#so maybe Sarah Marshall would say like biggest media storm of the 90s outside of OJ and Princess Diana

[jilyandbambi]

#omg now i’m imagining the ‘you’re wrong about’ ep about the yellowjackets crash#i need to hear sarah marshall defending shauna shipman#‘today i’m joined by blair braverman to talk about probably the third largest media storm of the 90s after oj and monika lewinsky’#‘shauna shipman had the audacity to have sex as a teen girl and then not die about it so tabloids HAD to destroy her life’#yj @jewberry-scone

yeah, if 6 teenage girls and 1 teenage boy had emerged from the Canadian wilderness after 19 months with a 1 year old baby in tow, there would've been no escaping the media hellstorm. They would've been on 20/20 within 3 months. One group interview and a few candids of Shauna holding the baby would've been the price they'd all have had to pay in order to be left tf alone because while in 2023 society pretends to care about trauma, PTSD, and teens' mental health, this was the 90s--when Nicole Brown Simpson was blamed for her own murder, Lorena Bobbit was a late-night punchline, R. Kelly marrying 15 y/o Aalyiah was an open secret, grown men were calling into radio stations to speculate on 16 y/o Britney Spears' virginity, and Monica Lewinsky was doxxed and getting death threats for sucking off Bill Clinton.

What I'm saying is:

Seven teens (the girls + Travis) surviving against the odds for 19 months is the epilogue to a tragedy with enough unanswered questions to keep true crime nerds speculating & reporters digging.

But them being found with an infant? Had it come out that one of the girls was pregnant and gave birth during the ordeal? That's mainstream tabloid fodder. The kind that not even "papers of repute" would turn their noses up at. Barbara Walters, Lesley Stahl, and Mike Wallace would be beating each other and TMZ down to get the first interview, the first photo of the baby. NBC would've backed a U-Haul full of money onto the Shipman's, the Martinez', and the Sadecki's front yard (because speculation as to who the actual father really was would be kept going until it came directly from the source). Did she know she was pregnant when she got on the plane? Who else knew? What was it like giving birth? Did any of the other girls get pregnant? How many of the girls did Travis do it with? Weren't any of them afraid of the same thing happening to them? Did doing it help them cope?

And it wouldn't just be the media. Doctors, child development specialists, psychologists, sociologists, and academics would be calling non-stop to get Shauna and the baby to participate in clinical trials and studies.

The only way they'd have been left alone is if they'd done a televised interview and ended it by pleading to be allowed to go on with their lives in peace