We visited friends with young daughters and showed them a
RiffTracks short, "Molly Grows Up". Riff Tracks, for those who don't know, is a new project of Mystery Science Theater alumni Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy. It's a collection of audio tracks you can sync up to your videos of movies where Mike and his guests riff on the action, dialogue, acting, etc. - like MST3K without the bots. Riff Tracks also features several old instructional shorts, with the same jibing.
Watching "Molly Grows Up" started a lively discussion, especially among the female half of the audience. This educational video from the 50's about a young girl experiencing her first period had a plethora of doctors in the credits, but their knowledge was woefully outdated and quaint. Plus, no one had parents this cool in the 50's, where menopausal Mom and Molly have a frank discussion, with Dad joining in the fun, while sagely smoking his pipe and noting that "Molly is growing up!"
When Mom warned Molly against swimming until 3 days after her period because "you might catch a cold", the collective reaction was "Huh??!" Also amusing was the school nurse's instruction on various activities girls could engage in during "that time" - dancing was OK, square dancing should be done in moderation. Because, you know, that square dancing is a little too wild.
The funny thing of it was, none of our memories were anything like Molly's. We learned about menstration through those little clinical Kotex booklets passed to us by parents, through sleepovers (where one got WRONG information), through the Girl Scouts (who were much better), and sadly in one case, when it started and Mom had to explain to the scared girl that she was
not dying. So maybe Molly's was wasn't so bad after all!
