Intro To Comms Paper

Grace Van Cleef Intro to Communication Studies Cultural Criticism Paper 12/5/18 “Girls Get Horny Too”: Adolescent Female Sexuality in Big Mouth In modern day America, middle school is universally considered to be one of the worst parts about growing up. It’s confusing, sometimes scary, and often just plain gross. Media can affect the way we process parts of our life. People still enjoy watching “coming of age” movies even after they are adults. The combination of nostalgia and introspection provides us with a reflection on who we were at integral moments in our development and how our experiences shaped who we are today. However, media created for adults, depicting middle school, is rare. This is a period of life which can be painful or awkward to remember and reflect on; however, looking back at the most uncomfortable points in our lives can provide us insight into what mattered and what didn’t, what still embarasses us, and what affected us the most. Big Mouth is a Netflix aired cartoon television series created by Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, who also voice several of the main characters. It is aimed at adults and designed to be pseudo-educational, but mostly humorous. The show follows a class of seventh grade students as they navigate puberty. What sets Big Mouth apart is it’s candid exploration of puberty through the use of semi-fantasy, which can be easily implemented due to the animation style. Most of the adolescent characters have “hormone monsters”, invisible monsters who follow them around and encourage them to engage in all sorts of emotional, sexual, and generally hormonal behavior. This, along with a few other imaginary constructs, serve as effective metaphors for the incredibly confusing and temperamental ins and outs of going through puberty. Big Mouth emphasizes

themes of sexuality, parental roles, friendship, and romance, as well as touching on mental illness, divorce, drug use, and gender roles. There are a wide range of male and female characters with well developed and unique personalities, which can be rare for characters of that age. The television show Big Mouth uses a diverse range of characters to perform a candid examination of the way gender roles and sexuality are defined in adolescence and evolve over time, reiterating time and time again the negative impacts gender stereotypes can have on healthy sexual and emotional development, in youth and adulthood. Missy is one of the female protagonists of Big Mouth. She is somewhat unpopular, since she is socially awkward, nerdy, and bookish. She speaks with a slight speech impediment due to her braces. Her parents are strict but loving, and she has a strong relationship with them where she developed a lot of her interests and hobbies. Despite all this, Missy is still aggressive when it comes to agency over her sexuality. In the very first episode, she asks one of the male protagonists, Andrew, to dance with her at a school dance. This begins a whirlwind relationship for the two of them that lasts throughout the first season and illustrates an important subversion of typical representations of adolescent sexuality. We live in a society that usually implies that sexuality is highly related to looks and looks alone and that only certain very specific body types are “sexy” (Durham, 2007). However, Andrew recognizes that Missy is nerdy and awkward, but he is incredibly attracted to her anyway, contrasting many of the messages being directed at young people. This is especially important since it provides representation for people who can recognize themselves in Missy, who likely felt uncomfortable and undesirable throughout their middle school years. Missy’s character is an honest representation of how budding sexuality can manifest itself in young girls, especially shy girls. Missy is very smart and seems to have a frank understanding

of herself, but she is still naive in many ways. In the second season it is revealed that she has a stuffed animal that she has been grinding against for masturbation since she was very young. She doesn’t fully admit to herself that her actions are masturbation, and it is indicated that this is due to shame over her desires. Even still, Missy fantasizes about Andrew and Nathan Fillion (a famous actor), and by all means is portrayed as romantically and sexually charged, and not apologetic about it. Even while maintaining Missy’s character as forward and frank when it comes to her sexuality, the show uses Missy to explore the shame girls often feel surrounding their sexual urges. Research by Durham (2007) states that “sexual double standards still exist by which girls face condemnation and punishment for sexual activity while boys are celebrated for the same behavior”. Missy’s parents shame her for being a “mons pusher” (grinding her hips against him during seven minutes in heaven) with Andrew early on in their relationship. They are forbidden to continue dating, and while Andrew wants to date in secret, Missy ends their relationship because she “can’t control herself around him”. This illustrates how reactions from others about otherwise healthy sexual behavior can influence how young girls police themselves. Meanwhile, the show explores a parallel plot arc where Andrew becomes addicted to pernography, showing that he truly cannot control himself. The whole joke of the episode is that Missy barely does anything; she gets excited while kissing Andrew and grinds up against him a little bit. However, once her parents discover this and react, she is so overcome with guilt that she decides to end her relationship with Andrew, despite her ongoing romantic and sexual attraction towards him. Andrew, on the other hand, faces no consequences for his lack of selfcontrol. However, he does not fully understand why Missy leaves him, and this actually kickstarts his unhealthy coping through pornography. Through Missy and Andrew’s relationship,

Big Mouth makes an important point about what happens when outside forces restrict healthy sexual outlets for young teens. Jessi is the largest female protagonist in Big Mouth. She is proud of her gender, but she mostly hangs out with boys, and she is best friends with the show’s male protagonists, Nick and Andrew. She is smart, cynical, and bitingly sarcastic. Jessi’s character arc follows how a relatively sexually and emotionally well adjusted adolescent might turn to harmful behaviors reinforced by gender norms when faced with confusion and conflicting feelings. Initially, Jessi’s character subverts typical representations of female adolescent sexuality by providing an example of a young girl exploring her sexuality in a healthy way. Her hormone monster illustrates that she experiences emotions just as intensely as the boys in the show, albeit in a different way. She also tries masturbation and has her first kiss in very charming, realistic, and age appropriate ways. However, the show uses Jessi to candidly explores the theme of parental roles and parental conflict in adolescent development. Jessi’s mom, Shannon, is in a loveless marriage and has begun to cheat on her husband with another woman. Shannon’s character is another representation of female sexuality in Big Mouth. Many parts of Shannon’s character arc are only implied, but the show heavily suggests that she has made bad choices because she wasn’t happy, and faces a lot of backlash and shaming for behavior she knew was wrong but felt was necessary. When Jessi finds out her mom is cheating on her dad, her behavior rapidly changes to something quite different. Research indicates that we often fall back on harmful narratives to guide us in times of conflict. When life feels chaotic, it is helpful to rely on scripts to provide the course of action that seems to make the most sense, whether or not it is truly the best. The gender narrative indicates that men should be dominant, aggressive, and controlling, while women should be submissive and need men in their lives (Wood 2013). Jessi begins to act

out sexually and emotionally. She starts hooking up with a male character, Jay, who’s known for being aggressive, sexist, and constantly aroused. Eventually, the two of them run away together, in direct response to a fight Jessi’s parents have. Jessi and Jay’s relationship perfectly illustrates how even independent, well-adjusted women can rely on the gender narrative in response to confusion and chaos in their lives. The gender narrative also logically follows to slut shaming behavior. If women live to serve men, a woman taking autonomy over her sexuality is not looked highly upon. Several times, Jessi lashes out against her mom in ways that clearly come from a slut-shaming ideology. She harbors a lot more resentment against her mom for cheating on her dad than she does against her father for never giving up weed or contributing to his household or marriage for years. Jessi is not blamed for her anger towards her mother; it is clear that the creators of the show included it neutrally, as a natural response. However, it is another example of the gender narrative becoming a fallback for Jessi when she is faced with a confusing and upsetting situation, that being the end of her parent’s marriage. As Jessi becomes more unhappy with her home situation, she continues to hold slut shaming attitudes not just against her mother but against other characters in the show as well, specifically Gina. Gina is a character who is pretty much exclusively used to explore the problem of slut shaming, especially among adolescents who have all sorts of different body types. Gina gets a lot of attention very suddenly when people realize she’s one of the first students in the grade to develop breasts. However, she sits alone at lunch; everyone is too intimidated to talk to her. Nick gets some tips on how to talk to women, essentially encompassing just listening to them and responding to what they say. He uses these skills to start a conversation with Gina, and finds that she is funny and genuine. They begin an innocent and happy relationship. They soon make out and Gina allows Nick to touch her breasts. Nick tells Jessi and Andrew, which leads to Jessi

telling a popular girl in a moment of jealousy, and suddenly, a positive exploration of adolescent sexuality turns sour when everyone starts calling Gina a slut. Girls are frequently painted as not having autonomy over their own sexuality. An analysis of representations of female sexuality in Seventeen magazine found that real life examples of sexuality among young girls are often presented negatively, even as those girls are simultaneously sexualized. A story in one issue included statistics on the number of girls who reported regretting their first kiss, first time giving oral sex, or first time having intercourse. Even further, another issue “quoted girls who lamented that their sexual encounters with boys had ‘changed our relationship’ so that it ended; ‘hurt my friendship’ because the girl developed a reputation as a slut; and ‘destroyed my self-esteem’” (Durham 2007). These kinds of ideas in magazines aimed at adolescents, with a lack of positive alternative, create an environment in which sex is viewed as something that has negative consequences, that young women should avoid. The dichotomy between the high levels of sexualization among young women and the social consequences of how they take agency over their sexuality is highlighted in Gina’s plot arc. Certainly, the negative consequences of sex described in Seventeen are almost exactly what are illustrated as happening to Gina. However, in Big Mouth, the emphasis is on the unfair double standards being placed on her. The show never once paints Gina as unreasonable or overly emotional. She has emotional reactions to her bullying; she gets very angry at Nick and very upset when everyone starts calling her a slut. However, the focus of the show is clearly on analyzing how all the young people involved, not just Gina, navigate their feelings surrounding the situation. Some characters, like the popular girls, clearly have some level of jealousy. Most of the boys in the show do not engage in the slut shaming, but still sexualize Gina in a way that contributes to her social isolation. Jessi feels extreme guilt for sharing the private information with the popular girls in the first place. And

Gina, of course, feels anger, shame, regret, and loneliness, but also a drive to justify that there was nothing wrong with what she did in the first place. The eventual subversion of her claim to her own sexuality is painted as entirely the fault of the people around her, not her own. In this way, Big Mouth explores female adolescent sexuality in a way that is realistic to societal norms, but challenges the perspective that might usually be used to view sexual behavior among young girls. The rise of social media means that social pressures and constructs of sexuality are being exposed to children at younger and younger ages. Understanding how sexuality manifests in adolescence and how gender roles impact that can help us understand how to best help young adults to mature in the healthiest way possible. Big Mouth explores gender roles and sexuality candidly in a way very few pieces of media have attempted with children that young, but it’s realistic to how being 12 and 13 years old is and therefore shouldn’t be ignored. Big Mouth challenges and subverts typical representations of adolescent female sexuality time and time again. The diverse, well-developed characters provide someone for every viewer to relate to. Big Mouth repeatedly asserts that we should allow young people to explore sex and sexuality at their own pace, with minimal intervention. This aligns with current gender theory and makes the point that outside intervention, whether it be from misled parents, media, or society at large, only has negative impacts on the sexual and emotional health of our youth.

References Durham, M. G. (2007). Sex and Spectacle in Seventeen Magazine: A Feminist Myth Analysis. International Communication Association: Annual Meeting, Feminist Scholarship Division, San Fransisco, CA, May 24-28, 2007. School of Journalism and Mass Communication Publications. Wood, J. T. (2001). The Normalization of Violence in Heterosexual Romantic Relationships: Women’s Narratives of Love and Violence. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 18(2), 239-261.