Fucking Day: She's Too Young (Patreon)

Hey, guess what, guys? I have syphilis! Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to talk about the absolute classic Lifetime Original Movie, She's Too Young.

Like all good Lifetime Original Movies, the title sounds best when yelled by a forty-year-old woman in a sensible cream-colored sweater at a bus stop. It's a movie about a syphilis outbreak in suburbia, and it's got everything: Marcia Gay Harden. That's it, she's everything. This is Marcia Gay Harden at her Marcia Gay Hardest.

The film's structure is very similar to a horror movie, but the monster is a syphilitic boy. It follows the life of a teenage girl, Hannah, and her two friends, Dawn and Becca, after they make the fatal decision to go for ice cream with an older boy named Nick. They do not, in fact, eat that ice cream, though; oh no. Instead, Nick takes Becca to a hotel room where they smoke two and a half cigarettes, drink two beers, and have sex.

As Marcia Gay Harden watches her precious daughter get in the car for this ice cream date, she says to her nameless husband, "I thought we decided that She's Too Young to be riding in cars with boys?" Her nameless husband laughs and tells her everything will be fine. "I think she's earned our trust," this poor, naive man says. He should be wearing poofy, multicolored pants with little bells, for he is such a FOOL.

We get a glimpse at what Nick's home life is like. It's a one-minute villain origin story. His parents are never around, and his dinner is a can of beer he drinks alone in the dark before turning on a background porno while checking his emails. They are mostly from porn sites and girls begging to have sex with him. There are also a few messages from his friend Brad who Nick has a really interesting relationship with, but we'll get into that later.

At school the next day, Nick shows a sudden interest in Marcia's pure and perfect daughter, Hannah. Nick from the beer and sex earlier! Hannah plays the cello and has no other personality traits. This is the scene in the horror movie where the Monster begins to stalk our heroine.

We get shallow glimpses of Dawn and Becca's home life. Becca's parents are super religious, and Dawn's divorced Mom wants to be her best friend. We learn from a dramatic cross-fade that Dawn has syphilis, the disease of mad kings, and also all of Nick's ex-girlfriends because did I mention that Nick has dated both Becca AND Dawn already?

A school counselor explains to Dawn how contagious syphilis is and that she needs a list of all of Dawn's sexual partners. Dawn admits she's had around 15 to 20 sexual partners at fourteen years old. The counselor says, "You've had s…sex with 20 boys?" You can see it in her face. She knows what's coming. She's like, "Oh SHIT does Nick go to this school?"

Nick and Hannah have a pretty sweet and innocent get together in the abandoned mansion that Nick haunts, and then he pressures her into sex on their second date. Hannah describes the incident to Becca by saying, "I'm Bummin," over an instant message. We also glimpse Hannah's Buddy List, from which we learn Brad has locked down both the email BadBrad and radBrad. He's squatting on all of the Brad-based screen names. Honestly, a smart business move on Brad's part.

Hannah, Becca, and Dawn babysit together, and Dawn delivers one of the most iconic lines of the movie to her friends, "Hey, guess what, guys? I have syphilis". She's trying to sneak it into the conversation in a way-too-perky tone, but it puts a real damper on the evening. Becca has invited Brad and Nick over, but she's worried Dawn will ruin her chances of getting laid with all of her syphilis talk, so she kicks her out.

Don't worry, Dawn didn't harsh the vibe. When Nick and Brad come over, Nick immediately tries to pressure Hannah into group sex with all of the teenagers present. Hannah refuses, and Nick's friend Brad says, "Forget about her," which Nick promptly does in favor of having a threesome with Brad and Becca.

Nick and Brad seem to put a lot of time and energy into organizing group sex for the two of them. They are the gay-coded Disney villains of this film. I wish they could have worked out their internalized homophobia and opened a B&B together before things got too dark. Instead, Nick had to go and continue giving everyone in school the gift of syphilis.

In the background of the movie, warden of the sexpocalypse, Marcia Gay Harden, has been growing more and more concerned about the behavior of her perfect teen daughter. Hannah stays home sick from school after she breaks up with Nick over the minor orgy incident, and Marcia oozes that motherly disappointment that we've all come to crave from her.

Suddenly, word breaks out around the school that a whole bunch of kids have syphilis! The parents are distraught. Who will lead them in the fight against this terrible disease? There's only one woman in a turtleneck Marcia Gay Harden enough to take down syphilis, but first, we have to hear Nick learn he may be patient zero. This teenage boy delivers the most menacing villain speech in Lifetime Original History. He asks for the shot that can cure early stage syphilis, then says, "You better stick 'em all, because I probably did."

Holy HELL, Nick. An Oscar to the woman who heard those words and managed not to throttle this child. Syphilis Nick's Lifetime villain status instantly skyrockets. This guy is a legend. Surely, no one can take him down.

Hannah has syphilis, and Marcia is shocked. She starts rallying the parents in town to get them to discuss the syphilis outbreak with their children. She takes this thing straight to the top, Nick's Mom. Their conversation begins with a scene that heavily leans on symbology to speak to Nick's home life. By that, I mean there's a gigantic bone sculpture outside of Nick's house that the camera lingers on.

Nick's Mom, of course, blames the teenage girls who are constantly throwing themselves at her son via email. She says they can be "more aggressive than the boys these days" and that Marcia wouldn't believe how many times they call every single night. The other parents in town are equally as unreceptive to Marcia's syphilis talk, and eventually, everyone starts bullying Hannah over her weird syphilis-obsessed mother.

Hannah and Becca both run away from home at the same time; Hannah, due to the cyberbullying, and Becca because her parents are sending her to a Christian private school, where Becca mistakenly thinks there will not be sex. (There will be plenty of sex, and it will be way weirder, Becca). In an attempt to find Hannah, Marcia and her nameless sweater of a husband log into Hannah's computer to ask her bullies where the party is tonight.

Of course, the cyberbully is like, "If I knew where the party was, I wouldn't be sitting at home bullying you? I'm a loser, idiot. More to the point, U R a HO and your M is a Bitch." However, someone else in the bully Hannah group chat does give up the location– it's Brad's house! Marcia jets over there to find a group of teenagers standing around a bed watching two people have sex. Don't worry, though. Hannah is safe with a non threatening male friend who keeps a collection of close-up pictures of her mouth.

Hannah is sexually rejected by her nonthreatening male friend and runs to Brad's house, devastated, to look for Becca, who is crying alone in her bed after having sex with two older guys in a car. Brad slaps Becca and tries to force himself on her, but her non threatening male friend bursts in and saves the day by taking a picture on his cellphone and threatening to email it to 911.

Marcia is reunited with her distraught daughter who says, "I'm sorry I put you through this, Mom." It's the dream ending for any mother in any Lifetime Original Movie. Wait, there can't be a happy ending, though; right? Oh no, She's Too Young promptly reminds you that the monster of teen sexuality will strike again as we watch Dawn's little sister hold up one of Dawn's fishnet shirts and look at herself in the mirror like she's heard it's cool to get syphilis. Mothers, have you talked to your children about Hot Topic?

Note the sexy band posters on the wall for things like The Pillow Boys, Swefit, and Total Hottie. There's a poster in a previous scene for a band called Tool Face. I think the presence of these is to remind us that in addition to Nick, the sex maniac, our over-sexualized culture is the real villain. There are a lot of mixed messages in this movie about teenage venereal disease, but maybe the real treasure isn't some sort of moral in this morality play but the friends with syphilis we made along the way.

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