Big Mouth: Opening a Dialogue, One Dick Joke at a Time

The first time I heard the word “sex” was when my problematic best friend Olivia told me that sex is when a man and a woman take off all their clothes and pee on each other. We were in the first grade. For the next several years, I would continue to ask my mom where babies came from, continuously unsatisfied with her answer. “I prayed for you and God blessed me with a child,” she would say. But how and why did she get pregnant? If God created me, why wasn’t I just zapped directly onto the earth as a child? I wanted specific answers! I didn’t learn what sex actually was until the fifth grade, when my pediatrician recommended I read “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Girls. The book answered all my questions and prompted me to ask plenty more. I didn’t fully understand everything, but I knew it would be weird to ask; I sensed that my parents and peers were uncomfortable talking about sex.

Fast forward 10 years or so, and I discover Big Mouth, the show based on best friends Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg’s real-life, embarrassing preteen experiences. The animated Netflix show about middle schoolers navigating the horrors of puberty fosters an open and necessary dialogue about sexuality. “The whole reason we made the show is because we believe that the more that this stuff around puberty and sexuality is talked about, the healthier people will be,” says creator and voice actor Nick Kroll. “My hope is that the show gives a platform and vocabulary for kids to talk to their parents, each other, their educators about what they’re going through. You feel very alone at that point in your life. It’s very helpful in general for kids who are at that age to see that this is happening to everybody.” Big Mouth aims to break down the stigma surrounding sexuality by openly discussing our culture’s misconceptions, fears, and anxieties, as reflected in the psyches of Nick Birch, Andrew Glouberman, and their friends at Bridgeton Middle School. The show is written for adults, but it tackles the many preteen challenges of shame, identity conflict, depression, and more.

Young adolescents often lack the language to talk openly about their experiences, but Big Mouth offers that language through personification. Hormone monster Maurice and hormone monstress Connie are the angel/devils that drive the main characters, encouraging them to explore their sexualities in sometimes healthy, but mostly unhealthy ways. The Shame Wizard haunts Andrew with self-loathing whenever he spirals into feelings of worthlessness and guilt. The Depression Kitty attempts to capture and isolate Jessi, feeding her spoonfuls of soupy ice cream and telling her to nap constantly. These characters illustrate the many challenges that come with growing up, allowing the show to give voice to the middle school characters’ constant internal conflicts.

The show is extremely vulgar, cringe-worthy, and frankly disgusting at times, filled with an obscene amount of dick-jokes and genitalia puns. The vulgarity definitely aims to create comedic shock-value. However, by vocalizing the writers’ crudest, most shameful, disgusting thoughts, it also creates an openness about sex, which is an extremely uncomfortable topic in our culture.

Americans love sex. But we hate talking about it. Advertising and media is consumed by hyper-sexualized images of both men and women, but we can’t talk about reproductive or sexual health without inciting heated debate. The stigma around sexuality is perpetuated by ignorance. Only 27 states and DC mandate both sex education and HIV education, and only 17 states require program content to be medically accurate. With no reliable education, kids learn about sexuality through the media, which often contains misinformation and problematic messages about sexuality and gender.

Big Mouth tackles the lack of education about sex and healthcare directly in Season 2’s The Planned Parenthood Episode. After the first season, co-creators and executive producers Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett attended a talk by Sue Dunlap, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. She asked the roomful of  writers and producers not just for donations, but also for stories that involve Planned Parenthood. What resulted was an episode dedicated to debunking the many myths about Planned Parenthood and sexual health. The episode begins with Coach Steve, the happily inept adult-child, teaching a lesson on sexual education. The comically stupid teacher barely knows what sex is, much less how to educate about sexual health, and so the students spend the episode teaching him about reproductive healthcare, STDs, and the many services offered at Planned Parenthood. One student Jay claims that Planned Parenthood is an “abortion factory,” but Missy reveals that Planned Parenthood also offers cancer screenings. In a skit modeled after The Bachelor, Nick’s 16-year old sister Leah chooses a form of contraception. She chooses the Pull Out Method before her mother crashes the show and tells her she will use both The Pill and Condoms instead. In another horror style skit, Andrew imagines the terrifying consequences of Blue Waffle, an urban legend that many kids believe is a real STD. Towards the end of his nightmare, he stumbles into a Planned Parenthood, where a clinician tells him Blue Waffle isn’t real and encourages him to get tested for other STDs that are real.

At the end of the day, Big Mouth is a funny cartoon that aims to entertain, not educate. But Big Mouth’s honest approach to sexuality opens a broader conversation about the way we talk about sex in our country, especially within our education system. Children don’t receive the honest, diverse, informative, up to date education they need in order to understand their own sexual health, much less one another’s. This lack of communication about sex only furthers unrealistic expectations about sex, as well as sexual violence against women and sexual or gender minorities.

The future of America’s sex education system is unclear given our current political polarization, but there are some resources available. Sexplanations is a YouTube channel that offers free, entertaining, shameless sex education online. Clinical sexologist Lindsay Doe discusses a wide range of topics, from “Disability and Sex” to “How to Eat Ass.” The videos present information in a fun and entertaining way that encourages open dialogue. 

Big Mouth isn’t a substitute for sex education by any means, but it is a great starting point for opening a dialogue about sexuality. I love bonding and laughing with friends about the shared trauma of our adolescent years, often exchanging embarrassing stories that mirror different plots in the show. I hope future generations are able to start that dialogue sooner, with a solid base of well-informed sex education to work from.

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/10/netflix-big-mouth-season-2-planned-parenthood-show-episode/572026/

https://www.kveller.com/why-tweens-should-be-watching-netflixs-raunchy-animated-show-about-puberty/

https://tv.avclub.com/nick-kroll-on-how-a-talk-by-planned-parenthood-led-to-b-1829562016

https://www.thewrap.com/big-mouth-planned-parenthood-abortion-nick-kroll/

https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/sex-and-hiv-education

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/for-educators/whats-state-sex-education-us


10 Replies to “Big Mouth: Opening a Dialogue, One Dick Joke at a Time”

  1. I’m interested in your thoughts surrounding the controversy a few weeks back where Ali Wong’s character being introduced explained her pansexuality in a way that made some people laugh, but it made a TON of people angry. Not because they were upset she discussed pansexuality, but because she drastically oversimplified the definition, as well as completely invalidating bisexual people as well as other sexualities in the process. No show is perfect, and I agree that what Big Mouth does for the conversation around sex and sexuality is ultimately positive because it normalizes it, but the shows over reliance on gross out humor as opposed to well written thought out jokes sort of cheapens the effect for me personally. However, this article is great and very well written, and I’m always on the side of opening up the conversation about sex in any way possible.

  2. I really liked how you tackled this topic. Personally, Big Mouth’s humor never really landed, but especially after reading your post, I can appreciate how it can serve to start a more open discussion on sex. So many people have stories like yours of being misinformed about sex from a young age or through poor sex education, so I think it’s important to be able to discuss it in a healthy manner.

  3. This is such an important topic that is not often talked about, so thank you for bringing it up in a very straightforward manner. I have never seen Big Mouth, but definitely have gained more appreciation for the show after seeing this. I appreciate satire on this subject, and I think the show Sex Education on Netflix is another great example of this. However, America has even made it difficult for Planned Parenthood to survive. Media is where these discussions start, and we need to pay more attention to shows like these. Lifting the demonizing stigma around sex and improving education would benefit this country (and the world) so much. We could probably resolve certain issues (or make conversations less convoluted) like abortion rights, access to birth control, STD’s, and teen pregnancy if we could just accept that being horny isn’t going to send you to hell.

  4. I definitely only started watching this show because John Mulaney was in it, but I’ve come to appreciate it’s mission to put all the ugly, cringeworthy, embarrassing truths about puberty and sex into the view of the American public. Even if at times some of the subplots or characters seem unnecessary or annoying, for the most part it seems to truly just want to destigmatize topics we generally refuse to discuss with preteens, who will inevitably experience these issues. However, I wonder how many middle schoolers going through puberty actually watch and benefit from this show. Given that it is written and presented more as an adult comedy about puberty, it would be interesting to see how much viewership the show gets from the age group its actually about.

  5. I recall when Big Mouth was revealed, it was completely bashed and shunned for its extremely crude and vulgar humor and objectively disgusting animation style, which I still cannot get behind. For this whole time I had never seen the show and never cared to because of the stigma it has, but reading this post I feel like maybe I should give it a shot. It is true that although the vulgarity can be overwhelming at times, the creators want to force this kind of talk because they want people to think about it, and I think that is a good thing. The best way to help people, especially younger ones, grow to accept a changing society is to show the changes in a normalized context, which may be what Big Mouth is trying to do by normalizing sexual humor and commentary among a school-age group of kids. It does, however, beg the question: how many kids in that age range even watch this show? I seriously doubt parents would be okay with it, but it may be an interesting experiment to see how they would react to it.

  6. I had no idea about the purpose behind making Big Mouth and when I had initially heard about it, my immediate reaction was: why would someone want to watch children go through puberty? It is truly the worst time in every child’s life because you think that you’re the only one going through any changes. Everything you do is weird and everyone is determined to make you feel weird. But, after I finally decided to sit down and watch an episode, I realized that this show is way more than just kids going through puberty. Even though it is made for adults, middle schoolers totally watch it and I think that’s great. It will allow them to be far more open about talking about sex and likely prompt a lot of questions for them to ask, which will cause them to have a way better understanding of sex.

  7. I have yet to watch Big Mouth, but after reading this, I might just have to check it out. You tackled a very important issue in American society. Sex is advertised everywhere we go. Whether be on billboards, online ads, or even on T.V. shows and movies. It is because sex does indeed sell. But, why is it that we’re normalized by this, but not normalized by talking about it? I feel as though the media has talked up sex to being some type of supernatural thing rather than discussing the normality of it. I have my own awkward puberty stories just as we all do, but I was lucky enough to have two older siblings to discuss it with me. I specifically remember my mother feeling to uncomfortable so she told my brother to tell me and he didn’t hold back on teaching me about it lol. However, I was happy I was able to freely asks any questions that I had about it. Teens going through puberty shouldn’t feel nervous or embarrassed for not knowing something and feeling comfortable asking any sexual questions that they might have. It’s nice to see that Big Mouth is taking a crack at it by show casing it through a comical cartoon. From the trailers that I have seen, it almost shows that the cartoon makes fun of the ridiculous cringe worthy moments of puberty as a mock to media for the way they continue to portray it. Overall, super interesting read!

  8. Much as people bash Big Mouth for its style, my partner pointed out something kind of funny about it. When you’re that age, you really do feel that ugly. Humor is a great way to open up discussions and dialogues about topics people are typically afraid of talking about. It makes scary things less scary if you can make a decent joke about it. That said, I’ve not actually seen the show, so I can’t tell you if the humor lands for me or not. I can tell you my partner likes the show, and agrees with everything you’re talking about here. It’d be nice if we could have something that *is* educational as well as funny, but sometimes it’s hard to find that total happy medium. You also brought up books and YouTube. I’m pretty grateful for the internet, because sex and sexuality, amongst other things, are not the most openly discussed things in circles I grew up in. Kids need to know how to access those resources, though. Cool read!

  9. There’s a general fear and awkwardness of talking to younger people about sex. Nonetheless, sex education is important and as your article shows, animation can be a perfect tool for that. Big Mouth has many funny gags as well as accurate information about the process of human reproduction. I think it’s a perfect teaching method for the youngsters.

  10. I’ve never seen big mouth but I can appreciate the fact it’s opening a conversation on sex. Like we’ve discussed, sex ed isn’t something everyone is fortunate enough to have provided in their schools. Therefore, I applaud Big Mouth for taking initiative to do so, be it unorthodox, but still effective.

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