At the request of a faithful blog reader I was asked to write this post. Close friends and family know I have the Winnie Rant. Imagine finding out a huge part of your life is a lie. That’s what happened to me a few years back…when I was told that all the characters of Winnie the Pooh were boys.
No, I wish I was kidding. I may have just shocked most of you, but it’s true. Winnie the Pooh characters are boys.
Let me just say, that in my journey of writing this post, I wondered if I’d have a hard time illustrating my points. Oh, it’s going to be so much easier than I anticipated. Okay, I mean, obviously Winnie is a boy, I don’t know why he was given a girl’s name… obviously whoever wrote the show didn’t have future telling skills to look forward and know about “The Wonder Years” … Obviously, the world was super confused to discover the main girl’s character as Winnie.
But okay, I can get behind the idea that Winnie is a boy. He wears a red shirt, talks like a boy and eats all the time. It’s not far fetched to identify him as a male. His best friend, Piglet, is an entirely different story.
If you’re going to make someone PINK named PIGLET a boy…you should at least make him the most masculine character! Yet, with his soft voice and fear of everything that moves (and everything that doesn’t)..it really DOES take a brain surgeon to figure out that PIGLET is a boy. I spent the first fifteen years of my life believing that Piglet, in all his pink timidity was a girl.
Rabbit. Okay, he gardens…not TOO abnormal for a man, but in his later years he often wore an apron and mothered a bird name Jessie. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to know? Maybe I was just raised in an ultra old fashioned home… but with VAGUE names like Rabbit, how was I supposed to gather that Rabbit’s gender was MALE?
Eeyore.. I had no doubt he was a male, however, I couldn’t figure out WHY he wore a pink bow on his tail? Why not blue? Why not the ever popular unisex colors of green or yellow? NO, we had to make him depressed AND wear a pink bow. Maybe I missed the historical Winnie the Pooh files where they explain why it’s pink, but I would think that Christopher Robin would do something, but I won’t even get started on his character. Why wasn’t one of their GRAND ADVENTURES to search for a blue bow for Eeyore? No WONDER he was depressed… He was dolled up and probably confused about the gender of his ONLY friends. I can understand his sadness.
Tigger, praise God, was the most obvious. I knew Tigger was a boy. I didn’t understand why He felt the need to stand on Pooh’s belly.. yet, I am not a man nor a mother of boys, perhaps this is normal? I think not, but, what do I know?
If you need further assistance in understanding my confusion take a look at what you’ll find on a good ole Google search:
So ..maybe it was just me.. or maybe there are kids all over the world confused… Why did no one ever tell us? Why didn’t someone draw the line with Winnie?
ASHLIN BOYLES 