Puberty is hard. Period. But Pixar’s new movie Turning Red tackles puberty—and periods—in exactly the right sort of cringy way to make it just a normal part of the story.
The film is about a girl, Mei, who uncontrollably morphs into a giant red panda when her emotions go unchecked. When she first changes shape and hides in the bathroom, her mother assumes she’s gotten her period and brings her supplies (and advice) about how her body is changing. Meanwhile, Mei hides in the shower, puzzled less about periods than she is about suddenly having fur.
“The hope is with putting it on the screen… it does normalize it,” producer Lindsey Collins told pop culture and gaming news site Polygon. “There’s an appreciation from anybody who’s gone through it for what we put on the screen, but also those who haven’t gone through it.”
By addressing menstruation, the creators of Turning Red intend to destigmatize it––for everyone, not just young girls.
“Everybody on the crew was unapologetic in support of having these real conversations about periods and about these moments in girls’ lives,” continued Collins. “From the very beginning, [I was] just really trying to not hold back with telling the story about a girl going through puberty. We’re going to go there,” Director Domee Shi said in an interview with IndieWire. “From the very first version, it had pads, it had puberty, it had the weird boy crushes and drawings.”
People didn't like Pixar addressing a girls transition to womanhood in Turning Red.
— JOLLY J✨ (@DynamoSuperX) March 13, 2022
I 100% understand why some find the topic uncomfortable but there's nothing "inappropriate" or "disgusting" about a woman's period. It's a natural stage of their life. I respect Disney for this. pic.twitter.com/aQ5TGmcoaT
Shi has said she hopes that Turning Red helps girls and women feel seen–and that it signals that periods, puberty and unwieldy emotions are simply a normal part of life. “You don’t see that very often in movies and TV shows,” Shi said in an interview with entertainment news site Uproxx, “and I think that’s precisely why we wanted to put it in the movie.”
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