In PEN15's second season, the dark reality of tween slut-shaming and sexist double standards descends like a storm cloud

The Muse

"PEN15 has always been a show to watch through your fingers, pubescent body horror disguised underneath layers of Claire’s accessories," says Hazel Cills. "The show’s first season reveled in awkward early-aughts nostalgia, delivering a horny and hormonal tornado of masturbation discoveries, painful crushes, and the delightful horrors of AIM chatrooms. But the latest installment pushes Anna and Maya into the spotlight nearly every young woman experiences at a formative age, the moment in which a girl realizes that she is not as in control of her body as she thought, and the crude ways in which boys and girls take advantage of that slippage." Cills adds: "Much of PEN15's brilliance is (Anna) Konkle and (Maya) Erskine’s acting, as they don’t mimic widely what a 13-year-old in 2000 might sound like so much as inhabit what seems to be specific younger versions of themselves. Their intense, bizarre specificity has a way of unearthing memories of that age I feel like I had but can’t quite pinpoint, such as one scene in which Anna, moving from one end of the pool at a pool party to the other, takes the opportunity to show off her intense, completely uncalled for butterfly stroke, splashing all nearby parties with excessive force. In the days after watching the episode I kept thinking of the scene and laughing, remembering kids I knew who had just completed lessons at camp and thus treated every pool they encountered like it was an Olympic arena. But it’s that same talent for unearthing the goofy, silly antics of being 13 years old that makes the show so poignant at capturing the cruelty of being that age, like the shock of thinking you’re getting close to a boy who suddenly talks about your pussy out loud to others."

ALSO:

• Why PEN15 goes into more emotional territory in Season 2: "I would say it more came out as we broke the story. We were just talking about this, but we’ve been working on this since we were 25," says Anna Konkle. "We’re 33 now. So one of the goals for us in the face of one, the intimidation of people liking season one, and two, just getting older and wanting to still be invested and to actually love what we’re making — we wanted to keep evolving. We knew that we wanted to have Anna and Maya go through experiences that continue to be R-rated, but that we wouldn’t be afraid of it going to darker territory, because that is truthful to being 13 years old. We didn’t know what that would look like or how low it would go or whatever. But it’s also, for me, hard to gauge sometimes, because that was what I grew up in. I did at times, I guess, feel like it was more serious, but I didn’t feel it was darker until recently."
• PEN15 captures the joy of being a theater kid with humiliating accuracy