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While the father of two is a big fan of Carpenter, he wasn’t expecting to have to explain the racy meaning behind the hit ‘Short n’ Sweet’ track to his 10-year-old daughter.
Kids asked the darndest things… including Dax Shepard‘s daughter Delta.
On Monday’s episode of his Armchair Expert podcast, Shepard reflected on a recent conversation he had with his 10-year-old about Sabrina Carpenter and the popular track, “Juno,” from her 2024 album, Short n’ Sweet.
While the track has become popular for its tongue-in-cheek reference to the 2007 movie by the same name in which Elliot Page gets pregnant in high school by their movie boyfriend, played by Michael Cera, it’s the sex positions Carpenter does while performing the song both across the U.S. and abroad during her international Short ‘n’ Sweet tour that have garnered both praise and backlash.
The actor revealed that he and his daughter listen to the album while he’s driving her to school. So when the conversation was broached about the pre-teen’s favorite song on the 12-track record, Shephard said the pair “worked through” the true meaning behind the tune.
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“She goes, ‘But do you know what Juno is?’ and I go, ‘No…’ and she’s like, ‘Well, it’s a movie,’ and I go, ‘The movie Juno? Yes, I know.’ And she goes, ‘Yeah, it’s a story about a girl who gets pregnant,'” Shepard, who shares Delta and daughter Lincoln, 13, with Kristen Bell, recalled. “I go, ‘That’s a little nasty.’ And she goes, ‘What’s nasty about wanting to have a baby with somebody?'”
Shephard explained that while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a baby with someone, it was the fact that the titular character in the movie, Juno MacGuff, got pregnant as a teenager.
“And she goes, ‘Oh, she’s in high school?’ She knew part of the Juno story, [but] she just didn’t know she was in high school,” Shepard said. “And the way she phrased it was like, ‘Wait, what’s nasty about wanting to have a baby with someone you love?’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, there’s nothing nasty about that, I’m just saying, ‘I wanna get pregnant in high school’ is kind of a nasty, fun lyric. It’s a positive ‘nasty,’ I’m saying.”
It’s not the first time Shepard and Bell have shared shared how they work through mature topics with their daughters.
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In a 2023 issue of Real Simple, Bell said that in their household, there are no “taboo” topics, and that includes sex.
“I hate the word ‘taboo.’ I think it should be stricken from the dictionary. There should be no topic that’s off the table for people to talk about,” Bell said at the time. “I know it’s shocking, but I talk to my kids about drugs, and the fact that their daddy is an addict and he’s in recovery. And we talk about sex.”
As for what the pair are teaching their kids, Bell said to “make amends.”
“Making amends and apologizing is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go. I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize,” she explained. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, right on.’ That’s important. If there’s one thing I want to teach my kids, it’s how to make amends—and that it’s for themselves, so they can like who’s in the mirror a little bit more.”
