Oh. My. God. Bristol Palin has posed for a Harper’s Bazaar photo shoot, and these photos… my God. I’m not upset that that Bristol chose to pose in gowns or be made up or anything – she looks pretty, actually. My problem is the schizophrenic message: she’s posing in all of these expensive gowns… with her baby. It’s a “baby as fashion accessory” photo shoot, and it comes with the message to teenage girls that you too can have a baby and still look fabulous in fabulous designer clothes, and that baby will just be, like, the coolest purse EVER.

This goes along with Bristol’s consistently spastic messaging on the issue of teen pregnancy and abstinence. I gave her a pass for most of her bullsh-t, but I’m kind of tired of doing that. She’s charging $30,000 for speeches on abstinence, she’s claiming she works 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, she’s posing on red carpets and flying to New York on a whim, and she’s posing for magazine photo shoots. I don’t really care if she wants to go all out with her “celebrity” – she’s as much of a “reality star” as someone like Heidi Montag. What bothers me is the message – that even though she’s paying lip service to abstinence and how “hard” it is to be a single, unwed teenage mother, her life is so cool and fabulous and designer-clothing-filled. Oh, and there’s even an interview in Harper’s (full piece here):

It’s a Saturday afternoon in Anchorage, and the only sign of spring is the gentle drip of melting snowdrifts. Parked under leafless trees behind Bristol Palin’s three-story gray townhouse is a cluster of giant SUVs and pickup trucks. I didn’t vote for this Obamanation, reads one bumper sticker. Another features a photo of the former Alaskan governor: Don’t blame me, I voted for Sarah Palin.

No flacks, no lawyers, no managers — it’s a world away from the media glare of the 2008 presidential campaign, when the McCain-Palin ticket dropped the bombshell that the then high school senior was five months pregnant. Later, the rosy-cheeked 19-year-old, dressed down in cropped cargo pants and a maroon pullover, says she remembers that moment all too clearly. “It was kind of humiliating,” she sighs as she clears boxes of pizza and bowls of Doritos and Skittles. “Great, I’m 17 years old, I’m 40 pounds overweight with a big belly on me, all my friends are at school watching this on the news. This kind of sucks.”

Bristol never expected to find herself here: waking up at 5:00 a.m. to fix Tripp’s breakfast (usually eggs), get herself ready — “It takes me so much longer with a baby, it’s not even funny” — then head to work from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. as a medical assistant in a dermatologist’s office. “I thought I would be somewhere warm at college with my friends,” she says. “But that was definitely not possible with having Tripp.”

But Bristol is hardly unhappy, despite her hectic schedule and lack of sleep. “I love my baby more than anything,” she says, which is obvious from the cuddles he gets. “He’s like a Gerber baby. He’s the cutest baby in the whole world.”

She’s also fiercely proud of her newly purchased condo. (Before she bought it, she and Tripp were living at home in Wasilla, an hour and a half away.) Though her mother’s earnings have been widely reported at $12 million since she stepped down as governor last July, largely due to her book, Going Rogue, and her TV deals, it’s Bristol who has picked out and paid for everything: the big leather couches, the flat-screen TVs, Tripp’s toddler-size bed (though he sleeps with his mother), and the Subaru wagon in the garage. “I’m on my own,” she says, in between constant texting on her BlackBerry. “I’m really proud of it. I’m a hard worker.”

Her older brother Track’s girlfriend, Britta, currently lives in the third bedroom, and her 15-year-old sister, Willow, often sleeps over. “I was scared to live by myself,” Bristol explains.

Not that Bristol goes out much, besides taking Tripp for walks. “I don’t ever have time for friends or anything like that,” she sighs. “It’s just like, Right, crap, there is a hockey game tonight that I want to go to but I can’t. Or, I do have to go to work today, because I’ve got bills to pay.”

“I just ignore it. He is a stranger to me,” she says, visibly rattled by the mention of Levi Johnston’s name, though she refrains from saying more. “I don’t want to get into it. It’s just dirty laundry.” She is not seeing anyone at the moment: “I’m in no rush. One day I’ll find a nice guy.”

Prompted by an aching back and a missed period, she took a pregnancy test. It came out positive. “I was like, What am I going to do?” she says quietly. They decided to tell her parents when she was six weeks along.

“I remember sitting on the couch with one of my best friends and Levi, and I just couldn’t spit it out. I was like, ‘Mom, Mom.’ I was bawling my eyes out. She was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I was like, ‘I’m pregnant.’ And she was like” — Bristol stops and mimics a gasp — “Oh my God. Holy crap. But once that part was over with and Tripp was here, it was just like, this baby is a blessing.”

Though Bristol was well-informed about sex education, “it’s not like we sat down and were like, ‘All right, here’s the birds and the bees.’ Truly, my parents just assumed that I wasn’t doing anything. And it was a shock for us all.”

Such a shock that “it didn’t hit me that I was going to be a parent until Tripp was like four months old. And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is reality. I haven’t slept in a week and I’m exhausted.'”

She’s not worried that Tripp himself might one day read her words and take them the wrong way. “He knows that I love him,” she says, shaking her head. There’s no doubt that he is a happy baby, making a few cooing complaints only when it nears nap time. He is learning basic sign language to communicate with Trig, including stop, which Trig signs when Tripp tackles him.

“I want to pursue the opportunities I have now. I want to do public speaking and cause campaigning. I want to write a book.” (Before interviews, her mother advises, “Just smile, be positive, be confident.”)

“There’s been so much misreporting and lying about me and my family, it makes me sick,” she says. “It proves a lot of reporters just report lies and rumors, so I’d push for more accountability.” Meanwhile, she and the rest of the world are speculating about Palin 2012. “I don’t know if my mom will run, but she should.”

Unsurprisingly, she’s no Obama fan. “I think he is making more Americans become dependent on government, and he’s acting like government can and should take care of everyone. That is completely contrary to what made America a great nation. We should be expected to take responsibility for ourselves.”

After all, though Bristol is finding her own path, she is still her mother’s daughter: “I just want Tripp to be happy and healthy. But it would be fun if he was an athlete,” she says, before picking him up and giving him a hug. “I know I’ll be a hockey mom.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

Sigh… is there anything to really say? I don’t want to get into the politics of Bristol Palin, because we’ll just get into a huge fight. I will say that it looks like Bristol is slowly but surely becoming her mother’s daughter, you know? Before, I got the feeling that Bristol was maybe a daddy’s girl, that she kind of resented her mom and mother’s expectations of her, but now it seems like Bristol is her mom’s little Mini-Me.

Photos courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.