Worldwide children’s TV sensation Peppa Pig has added a same-sex couple to its cast of characters – two lesbian polar bears. “I live with my mummy and my other mummy,” Penny says in the episode, which is titled “Families.”
It is the first time in the show’s 18-year history that the programme has introduced a family in which the parents are LGBTQ+. It comes two years after a petition was created on a US-based website, demanding a “same-sex parent family on Peppa Pig”. It has garnered almost 24,000 signatures.
“Children watching Peppa Pig are at an impressionable age,” the creators of the petition wrote. “Excluding same-sex families will teach them that only families with either a single parent or two parents of different sexes are normal.”
The cartoon show, centered around the 4-year-old piglet and her family, has been translated into 40 languages and broadcast in over 180 countries, becoming a “global phenomenon.