the movie's writer, I read that he always wanted Duckie and Andie to get together, which is why he came out with "Some Kind of Wonderful." In that one, the outsiders do end up a pair.

Still, I don't know what he was thinking with "Sixteen Candles," another Ringwald showcase. Most of the movie is quite entertaining, and it's great to see the forgotten 16-year-old get the boy of her dreams.

But was it really necessary for the dweeb, played by Anthony Michael Hall, to have backseat sex with the hot senior girl when she was passed-out drunk? And did she really have to say that she enjoyed it? If that isn't sugar-coated date rape, then I must have misunderstood all my "no means no" training.

Apparently, the idea that Ringwald would be back in a sequel called "37 Candles" was just a rumor. It's too bad. It would be an opportunity for her to give her on-screen daughter some advice on this score. Or better yet, maybe she could tell her daughter to skip the wild parties and get a job, perhaps even baby-sitting small children. I know of someone who's hiring.

Thoughts on teen movies for your teens? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

Martha Brockenbrough is author of "It Could Happen to You: Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond." She's also founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. And she writes an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.