Director Domee Shi adds a charm factor to the perils of puberty in ‘Turning Red’
At 6, the daughter of Shan and Gao Shi is very much a man: she has a thick head of hair and a muscular body and has been called “big and strong” by her parents, a retired couple who never had a daughter of their own.
At 15, the daughter of Shan and Gao Shi is much more feminine: she has no hair and not much muscle. And now, at 17, she is a woman with a man’s body and head of hair.
She is a “turned girl” – the word that describes the period of time and a person between puberty and womanhood. This is the story of how it all happened.
“As a girl my body changed quite a bit,” said Shi, who is now a woman. “Like my hair, it was longer and thinner.”
Shi’s parents are former migrant workers who moved to Canada from China and did so after their first daughter was born. Both were educated at university.
They had a baby girl, but didn’t have their first daughter. It made them question whether they would have one or two more.
Shi’s father, an accountant for a company in Ontario, said it was a very difficult decision for him to leave his country to come to another country. He was also worried about his daughter’s future.
But even that wasn’t enough to dissuade him from moving to Canada when he had his second child – with his wife, who was also a migrant worker in the city.
“We were so afraid that if we came back it would be like starting all over again,” said Shi’s mother, Gao. “She was 14 when I came and just turned 15. As a first-time parent, I was so scared that I didn’t know what to do with her. I didn’t know how I was going to raise her.”
But they made the decision, at least
