Not Your Mother's Meatloaf

As teenagers today navigate increasingly fluid identities and choices, there is a demand for an accessible, interactive tool to help share knowledge about sex and sexual health; one that demystifies the facts and speaks frankly about experiences whose lessons often fall into the grey areas. Since 2008, Miller and Bley have held an open call for young people to create comics that address a variety of topics involved with sex education. We have since produced several issues of a sex-ed comic called Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf. The work is chosen from a vastly varied group of submissions and attempts to challenge hetero and gender normative practices in sex education. The comics address topics like body image, safer sex, consent, and relationships, from positions that have historically been left out of sex education. These graphically illustrated personal narratives address different themes, such as “Firsts,” “Bodies,” “Health,” “Age,” and “Endings.” The book will bring together the best of the material from the Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf comics, along with new graphic stories and writing by the editors providing personal and sociological background.

Author Biography

Saiya Miller graduated from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. She has worked as an educator and activist, teaching art and music, as well as using comics and zines in workshops for teenagers. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and Vermont. Liza Bley studied writing in New York City, where she also worked at Make, a craft and sewing school, and contributed sampled to the book Embroider Everything Workshop.