Educational Media Reviews Online

Little Big Girls offers a thoughtful, balanced overview on the phenomenon of girls generally reaching puberty at an earlier age, as well as some broad oversight into the societal consequences. The documentary is artfully shot, interspersed with charming animation sequences narrated by actress Catherine Trudeau. The film’s primary focus is on teen girls and young women reflecting on their experiences of going through early puberty, accompanied by statements from researchers and experts in fields including medicine, psychology, and endocrinology. Though the film touches on widespread evidence that girls are going through puberty at an increasingly earlier age, it primarily addresses the individual impact of the experience. Most interviews are conducted in French and dubbed into English. Though many studies in the United States trace the connection between precocious puberty, race, and ethnicity, the film does not address race or ethnicity in detail and the young subjects are predominantly Caucasian and middle-class. The strength of the film, however, is the searching candor with which all these women reflect on their experiences.

In this series of interviews, older teen girls and young women describe their reactions to developing sexually at a much earlier age than their peers, beginning around age 9 or even earlier. Almost all their experiences are described as negative. The arrival of menarche was sometimes accompanied by shock, anger, or bewilderment, and left many feeling prematurely deprived of childhood. Many faced real or perceived social rejection and struggled to cope with feelings of difference and looking “older.” Several interviewees, reading excerpts from old journals, talk in depth about the lasting impact of early puberty on their sexual and psychosocial development. Some express poignant regret about having sex at a young age, in some cases as early as 10 or 11, and others describe coercive first sexual experiences and varying long-term repercussions through adolescence and early adulthood. One girl expresses regret that her school’s sex-education curriculum dealt only with the biological aspects of puberty and not “men really want”; she had long coped with self-doubt and a fear that men would want her only for sex. Several mothers appear in these interviews, in an intensely supportive and sympathetic role.

The health consequences of experiencing puberty are nominally addressed. Girls are already known to mature faster than boys. Precocious puberty potentially increases the risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Though obese girls are also prone to experiencing puberty at an earlier age, researchers have discovered that earlier maturation is now occurring in all groups. It has also been hypothesized that earlier, more prolonged exposure to estrogen and progesterone could potentially lead to greater risk for developing breast or ovarian cancer.

Little Big Girls also addresses the environmental factors which potentially contribute to an earlier age of sexual maturation. Exposure to phthalates, for example, has been associated with development of pubic hair in very young children. Chemicals used in furniture stuffing, plastics, and cosmetics have been correlated with the disruption of certain endocrine pathways, which cause the body to erroneously interpret the presence of sex hormones. Rats exposed to endocrine disruptors at a very early stage of development, in some cases shortly after birth, also experience earlier sexual maturity. It is mentioned that Canada has banned the use of BPA’s in baby bottles, but environmental issues are also not discussed in depth.

Another point of emphasis in the film is that girls need to receive more education at an earlier age, rather than learning about biological changes after they have already occurred. In order to develop a healthy self-image and counter the barrage of images depicting the objectification of women, girls need strong mentors of both genders whose guidance will foster critical thinking skills. Choquette’s film is a sympathetic attempt to de-stigmatize women who have been through early puberty, and makes a substantial case for women’s need to be responsibly informed about their own bodies.