?Peppa Pig is a brat.?
An old friend of mine made this uncreative observation recently, and she’s not alone in her thinking. I regularly see complaints about Peppa in my online parenting group.
It’s true that Peppa?s loud. She?s direct. Some people might call her bossy. She oppresses her younger brother, George. She?s not humble (?I?m sure I can already do it,? she says while learning to ice skate). She regularly fat-shames her father and she breaks her mother?s computer.
But does this make her a brat" It makes her a kid, still figuring out how to have a personality and testing boundaries. So why are so many quick to label Peppa as problematic" Could it be the age-old expectation that girls are meant to be ?good?" Fiction, storytelling and anthropomorphised pigs learning moral lessons have long existed in human society. We look to fables and serialized stories to reflect our experience and help us process it. So, when it comes to media for kids, it?s important to have responsible role models, like Daniel Tiger.
But kids and grown ups also crave the messy protagonist. Think about it. We’re in the Golden Age of the TV Antihero. For years, we celebrated flawed and dangerous men like Tony Soprano and Walter 
.related-article-block{display:inline-block;width:300px;padding:0.5rem;margin-left:0.5rem;float:right;border:1px solid #ccc}@media (max-width: 525px){.related-article-block{float:none;display:block;width:280px;margin:0 auto 2rem}}

9 ...