I was watching Pen15 with my husband on the couch, our cat curled up between us. A scene came on where Maya has started her period and pulls out a tampon for the first time. It’s about the size of a rolled-up bath towel. I laughed out loud so hard that my cat lept off the couch. Steven, silent, turned and gave me a surprised look. He didn’t get it. Maya inspects the torpedo of a tampon, turning it this way and that, and I remembered doing the same, wondering how the f*ck that big thing was supposed to fit up inside me.
Of course, neither my tampon, nor Maya’s, was really that size. But to a girl just getting her period, it feels that way. I had to explain this at length to Steven, who seemed to get it but still didn’t find the joke quite as funny. Of course not. Childhood shows always focus on boy or gender-neutral problems. There has never been a show that left him out of the joke.
There were several more moments like this during the show that amplified the difference of our experiences. He didn’t get why Maya was devastated when Sam says she has a smelly fish vagina. While Sam thinks he is just talking trash during their wrestling match, Maya is hurt to the quick. She gives up and lays on the floor to forfeit, then runs out of the gym. “But he couldn’t know what her vagina smells like,” Steven said. “Why is she so upset?” It felt obvious to me. But that’s because I lived that shame, that constant worry about what everyone thought of me, the pressure to be “normal” and not anything but a perfect, attractive, graceful girl. And our vaginas? That’s nearly the most personal and private thing about us, the worst thing to be made fun of.
Steven loved watching this show. It’s the story of two best friends growing up in the 90s, navigating the awkward changes of girlhood with particular honesty. I didn’t enjoy it as much as him, even though it was funny and deeply moving. For me, it was uncomfortable. Maya Erksine and Anna Konkle opened a window to girls’ private fears and silent struggles we tried so hard to keep to ourselves. It was still fresh to me. Stinging. Because these things hurt at the time, and we tucked that hurt into ourselves, sure we were the only ones, afraid and ashamed to share them, and we’ve held onto them. Many of us have examined and assessed our own hurts, but never had we seen something on screen that showed them to the world. Never has anyone so intimately and accurately revealed them.
We’ve seen more TV and movies like this in recent years, more honesty about girlhood. The movie Eighth Grade directed by Bo Burnham was one of these, peeling back layers of girls’ vulnerability and constant anxiety about being normal and accepted.
More recently, Judy Blume’s classic novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, was brought to the big screen, delving into the secret anxiety of getting your period, growing boobs, and the way girls’ struggles often pit them against each other. Margaret moves to New Jersey from New York at the absolute WORST time to move: As a preteen girl. I know. I moved at age 12 too. It was hell. But Margaret navigates it fairly well, despite her inner turmoil of needing to fit in, ditching her socks and getting blisters on her feet to please her new friends.
There are also some lovely moments between Margaret and her mother, asking awkward questions, causing them both to become uncomfortable, sometimes at odds with one another because of these difficult transitions. One of the under-explored themes in movies is the extremes of love and conflict between girls and their mothers. Both Margaret and Pen15 touch on this. While mothers are typically the source of comfort and reassurance, they are also the symbol of a girl’s childhood. But girls are socially shamed into being quiet about their changes, even if their mom is willing to talk about it. As girls, we react in anger or frustration to the subject, even if we hear exactly what we want to. It’s not all about the relationship between the mom and daughter, but also the relationship the daughter has with herself, which has been molded viciously by the rest of the world. We don’t want to talk about our bodies because by growing the way they should, they defy societal expectations. Girls are lanky, awkward, bleed every month, have hair in places we shouldn’t, have teeth not perfectly aligned, hair that is not smooth or shiny enough.
But shows like these I’ve mentioned make a small foothold for the girls now and in the future. Seeing characters talking about periods and boobs and fitting in can be a step toward both parents and girls talking about it themselves, and not feeling the need to shut down, hide ourselves, make the most effort to be perfect. Our struggles as preteen girls are not anomalies. They’re not strange to one another. We share these universal girlhood experiences despite never knowing how much other girls feel the same way. Seeing them on the big (or small) screen gives us the power to talk openly, and honestly about them.
Art like this is a tool to explore our truths and forgive the shame we felt so heavily as girls. Many women feel it as adults too. Though it can be emotional, embarrassing, and even tiring, to watch honest depictions of this raw time of our lives, maybe it can also help us heal our relationship with our bodies. Or maybe, it’s just good to feel that we were never alone in all this.
