Besides, how can alluding to menstruation through a box full of period products – which Mei’s mother produces in one scene – be inappropriate for young audiences, or even radical for their prudish parents? In Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was published in 1970, the protagonist, a sixth former, spends most of the book wishing for her first period and experimenting with sanitary pads. It’s a young adult classic.

If we want to look at how things can go when young people are unaware of periods at the time they get their first one, let’s just think about Stephen King’s Carrie, in which the poor girl assumes she is bleeding to death in her gym class. Then she develops psychic powers as a result – hardly the poster girl for blissful ignorance. 

Personally, I took a leaf from my mother’s book and did my best to normalise periods for my children from the get-go. Unpacking the shopping, I’d ask one of my boys to take the shower gel and tampons up to the bathroom. “Ugh, I’ve got a bit of a headache, as I sometimes do when I have my period,” I’d say to my daughter. Needless to say, when they discussed menstruation in Year 3 Sex Ed, she was full of disdain for the boy who shouted “I think you bleed out of your bum!” Aged eight, she already knew far better. 

Yet it’s not just this physical aspect of adolescence that’s causing viewers to turn red. They are also grumbling about how Mei, in charting her course to independence, actively disobeys her parents. “It glorifies finding yourself and following friends at the expense of listening to your parents’ guidance,” wrote one viewer. 

Another was even more scathing. “Disney has long held an established trust by parents in this country… but Disney has finally now officially violated that trust once and for all by publishing this smut,” it said.