Can They Really Be Considered "Cartoons" with All That Shading and Highlighting

Tonight I experienced possibly the MOST uncomfortable and embarrassing moments I’ve had since coming back from summer vacation 8th grade year after “blossoming” into womanhood (and FYI, junior high boys, we know you don’t keep jabbing our newly “blossomed” parts with your boney elbows in the hallway on accident…so knock it off, before we start doing some “experimental” kicking of our own…but I digress). My friends, tonight I viewed the “Growing-Up Boys” program at my son’s school. I knew this evening wasn’t going to be all lollipops and rainbows, but I believed I would be able to maintain an appropriately academic expression all while taking “thought-provoking” notes on the video’s content. I’ll just say at the outset…this would have been a whole lot easier to do with a room full of people to buffet all the “Growing-Up Boy” jargon, diagrams and incredibly realistic and anatomically correct “cartoons” (can they really be considered “cartoons” with all that shading and highlighting?). However, alone in the room with the 30-something male principal and the 20-something (okay I’ll say it, nicely put-together) male gym teacher….in a word…PAINFUL!! (feel free to snicker here…I would too).


At the end of every 5th grade year, my son’s school offers the “Growing-Up” program. The girls and boys are separated and shown videos about their changing bodies (oh goody) and have a kind of “what to expect when you are expecting horrific puberty-induced changes to your body” discussion. They give parents the opportunity to view the program ahead of time and have your child “opt-out” if the program doesn’t meet with your approval (providing you have received said “opt-out” slip…if not…tough luck for you and your impressionable youngster). The whole “opt-out” or “denial-slip” policy has been a bone of contention with me and the school district for a while now. I find it ridiculously back-handed to send home denial slips (that usually end up lost or covered in some kind of unmentionable schmootz at the bottom of the schoolbag) for any program that isn’t reading, writing or ‘rithmetic related. I think this is just big government, once again, reaching the lowest common denominator and circumventing our parental rights to give our expressed “permission” for our children to view any programs outside of the normal curriculum’s purview …but let’s go on before this disintegrates into one of my conspiracy theory rants (I make O’Reilly look like some Mr. Microphone toting kindergartener).

When the principal asked us to raise our hands if we were a “boy-parent” and my lone digits reached toward the drop ceiling, I knew I was in for a rip-roaring’ good time. He explained that the programs dealt solely with the changes the students would be experiencing over the coming year and hygiene related issues. He very pointedly said that they would not be discussing the mechanics of s-e-x. (gee…we’re not going to give a “how-to” lecture about s-e-x with 11 years olds…why ever not). At this point, the boy-parent and the girl-parents were separated into different rooms. As I walked down the looonnng echoey hallway with the principal and gym-teacher, my alter-ego (Andrea, the nervously inappropriate comedienne), began to surface. She said things like, “good-times guys, good-times” and “if you hear what you think is giggling, assume I’m choking and that I am performing a self-Heimlich maneuver”. Ever being the “good” student I took the front seat until the principal informed me I may be “uncomfortably” close to the material. We all take our seats (and no, gross, not next to each other…sick) and the video begins. Right off the bat my foot tapped in time to the beat of the early 90’s music and I look appreciably at the fashions, and for a short time I am comfortable in the knowledge that there is nothing that this little video can do to throw me off my game (oh, how the mighty fall)…

The basic premise of the video is a group of 3 boys and 3 girls that are friends. They begin to notice each other and the weird feelings they get around each other (like that time they climbed the rope in gym class…sorry, had to be done) and their changing bodies…eeegads. I think things are going along fine until the narrator (who is the voice of one of the boys all grown-up) begins to talk about the “crush” he had in school. Enter mini-Maxim cover model. This “little girl” looked like something you would have seen in the movie “Weird Science”. As she ran her fingers through her long white blond hair and applied her lipgloss I wondered what happend to the other 3 girls that were hanging out earlier in the video. Okay, Strike One for stereo-typical lewdness and overt sexuality. Moving on, the video goes on to explain many value-added points about biology and chemistry (with all the appropriate diagrams and incredibly real-to-life artistic renderings to accompany them). Then, when I am least expecting it, they hit me right between the eyes with a monster slang term (no, I will not tell you) that just about sends me to the floor in a puddle of mortified ooze. Suffice it to say it was not the medical description of the “event” and I looked over at the gym teacher just in time to see him smirking into his fist…yeah…you and me both buddy…you and me both. Strike Two…

All the explaining to this point has be done by big brother to little brother…where, you ask, are the parental units? Apparently, they are considered “The Man” in this scenario and left out of the video intentionally (smooth move educators…way to engender closer relationships filled with communication between parents and children). As I continue my private viewing, Strike Three comes around the bend. The young man begins to discuss some of his confusion with his pregnant Aunt (sure, of course he picks his pregnant Aunt…that makes loads of sense). She tells him he’s not alone. That the girls are going through changes now too. The narrator begins to explain the female reproductive system with some overzealous information about parts that are really not pertinent to reproduction and the 3rd and final strike crosses the plate. The narrator begins to explain that …well…let’s just say he gives the whole “Tab A” into “Slot B” explanation and how “Tab A” sends out “friends” to fertilize “Slot B’s” eggs after “insertion”. I mean…I don’t know where these two guys are from, but I can say without hesitation, that these are indeedy the “mechanics” of s-e-x. My gaze cuts to the principal and I can see that maybe, just possibly, he is seeing this information in a new light (like the one that’s shining like a spotlight on my face; which, by the way, is conspicuously void of anything approaching an “appropriately academic expression”) and that maybe, just possibly, this video has just told it’s audience how to have s-e-x. The video concludes with more music (that I felt vaguely like I should beat-box to) and a montage of kids romping around on the grass, because, as the narrators says “there is still plenty of time to just be a kid”…really knucklehead…because I’m pretty sure you just told my 11 year old how to have kids (full color diagrams and all)!!

The principal and I discuss some of my points of contention (him, a little red faced and explanatory, me a little red faced but firm) with the video…he nods his head sagely and I leave with a little notebook full words and phrases that would have gotten me kicked out of my little private school… Later, I talk with my girl-friend who was in the “Growing-Up Girls” program. She is shocked by what I have relayed to her and says that the girls program was mainly about feelings and hormones and the basic changes. She said that the only mention of reproduction came when the narrator says that “male sperm can fertilize the female egg resulting in a baby”, but all helpful tips (and full color diagrams) on how this is actually unfolds are left to the viewers imagination and the parents discretion (imagine that).

I came home and relayed all the info to my husband. After going over my notes, he asked simply…”Gee, if this isn’t sex ed, what’s next…handing out copies of the Kama Sutra?” I have since spoken again with the principal and have most vehemently not given my PERMISSION for our son to view this program. He said he understands and that after viewing the program again (with a lone woman in the room) he thinks he will amend next year’s letter to the parents letting them know that the “Growing-Up Boys” program may have more sexual content in it than it’s female counterpart, and encourage parents to view this material before their sons see it….GEE…WHAT A NOVEL IDEA!

Well, I’m off to the library now…I’m pretty sure I have a full day of more colored diagrams and note taking in my future.