But sex education actually has its roots in moralizing: American sex-ed films emerged from concerns that social morals and the family structure were breaking down. The movies, in particular, tend to stick in our minds. Screening films at school to teach kids how babies are made has always been a touchy issue, particularly for people who fear such knowledge will steer their children toward sexual behavior. Today, most American adults can call up some memory of sex ed in their school, whether it was watching corny menstruation movies or seeing their school nurse demonstrate putting a condom on a banana. How uncool did you have to be to announce the arrival of your period to the whole house? Is it really something you want your dad and brother discussing over potatoes? After all, our school felt girls had to be separated from the boys in our class just to watch this movie. I saw this film in a middle-school sex-education class in 1988, and even though I’d read, “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” the movie seemed embarrassingly old and this scene particularly laughable. After excusing herself from the dinner table, the 13-year-old girl begins to shout, her excited voice ringing through her family’s Mid-Century Modern home, “I got it! I got it!!” Her mother, in a Donna Reed-type dress, beams, while her 10-year-old brother looks up quizzically and asks, “Got what?” The boy’s father turns to him and says, brusquely, “She got her period, son!”
