A new bill has been introduced in the Florida state legislature that will clamp down on what teachers are allowed to say to students when it comes to sex education. Because the kinds of people pushing draconian measures like the “Don’t Say Gay” law and the “Stop WOKE” act find it icky to think of any function involving reproductive organs beyond something that happens “down there,” this new Florida bill would naturally preclude any adult in a school setting from saying anything about menstruation to a child not yet in sixth grade. Never mind that girls can start menstruating as early as age ten.
I’ll issue this next statement in a whisper, in order to protect Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, should he read it and get the vapors: (The new movie Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is about girls getting their period.)
Is everyone OK?
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It seems like advertising is a good enough place as any to start. Maybe that’s because MCU movies themselves are starting to feel less like the art/entertainment that the marketing and advertising is designed to support and more like merely an extension of that marketing and advertising. On the day Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was released, May 6th, I saw an online ad for it. The text of the ad read, “The Marvel universe will never be the same.” I had already attended a press screening for the movie four days earlier, so I knew that claim was basically bullshit.
Things happen in Multiverse of Madness. There’s even a major development in the movie’s final minutes that does promise to change Dr. Stephen Strange in a fundamental way. But, as is increasingly the issue with these movies, the entirety of what comes before that moment feels like a flimsy excuse to get us there, not so that we can marvel (pun completely intended) at the development within the movie itself, but so we can be excited for what this change will mean for future installments.
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