Maybe it’s just me, but growing up, I always felt uncomfortable about shows directed to tweens making episodes about training bras. When I was growing up, some of the more popular episodes with this topic was Lizzie McGuire “Between a Rock and a Bra Place” and All Grown Up “Separate But Equal”.

In the Lizzie McGuire episode, Lizzie and Miranda go shopping with Jo for their first bras. The awkwardness is played up when Lizzie has to shout that she wants a bra in front of her brother, dad, and Gordo (male best friend and eventual crush). It was hard to watch when Gordo and Sam looked in shock and Matt just called it gross. Obviously that’s what men are like but it was weird messaging for tween girls that, like Lizzie, we already having a hard time trying to ask for one or navigate the need for one in the first place.

What was even more weird was the table reading. In the show, you obviously don’t get to hear the movements/directions or scenes read aloud but in the table reading you do. So there was one scene where I guess the director was talking about a girl in Lizzie and Miranda’s gym class and just referred to her as a “flat chested girl” while Lizzie and Miranda spoke about how they needed a bra more than she did. That just comes off as super weird to me. In another side bar on the topic of bras and weirdness, I remember a part in the baby sitting episode where Gordo was stumbling over his words to say that Kate looked like she had “nurturing capabilities” because of the size of her breasts.

Most of the writers are grown men. The network wanted to strike the bra episode down for the ‘risqué’ subject matter but didn’t seem to find it uncomfortable how the writers were making such crude dialogue about underage girls.

As for the All Grown Up episode, Phil and Lil are set to have their 12th(?) birthday party. However, the plan for the party ultimately changes when Phil walks in on Lil in a training bra, runs away, and eventually they decide to have separate parties. I don’t know why girls’ transition into puberty always has to be a such public thing in tv shows and why boys are always shown to be terrified or grossed out by it. I feel like it would be a better message to center girls in their own stories about puberty without having a male presence involved and without males having such adverse reactions to situations that are already so sensitive to the girls affected by it.

I don’t know what tween shows are like nowadays (if there are even that many out there) but I really hope representation and discussion around girls puberty and training bras has improved. In a society where periods are viewed as dirty and just having breasts is sexualized, I’m sure it would mean a lot to many girls to have some positive (and informative) messaging around puberty.