Blockers tells the story of three teenage girls determined to lose their virginity on prom night; it’s also about their parents mourning the loss of their daughters, watching them grow up and learning to let them go. The 2018 movie, directed by Kay Cannon, has everything you’d expect in a sex comedy: vulgarity, ridiculous gags, and hilarious jokes. It also complicates notions of sexuality and gender in surprising ways. Emily VanDerWerff, a writer and critic-at-large for Vox, was deeply struck by the movie when she first saw it. She realized it was showing her something she never could have imagined: a life for herself as a woman.

Emily VanDerWerff is the critic-at-large for Vox. Her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Grantland, and The Baffler. She is the co-creator of the DiscoverPods-nominated fiction podcast Arden and the co-author of the book Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.