This past week, the long awaited season three of Big Mouth was finally streamed on Netflix. Through the perspectives of seventh graders just hitting puberty, Big Mouth is an adult-animated series that humorously follows the seventh graders’ navigation through middle school while simultaneously touching on social and political issues such as supporting Planned Parenthood, highlighting issues pertaining to racial and gender discrimination, and discovering sexual identity/figuring out sexual orientation. 

One thing that I really liked about season three of Big Mouth was the blatant theme of sex positivity shown throughout the series. In season three specifically, multiple main characters represented many different sexual orientations, such as straight, gay, bisexual and pansexual. Additionally, one of the main story lines follows a seventh grader named Jay who comes to terms with his bisexuality and comes out to his class. Although Big Mouth has showed some queer representation in seasons one and two, season three has a larger emphasis on discovering queer identities by having main characters that actively ponder their sexuality and come out, not to mention multiple instances where a sexual spectrum is emphasized. Moreover, this show shows a lot of sex positivity by frequently talking about sexual desires and touching on sexual issues that are usually considered too “taboo” to talk about. Additionally, it normalizes female sexuality without labeling women as “promiscuous”, and condemns sexism and sexual harassment. 

One thing about this season that I did not like, however, began in episode five out of 10. In this episode, Andrew (one of Big Mouth’s main characters) becomes sexually attracted to his first cousin. Throughout the next couple episodes, Andrew begins to flirt with and sext her. As taboo as this is to our society, incest was almost normalized in these instances. While I am aware that this show is very sex positive, I do not see how first-cousin incest can appropriately be placed under the sex positivity umbrella. Maybe this story line is just placed in to add some shock humor to the show, but I found it unnerving to watch. 

Overall, however, I was a very big fan of Big Mouth’s season three and would recommend the show in general to anyone looking for a good binge!