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?