Peppa Pig introduces lesbian couple. (Peppa Pig/Channel 5)
Popular children’s TV show Peppa Pig has introduced its first same-sex couple.
In an episode broadcast on Channel 5 Tuesday (6 September), Peppa is joined by classmates Suzy Sheep, Danny Dog and Penny Polar Bear as they start drawing pictures of their family.
Penny draws two female Polar Bears in dresses before turning to Peppa and saying: “I’m Penny Polar Bear. I live with my mummy and my other mummy. One mummy is a doctor and one mummy cooks spaghetti. I love spaghetti.”
The show has been running since 2004, but this is the first time in its 18-year history it has featured a same-sex couple.
Well what do you know? My kids saw the first same-sex couple on Peppa Pig and the world didn’t end. Penny Polar Bear said she lives with her ‘mummy and her other mummy’ and the four horsemen of the apocalypse didn’t came storming over the horizon to bring humanity to a close. pic.twitter.com/dtcHMDXJt5
— Simon Harris – #LovelyBitOfSquirrel (@simonharris_mbd) September 7, 2022
The move comes two years on from a petition demanding a “same-sex parent family on Peppa Pig”.
The petition, which has now gained more than 23,000 signatures, stated: “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.”
And they are not the only ones to call for this addition. In 2015 former Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb told PinkNews gay characters should be welcomed in shows like Peppa Pig.
“If you impose arbitrary limits,” he said, “you’re saying that actually at heart, it’s not equatable. It should absolutely not be out of bounds, which it appears to be at the moment”.
Although there has been some backlash from homophobes on social media, there has also been plenty positive reaction.
“Peppa Pig introducing its first same-sex couple has given me such happiness this morning,” one person wrote.
Another hit back at criticism by saying: “The lesbians in question are polar bears. If you’re struggling to explain lesbians but can fully hop on board with talking, domesticated polar bears who live in human-like houses then I think you’re the problem.”
Peppa Pig’s new characters come three years after Mr Ratburn got married to a man in the long-running animated series Arthur, which went viral for paving the way for LGBTQ+ inclusivity in children’s TV.
Previously, Peppa Pig has shown its LGBTQ+ vibes, releasing queer anthem “Rainbow, Rainbow” in the show’s first album.