LogFAQs > #956537437

Oh no, a teen character made a comment about another character's mom's tits. In 13 Reasons Why, a kid gets forcibly sodomized in a school bathroom with a broom handle. That shit is aimed at teenagers too, and while it's aimed at older teens, its focus on "starting a conversation" is intended to solidify it as a cultural touchstone for children of the 2010's. Its popularity is intended to cross boundaries and speak truth to power.

13 Reasons Why is an exploitative pile of dogshit, granted, but it shows that the envelope has been pushed further than what we grew up with. Even kid's cartoons like She-Ra, Infinity Train and The Owl House are tackling more complex issues than our beloved childhood media - though I'd say that Avatar: The Last Airbender was a trailblazer in that regard. So this comic is a bit edgy - as if you didn't grow up hearing worse.

From my recollection, teens swear at each other and make inappropriate comments. The harassment and abuse you face in high school is arguably worse than a lot of harassment and abuse you face in the real world, because outside of some extreme circumstances, you can get away with punching another person in the head without that other person being able to press any charges. Some of the nasty shit you hear in high school dies out in high school, because the adult world - to a degree - is less tolerant of it. High school is where a lot of people are probably at their worst as they try to define their boundaries.

Comments like this happen - at least in my experience - as early as fifth or sixth grade sometimes. It doesn't just sprout up in high school where everyone's basically halfway through puberty. If anything, this is safe, comparatively tame teen dialogue that aims to scratch something more controversial by falling back onto a recognised and more sanitized trope - a joke about your mother - as opposed to going somewhere more realistic, like comments about eating out someone's mom's bush.

In short, unless you grew up in a Mormon family or went to a religious school of some kind, I doubt this would actually be that shocking to you compared to what you grew up around. That, or my experience is an outlier. Either/or.

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But I don't have to make this mistake, and I don't have to stay this way.
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