Turning Red is a period timepiece set in 2002. It is a very teen story about Meilin Lee, also called MeiMei, who is going through big changes in adolescence.

Same Introduction, in case you didn’t see Part II. If you read Part II, skip to: Friends & Family

➡️ You can see the further analysis of the Psychology Behind Turning Red Here.

No disclaimers here; we have a full page for that 💁🏻‍♀️.

Turning Red spoilers ahead❗️ Including the ending 👀

🎬 For Parents: if you have children, you might consider watching Disneys’ Turning Red yourselves first or reading detailed reviews before playing it on movie night.

Some Points We Will Cover:

• Can Trauma Go from One Generation to Another?
• Toxic Perfectionism
• Difficulties Teenagers Face

Characters we will be talking about

• Daughter > Meilin Lee: MeiMei
• Mom > Ming Lee
• Astral Realm: a world where MeiMei and her ascendants have gone to part with the panda. 

Turning Red starts with a fearless, ready-to-conquer-the-world, 13-year-old Mei Lee. She embraces her intelligence as a trait she is proud of. Geeky and nerdy are cool. She is excited about her life and happy with who she is. 

“I accept and embrace all labels.”

MeiMei

Somewhere along the story, after a very dramatic and emotionally draining night, MeiMei wakes up as a giant red panda. Yes, a panda. A panda that’s cute and fluffy.

Overall, the movie received some great and some not-so-great reviews. There were polarized views, with people who really disliked it and couldn’t connect with MeiMei and others who really loved it. 

Friends

MeiMei has a cool group of friends. Externally, they aren’t cool or popular, but they are cool enough for each other. They are not all the same; they are quirky and different; they don’t even need to talk; it’s visible from the beginning. They even have different cultural backgrounds. 

When MeiMei turns into a giant Panda, instead of rejecting her, her friends still love and accept her. They are there for her and know how to pull her up—at least they try. Paraphrasing Georgia Dow (2022), her friends are her safe place. We all need someone who has our back.

“Even if you’re at your worst, you feel so much safer.”

Georgia Dow, 2022

There is a moment in which MeiMei lets her friends take the blame, just to let her mom feel that her daughter is perfect, more than that, she doesn’t want to disappoint her mother or go against her. A lot of our life is dependent on our parent support, MeiMei doesn’t want to lose that because she knows how important it is. So, MeiMei ends up hurting her friends.

Later on, MeiMei asks for forgiveness from her friends. Even though they are hurt, they are able to forgive her because they had such a deep friendship, they cared for each other, and had many good memories. They understand MeiMei and can move past it.

We also see an important transition here. At a certain moment, MeiMei tells her parents that to calm down, all she does is think about the people she loves most.

“It’s easy […] all I do is imagine the people I love 🩵 most in the whole world.” 

MeiMei

To which her mother automatically assumes it’s her parents, and of course, to not disappoint her, MeiMei finishes with, “…which are you guys.” Never does she contemplate that there could be other people who may also make MeiMei feel loved.

The truth is, MeiMei actually thinks about her friends, not her parents. What’s happened here is that in a couple of years, the most important people in her life went from being her parents to her friends. But for her parents, nothing had changed; she was still the most important person in their life. 

The Mother

I feel for her.

From the beginning, we see MeiMei mirroring her mother in certain ways; when her friends tell her to join them for Karaoke, she says, “I can’t. It’s cleaning day,” and she is excited about it because she likes cleaning.

We have two sides to this excitement for “cleaning day.”

• On the one hand, MeiMei mirrors her mother; she is enjoying something that probably an adult would, not a teen, and sometimes not even an adult. Where did this excitement for cleaning come from?

• Secondly, she genuinely enjoys doing things with her mother, which is really nice. It’s nice to see that she doesn’t hide what she likes to do from her friends, even though it’s so different from what they’d rather do. She shares because she knows she will not be ____ 🖋️____ [insert your own word here]. Rejected? Criticized? Ashamed?  

She then goes further to say she’s excited about a new feather duster. A feather duster? Yes, a 13-year-old excited for a feather duster. 

“But I like cleaning. Plus, I got this new feather duster, and oh my gosh, you guys, it picks up so much dirt; it’s bananas.”

MeiMei

We love MeiMei, but I think the excitement for the feather duster is bananas (at least for a 13-year-old). Yet again, I’d rather she be excited about the feather duster than something unkind. 

Toxic Perfectionism in Turning Red 🚫

MeiMei does everything she can, even suppressing her emotions, just to uphold her mother’s expectations. She has trouble communicating with her mother because she fears disappointing her.

MeiMei knows she will if she tells her the truth about certain things, such as liking 4town. She wants to be perfect for her mother and make her proud, and this is such an important part of holding their relationship together. Everything is fine as long as MeiMei is perfect and her mother is proud of her. 

Parents Approval ✔️

MeiMei is unapologetic about who she is to everyone else, and we love it. Except this changes with her parents. MeiMei craves their validation, especially from her mother. We see this in various scenes. When she comes home from school, she shows her mom her good grades, and then later that day, when her dad sees the dumplings she made and says, “Perfect,” you can constantly see the relief in her expressions and thoughts after she receives her parents’ appraisal. She lights up when her mother is proud of her.

➡️ See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4dBiOPNyAk

MeiMei even hides her emotions just to allow her mother to feel that her daughter is perfect and that everyone else is to blame except her daughter. We then see that this is contrary to what Ming’s mom does. Ming’s mom blames everything on her: “This is a disaster, unbelievable. Ming, how could you let this happen?”. 

Even though this holding off for her parents’ appraisal may seem a little too much, at least when you watch the movie, we all crave it, both children and adults. This is also shown towards the end of the movie when Ming, MeiMeis’ mom, breaks into tears, confessing

“I’m just so sick of being perfect. I’m never going to be good enough for her [her mother] or anyone.”

Ming, MeiMeis’ mom

MeiMei consoles her mother, showing understanding and acknowledging that what her mom is saying “isn’t true.” 

➡️ See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cmLEJGhZGM

Generational Trauma in Turning Red

After seeing MeiMei and Ming (MeiMeis mom) in the Astral Realm 🌕, we realize that Ming went through the same things with her own mother. You can feel her pain and pressure from having to be perfect, which she imposes on MeiMei, maybe unconsciously. But in the end, MeiMei can empathize.

💭 To comprehend what people feel and do, we can start by trying to understand the reasons. 

Mings panda was huge, maybe because she had been bundling up so much. She had swallowed so much, and eventually, it came out. We see this when she fights has daughter at the concert. 

Considering Mings panda was giant, angry, and uncontrollable, we can conclude that MeiMei’s mom passed this fear on to her, of trying to control her anger and anxiety. When Ming says she hurt her mom, we can assume that she tries to be perfect to prevent bad things from happening. 

💭 If you swallow your feelings, they will eventually come out in some way. 

We also see that Mings mom causes her a lot of anxiety. When she picks up the phone and answers her mom’s call, the first thing she does is start grooming her hair and dress, making sure everything is perfect, even though her mother clearly can’t see her. She thinks her mother will be critical. We see she had her own life with her mother.

💭 When they feel they are aiming for perfect, everything below it is a failure

Children with really controlling and authoritarian parents feel they have two options:

1. Accept that they are the black sheet and will never be good enough.
2. Try way too hard to be perfect but still don’t feel good enough.

Either way, they feel they will never be good enough. 👎🏻

💭 A lot of who you are as a person is shown in your children. Nevertheless, if your kids make a mistake, that doesn’t mean you did something wrong.

“We only parent the way we have been parented.”

Georgia Dow, 2022

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