Beyond 'Heather Has Two Mommies'
The future of gay characters in children's entertainment.
by Brett Berk
February 10, 2009
As far as I can tell, it concerns a stay-at-home-mom whose partner goes to work and whose kid goes to school and who — instead of taking care of things around the house like she's expected to — has some sort of psychotic episode and starts talking to the furniture, the walls, the fireplace, and a pat of butter, all of whom answer back in cheap "ethnic" accents. There are also some droll songs, pleas for collective understanding, and a dose of nonsensical instruction about homophones. It's like Pee-Wee's Playhouse on a handful of Dilaudid. As someone who has advised the creators of some of the most successful kids' television programs, I would like to offer this advice to the show's producers: reevaluate.
But it feels a bit niggling to complain at all, given the limited supply of gay goods out there for kids. If I were still running my school, I'm sure I'd have all of these properties on my shelf, which makes me feel a little . . . depressed. I recently completed a consulting project for a major toy manufacturer, part of which entailed talking to groups of Latino moms about the characters they cherish for their kids. Some familiar ones came up — Disney, Elmo — but it wasn't until the end that someone mentioned the Big D. "I hate Dora," one of the moms finally stated, to guffaws of agreement from her cohorts. "Just because we're Spanish, people think we like Dora. We don't. She's dorky looking, she's annoying, and they often get the language wrong. I like Maya and Miguel. I like Handy Manny." High School Musical is the gayest thing to hit popular culture since Liberace.
Though the gays are gaining ground on Bravo, we haven't quite achieved our Dora moment yet: we don't have enough representation with young kids to allow us to be selective. Things are changing with our youth. Witness the way that young people see gay rights as a civil rights issue, and vote accordingly; to say nothing of the High School Musical franchise, which is probably the gayest thing to hit popular culture since Liberace. But we have a long way to go before we see a recurring, overtly gay character on a mainstream kids' show.
I had someone tell me recently that one of the reasons that Californians opposed gay marriage was because they didn't want to have to introduce the topic to their kids. Well, I told them (and I'll tell you) that introducing kids to homosexuality is no different from introducing them to heterosexuality — something we do all the time. There are appropriate ways to handle the topic. And some of the media I've reviewed here does so: clearly, compassionately, and humorously, but most of all with the acceptance of its normality. Be it sexuality, bedtime, or broccoli, kids don't see things as problems until we problematize them. My nieces have grown up with their gay uncles, and see us as normal (or as normal as my boyfriend and I can be). Maybe by the time they're of parenting age, I'll be able to do another, bigger Queer Media review. Perhaps by then, we'll be able to look back on this time laughingly as the era in which Ernie and Bert still slept in separate beds.
©2009 Brett Berk and Nerve Media
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