The coach is the authority figure and teacher. Prior to the period of frankness that began in the mid-1960s, relatively few sex education films were actually produced in the United States. Most of these films concentrated on the physiology of sex and reproduction and were replete with animated "plumbing" diagrams. It was unusual to show children speaking relatively freely about sexuality, and because of the necessity of educating girls about menstruation, more addressed girls than boys. As Boys Grow, produced in the relatively liberal San Francisco Bay Area, presents regular boys asking regular questions and contains frank discussion of such topics as nocturnal emissions. Unlike Molly Grows Up, staged in the midst of the nuclear family, As Boys Grow shows sex education for boys as a team effort supervised by a fatherly coach figure. Although it might not seem unusual today, the achievement of this film seems to me to be the way that it naturalizes sexuality and creates an open atmosphere where all questions, no matter how misguided, draw serious adult attention. The gym was safe territory for sexual discussions and the coach a noncontroversial facilitator.
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