Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ Normalizes The Messy Emotions of Puberty

Pixar’s latest venture, Turning Red—which was released on Disney+ last Friday—uses an unwieldy, uncontrollable giant red panda as a metaphor for the messy emotions of puberty. And it couldn’t be more accurate.

Directed by Domee Shi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Julia Cho, this coming-of-age family-friendly adventures centers on a 13-year-old girl named Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) who is burdened by a family curse that turns her into a panda whenever she feels angry, embarrassed, upset, or even just really, really excited about her favorite boy band. Unfortunately for Mei, she’s going through puberty—strong emotions are pretty much her entire life.

The first time Mei turns into the panda, it’s the morning after the worst day of her 13-year-old life. Though she insists that the boy who works at the Daisy Mart is so not cute, she indulges in some harmless, romantic daydreaming about him, complete with illustrations of the two of them in an embrace. It’s all very innocent and very middle school girl—there’s a rendition of him as a mermaid with abs, for example—but unfortunately, Mei’s overbearing Chinese-Canadian mother Ming Lee (voiced by Sandra Oh) doesn’t see it that way. After discovering the drawings, Ming Lee marches down to the Daisy Mart to confront this boy, and puts Mei’s fantasies on display for him and everyone else to see.

It’s traumatizing for Mei, to say the least. But she’s always been her mother’s perfect child, so she blames herself. She calls herself disgusting, tearfully apologizes to her mother’s photo, and swears to her reflection that this will never happen again. As most of us know, however, puberty—and all the confusing, messy, and yes, occasionally disgusting feelings that come with it—cannot be willed away. In the morning, when Mei wakes up and looks in her bathroom mirror, she sees a huge, red, furry face staring back at her.

Mei’s mother hears a scream from the bathroom and assumes her daughter has just gotten her first period. She immediately provides her daughter with ibuprofen, a hot water bottle, and every conceivable type of menstrual pad. (Apparently, some viewers found the mere mention of periods to be “inappropriate” for a Pixar movie; I have nothing to say to these people, as that’s objectively ridiculous.) It’s such a perfect metaphor that I wondered, as I was watching, whether the whole “red panda” thing was all in Mei’s head—merely a kid-friendly visualization of the monthly experience of shedding a uterine lining. The movie is called Turning Red, after all, and the way Mei is screaming in terror over her own body—a body she no longer feels she has control over—is all too familiar to the menstruating half of the population.

While I can only imagine—with a sort of sick glee—just how upset a certain subset of viewers would be over a Pixar movie entirely about menstruation, it soon becomes clear that everyone can see Mei’s panda. When her mother finds out, she explains to Mei that the gods once granted their ancestor the ability to harness her emotions to transform into a powerful red panda, in order to protect her family during wartime. Now the women in the family are burdened with the panda. There’s a ritual cure, but until the ritual can be performed, Ming Lee tells Mei she must suppress her panda. And that means she needs to suppress her strong emotions. In other words, Mei’s panda is her emotions.

Mei hates her panda, at first. Locked up in her room, which has been stripped of her furniture to avoid destruction, she berates herself, runs herself into walls, and cries. She believes she has to face this alone, that she’s a freak of nature, and that it’s all her fault. But, then, a miracle: Her three best friends remind her that she is not alone.

“I hate this!” Mei cries to her friends Miriam, Abby, and Priya. “I’m slobby and I’m smelly!” ( They offer comfort in the form of an a capella cover of their favorite boy band, 4*Town, and a hug. It works. Not only does Mei turn back into a human, but she is also able to stay a human even when she feels emotional. Why? Because she knows she has her friends by her side. Later, when her mom asks Mei how she found control, Mei lies by saying she thinks of her mother’s love. But the truth for Mei, and the truth for many young teens going through puberty, is that it’s her friends that get her this confusing time in her life. After all, they might not be turning into a giant red panda on the regular, but they do totally get what it feels like to lose your cool over five boys singing in unison.

The moral of Turning Red is, of course, that Mei—and her mother—learns to embrace her panda. Rather than feeling ashamed or guilty of her messier edges, Mei accepts them as part of herself. A look at the audience reviews on the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page shows that some people feel the subject of puberty isn’t suitable for a kids’ movie. I couldn’t disagree more. Turning Red shows kids that puberty is normal—a confusing, sometimes torturous, totally normal mess. More than that, Turning Red asserts that these emotions, while overwhelming, are ultimately what make you you. And that’s beautiful.

Watch Turning Red on Disney+