Nearly everyone has seen the 2007 movie Juno. In this movie, teenager Juno McGuff becomes pregnant, and we all know how that happens. But interestingly enough, the movie isn't about the boy and the circumstances leading up to the taboo subject of sex. The movie starts after the sex has happened, and only briefly goes back to it. There is a flashback where Juno is telling the viewers who she had sex with, but nothing is shown: The movie jumps from right before the act back to Juno telling her story. So what does it mean when a movie revolves all around sex, but there's not really any in it?
The movie is all about what results from sex: pregnancy. More specifically, Juno's pregnancy. A teenage girl, still struggling through high school, trying to figure out what she wants, who she likes, has learned that she is with child. If that's not the epitome of stress, I don't know what is. Juno deals with her situation beautifully. She finds a couple to adopt her baby, and throughout her pregnancy she grows up. She learns how hard it is to part with a part of herself, not only her baby, but the girl she left behind when she stumbled upon womanhood.
The suggested sex, which is of course verified by the fact that Juno is pregnant, makes the movie way less about the actual sex, and way more about the struggle that Juno is going through. It shows that Juno is not, in fact, a "tart" who really "gets around," but is a girl who just wasn't careful enough one night, and now must pay the consequences. In my opinion, the movie isn't just about the problem of teenage pregnancy: it is about dealing with what life throws at us, learning to live with the results of the actions we make, and doing so in such a graceful way that we grow and learn from what we've been through. And who said sex couldn't mean more than just sex?
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