The Hulu TV series Pen15 sees Maya Erskine as Maya Ishii-Peters and Anna Konkle as Anna Kone, two best friends in middle school navigating the ins and outs of their social and personal lives. Pen15 is unique because it’s unafraid to depict the true experience of middle school girls, which, coming from personal experience, is not always pretty. The show confronts the girls’ issues at home, with the other kids at school, and with themselves in a very raw and genuine way.
It isn’t only sexual encounters with others in which Maya finds herself: in the opening scene of Season 1, Episode 3, she discovers masturbation. While making her My Little Ponies kiss, Maya notices a pulsing sensation “down there." Humorously portrayed onscreen by her underwear actually pulsing like a heart, Maya decides to act on it by moving her hands up and down in her pants. The scene doesn’t finish – even when Maya does – until she wipes an unknown sticky substance on the carpet.
Self-image isn’t the only tough issue faced by the Pen15 girls. Two major themes that we see dealt with throughout the show are Anna’s parents’ rocky divorce and Maya’s struggle with her identity as a Japanese-American. Instead of lightly touching upon the subjects once an episode or sporadically like a Disney or Nickelodeon show would, the girls’ emotional conflicts with their respective situations is thoroughly dissected in many of the episodes.