Why I Let My 13yo Watch "New Girl"

I’ll admit, I missed the New Girl craze. When it first came out in 2011, I had a toddler and then in subsequent seasons, a toddler and a baby, so I didn’t exactly have the bandwidth for a show about single people living in LA. I knew it was a comedy on NBC and starred Zooey Deschanel, the penultimate manic pixie dream girl, but that was about it. Until about nine months ago, when Mazzy was suddenly obsessed with it. She had watched some episodes at a friend’s house, told me it was really funny and continued to watch the series on her own. I didn’t think much of it, because the combination of Zooey Deschanel, that annoyingly peppy theme song and the fact that it was on network television, made me think it must all be pretty innocent.

This is the part where I tell you that I was very, very wrong.

Mazzy watched the whole first season before she suggested that we watch it together. “Sure,” I said naively, thinking we were headed for a world of family friendly mix-ups and PG rated hijinks. Just one episode and several penis jokes later, I realized that maybe I should have done some googling at some point during Mazzy’s New Girl journey, because turns out, they make sexual references a LOT. Like, a lot a lot. Like almost every episode is either about sex or involves some sort of sexual side plot. You’re never more aware of multiple penis and vagina mentions until you’re sitting on the couch with your 13 year-old. I kept glancing over at Mazzy to see if she was uncomfortable watching with me, but she seemed unbothered and remained excited to show me her favorite episodes. After a few “OMG Mazzy, what exactly are we watching????” freakouts, I decided to remain unbothered too.

It didn’t take very long for me to fall in love with Jess, Nick, Winston, Schmidt and the rest of the gang, and I began to look forward to our nightly mother-daughter New Girl sessions. Mike would often walk in during a masturbation or phone sex reference, give me a quizzical look like “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS” and then walk right back out of the room. My dad found out Mazzy was into New Girl and decided to watch so they could have something to bond over and the next day, I got a call, “Uhhhh… Ilana, are you sure Mazzy should be watching this?” “It’s fine, Dad. I assured him. And anyway, she’s already watched the entire series at least five times.”

My followers have similar reactions as my dad. Whenever I mention that Mazzy loves New Girl in my Instagram stories, I always get a lot of direct messages asking why I let her watch it or how I feel about watching it together. They always ask nicely and say they aren’t judging. I believe them. I think many of my followers are genuinely curious how they should handle that kind of content when their kids ask to watch and if maybe, giving it the green light and watching together might be beneficial. I know this is a loaded topic and I am definitely not encouraging anyone to start New Girl with their 13yo if they aren’t ready, but I think watching the show together was the right decision for Mazzy and me. Here’s why:

1. The characters are all in their 30s.

There are a lot of shows with sexual content that center around high school kids, like Ginny and Georgia and Never Have I Ever. Technically, these shows are geared more towards Mazzy’s age group, but I find that they open a bigger can of worms about when exactly kids become sexually active. The whole premise of Never Have I Ever is that the main character, a sophomore in high school, wants to lose her virginity. At the end of the first episode, she asks the most popular guy at school if he will have sex with her and he says yes. To be fair, we’ve now watched three seasons of Never Have I Ever, she hasn’t lost her virginity yet and it’s ultimately been a pretty wholesome show about a teenager navigating hormones, new feelings and first relationships. But although it makes the case for waiting for the right person, it also makes it seem like everyone in school has the goal of losing their virginity as soon as possible. Ginny and Georgia, another show popular with tweens and teens, takes things a step farther. The main character (also a high school sophomore) unceremoniously loses her virginity to her neighbor on the first day she meets him at the end of episode one, which while probably realistic for a lot of people (I actually like showing that not everyone’s first time is super special), was a bit shocking to watch and discuss with Mazzy. Ultimately, we decided to to stop watching the show after the main character began cutting herself in episode 2 and another character began duct taping her thighs. I just didn’t love how easily and quickly they continued to introduce major issues with each character. Maybe in a few years, we will be more ready for that one. My point is that in a show like New Girl, the main characters are unquestionably consenting adults, which in my opinion, makes it more comfortable to watch together. Your kid can learn valuable lessons about sex and relationships with “age appropriateness” removed from the equation.

2. There is no shame around sex.

In New Girl, sex is not presented as a sneaky thing that’s happening under the cover of darkness. It’s a normal, adult thing that adults can decide to do and talk openly about, without shame. It really struck me that Nick and Jess live together and have an off and on relationship for the entirety of the show, while they each sleep with a variety of other people, and it’s never a thing that either of them hold against the other. Contrast this to Friends where a one night stand changes the course of Ross and Rachel’s relationship and continues to be a major plot point despite how they actually feel about each other. I think this is because, back when our generation was younger, there was so much importance placed on your “number.” Especially for young women. You had to have had sex so that you weren’t a loser, but not too much of it, or else you were branded a slut. There is a never a moment in New Girl where someone sleeps with someone and it is judged. There are one night stands, booty calls, and sleeping with an ex in a moment of weakness and all of it is just part of being single and dating. It just seems like a way healthier, sex positive attitude than I remember growing up with.

3. They have safe, consensual sex.

We rarely saw examples of consent or protection in TV shows or movies when I was younger and I distinctly remember feeling like these things would be unsexy to see depicted. But I was wrong. Current media has countless examples of how both can feel like a natural part of sex. Even worse, many of my generation’s movies, like 16 Candles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Back to the Future all have scenes with sexual misconduct that are treated as a joke, in a way that definitely normalized that kind of behavior. In New Girl, not only is the sex happening between adults, but they make a point to highlight the fact that it’s safe and consensual. There’s no weirdness about protection (an entire episode is devoted to Winston looking for a condom) and characters often ask for consent. There is even an episode where Schmidt needs to sign a consent contract to sleep with his boss.

4. Sex is often awkward and funny.

I don’t want to alarm anyone but there was a study that came out earlier this year, which stated that most kids are exposed to pornography by the time they turn 12. For a lot of kids that age, that’s probably their first and only exposure to sex, which depending on what they see, can create a pretty scary perception of what sex looks like. I’d much rather my kids’ first exposure to sex be watching a show like New Girl, where the sex is treated with humor, sometimes a very realistic awkwardness and in the context of consenting adult relationships. All with me sitting next to them on the couch, willing to answer questions. I think when we shield our kids too much, that’s when they go seek answers for themselves and can end up in dark corners of the internet, seeing god knows what, and then feel like they need to translate this disturbing information on their own. There is actually an episode where Jess is planning to have sex with her new boyfriend, who will be her first since she was in a long term relationship with her ex, and she starts watching porn to prepare. She pretends to be into some weird fetish stuff to seem experienced and ends up really freaking him out. This was definitely an episode that felt particularly uncomfortable to watch with Mazzy, but then I realized it was actually a good way to explain the problem with porn: “Porn can take sexual activity to an extreme to make it more interesting for the camera. If you ever come across porn by accident, please understand that most of it is not what real sex looks like.”

5. All of the characters are looking for real, healthy relationships.

At its core, New Girl is about a group of friends in their 30s who are all dating, looking for love and trying to settle down. Not only is it a healthy picture of friendship, it’s a healthy picture of romantic relationships. For the most part, the men are all good guys looking for the right person. Each character has their own flaws, crazy dating stories and lessons about “red flags,” but by the end of the series, they use everything they’ve learned from their previous relationships and end up with who is right for them. We watch them each grow into more well-rounded, perfectly imperfect people, both apart and together, over the course of seven seasons. In the end, each partnership is genuine and full of mutual respect, love and support.

I believe that watching New Girl with my daughter has given her a window into what healthy relationships can look like, opened up lots of great conversations, and made “sex” a topic that is not forbidden or embarrassing in our home. In both Mazzy and Harlow’s school, sex education starts in 5th grade. They can either come home and talk to you about it or they can talk to their friends or they can fill in the blanks on their own with Google. I love that my kids feel way more free to discuss these things with me than I felt when I was younger. It seems to be a generational thing. I remember a friend telling me that her mom tried to have the sex talk with her in high school and she shut her down immediately. “Mom, it’s too late. I’m already teaching younger students how to put condoms on a banana as part of my job as a peer counselor at school.”

If you want to your kids to come to you with questions, the first step is removing the illusion of innocence that we might want to falsely project onto our children. And if you can do this by watching a delightful sitcom together, it’s a pretty good deal.