People Have Started A Petition To Have A Same-Sex Family On ‘Peppa Pig’
Remember the TV shows from back in our day? Pound Puppies and Bubble Guppies and a whole bunch of ridiculous but highly entertaining fluff. We’ll be honest, if we had to watch some of those on repeat, we’d lose our minds! We owe our own parents a debt of gratitude. The shows our kids watch are, for the most part, not terrible! One of the best parts of kids shows these days is that they’re changing with the times. They’re getting so much more inclusive! There are neurodiverse characters, differently-abled characters, and characters from all walks of life. Same-sex families are also being represented more and more, but is it enough? Some fans of Peppa Pig don’t think so. They’ve started a petition to have a same-sex family included on everyone’s favorite plucky porcine cartoon. Where do we sign?!
You’re probably familiar with Peppa Pig and her family and friends on the show. The families are somewhat diverse. But there are no same-sex families. And that, say some viewers, should change.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuJyuonh2mK/
A petition has been started by Care 2 to urge producers of the show to include a same-sex family. To date, it’s already garnered more than 17,000 supporters! The petition reads in part, “Children watching Peppa Pig are at an impressionable age, and excluding same-sex families will teach them that only families with either a single parent or two parents of different sexes are normal. This means that children of same-sex parents may feel alienated by Peppa Pig, and that other children may be more likely to bully them, simply through ignorance. Peppa Pig is not just for entertainment, children are inevitably learning from it too”.
We definitely agree about the show’s target audience being children of an impressionable age. And as we’ve seen time and time again, representation is so incredibly important. Surely there are kids who watch Peppa Pig who come from same-sex families! And not seeing their family included in shows like Peppa can feel very exclusionary. Not only that, but teaching children at a young age that families come in all shapes and sizes, and having two moms or two dads is totally normal, goes such a long way toward removing the stigma that so many LGBTQ people face everyday.
The petition to include a same-sex family on the show gained in popularity after another cartoon included a gay wedding.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxf3TPfFJ4m/
In the season 22 premiere of Arthur, Mr. Ratburn marries his “special someone”. Which, if you’d watched even one episode of that show, should not have been at all surprising. But the point is, it was sweet! And kids LITERALLY DO NOT CARE. They were probably more weirded out by Arthur’s teacher getting married than they were by the fact that he married a man. Kids just don’t care, man. It’s normal to them, as it should be! If we can get our kids to believe that rats get married and pigs go on vacation, then getting them to understand that same-sex couples and families exist should be cake.
