54 pages • 1-hour read
Half His Age
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes themes of sex, child sexual abuse, and emotional abuse.
Authorial Context: Jennette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy is an American actress and author. She is best known for her childhood appearance in the Nickelodeon show iCarly from 2007-2012. She won four Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards for her role as Sam Puckett. She also starred in the shows Sam & Cat, Malcolm in the Middle, Zoey 101, Lincoln Heights, True Jackson, and Victorious, among others. She later went on to produce, write, and star in the web series What’s Next for Sarah? and the series Between. She meanwhile developed a singing career which included an EP titled Not That Far Away and a single called “Generation Love.”
In 2018, McCurdy left her career in acting and performing to pursue careers in writing and producing. Her first film was a dramedy titled Kenny, which she both wrote and directed and which was inspired by her mother’s death. Other McCurdy films include The Grave, The McCurdys, and Strong Independent Women.
In 2022, McCurdy published her first book, a memoir titled I’m Glad My Mom Died. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years, and detailed her fraught and often abusive relationship with her recently deceased mother. In the memoir—as well as in subsequent interviews—McCurdy has detailed the complex facets of her maternal dynamic. She identified her reasons for retiring from acting as having been pushed into the career by her mother. The memoir also details exploitative and abusive dynamics she experienced while acting for Nickelodeon—the tenor of which extends to her novel, Half His Age.
While Half His Age is a work of fiction, in an interview for the New York Times, McCurdy revealed that the central relationship between 17-year-old Waldo and her teacher, Mr. Teddy Korgy, was inspired by her own experiences. In the New York Times transcript of the interview, McCurdy told Anna Martin that when she was 18, “she was in a relationship with a much older man. And it was only through writing Half His Age that she was able to work through her rage, understand her desire and reclaim her power” (Martin, Anna. “The Real Story Behind Jennette McCurdy’s Novel ‘Half His Age.’” The New York Times).
Cultural Context: Grooming and Student-Teacher Relationships
Half His Age traces the inception and evolution of the 17-year-old protagonist Waldo’s relationship with her middle-aged creative writing teacher, Mr. Teddy Korgy. Korgy’s impact on and abuse of Waldo is an example of grooming, a manipulation tactic used by sexual predators to control their targets and try to guarantee their silence.
Grooming is defined as “the deliberate act of building trust with a child, teen, or at-risk adult […] for the purpose of exploiting them sexually”; it typically “starts with friendship, mentorship, or kindness that gradually turns into manipulation, control, and sexual abuse or assault” (“Get the Facts About Grooming.” RAINN). Rather than a one-time instance of manipulation, grooming is a gradual process that often extends to the target’s family and close social circle. According to Bravehearts, an organization devoted to creating awareness around child sexual abuse, grooming perpetrators “are often seen as upstanding, likeable and charming, taking the time to build the trust of the child” and ultimately to keep the child from reporting them (“What Is Grooming?” Bravehearts). Due to their social standing or respected position in a community, the perpetrator is less likely to be suspected by those closest to the target.
In relationships between children or teenagers and adult perpetrators, grooming is harmful because it exploits the target’s inherent powerlessness: “Children of all ages are especially vulnerable to grooming because they are still developing their understanding of boundaries, trust, and relationships. Adults are often in positions of authority, which creates an imbalance of power” (“Get the Facts About Grooming.” RAINN). Children also understand that adults are their social superiors and learn early that they should not question them. These dynamics make it difficult for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse to identify their abusers’ seemingly affectionate behavior as grooming.
Half His Age depicts the harmful psychological and emotional repercussions of unbalanced, abusive adult-child relationships. Waldo is 17 and perceives her middle-aged teacher, Mr. Korgy, as her authority figure and her mentor. Her isolation is also so profound that she is desperate for any sort of adult investment in her life. She falls victim to Korgy’s attention because she wants to believe that he cares about her as a person; the result is a controlling and emotionally abusive dynamic.
Half His Age’s exploration of the problem of student-teacher relationships and child neglect is echoed in other contemporary works of literature, such as Joyce Carol Oates's Fox (2025), Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir (2022), Elizabeth Strout’s Amy and Isabelle (1998), and Lynn Barber’s memoir, An Education (2009), which was later adapted into a film starring Carey Mulligan.
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