Photo-illustration: Getty Images, Astley Baker Davies Ltd./Entertainment One
It would be difficult, I suppose, to avoid antagonizing people when you are a piggy young megacelebrity who may or may not be more than two meters tall. But this is the life of Peppa Pig, the animation star on the British children’s television program Peppa Pig. It seems that the gigantic 4-year-old sow girl is hardly able to go a few weeks without any public figure complaining about her, justly or not. There were the firefighters, the Recording Academy, the actor, the rapper …
Some of the criticism was deserved: in 2017, for example, Peppa was forced to take into account her naive and potentially dangerous views on spiders. Others, however, look more like green grapes. Parents complain that Peppa’s songs are very catchy, and that her show is very engaging for audiences under 5 years old. What should a young, hardworking pig do with this feedback? Did it get worse at her job?
Peppa’s most recent critic is Cardi B, who warned Peppa last week for “COUNT YOUR FUCKING DAYS”. What did the singing pigs do to upset Cardi so much? Who are Peppa’s other enemies? What does “Expert Daddy Pig” have to say about all of this? Below, we look at some of Peppa’s most public feuds.
In 2017, an episode of Peppa Pig called “Mister Skinny Legs” was taken down in Australia because he argued that spiders were not scary and showed Peppa taking a spider and putting it on the bed. Given that Australia is home to some of the deadliest spider species on the planet, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation considered the episode “unsuitable for the Australian audience” and banned it from being broadcast in the future.
Hi, Peppa.
In 2019, Peppa’s troubled past came back to haunt her when a clip reappeared laughing at the idea of her mother being a “firefighter”. “Mama Pig is dressed as a fireman,” says the narrator in the clip. “Mom!” Peppa scoffs. Peppa was called a sexist and her dismissal frustrated the London Fire Department, which responded on Twitter: “Come on @peppapig, we haven’t been firefighters for 30 years. You have a big influence on children and using outdated stereotyped gender-specific words prevents girls from becoming firefighters. “
Peppa did not respond publicly, but she seemed to be more cautious about the use of words going forward.
Despite releasing one of the most captivating and conceptually interesting albums of 2019, My first album, Peppa Pig was not nominated for a single Grammy by the Recording Academy. Hm. Maybe the Academy didn’t get a chance to hear the whole thing, or maybe they didn’t appreciate all layers of music like “Expert Daddy Pig”, which is a stark portrait of Peppa’s father’s incompetence and a striking portrait of toxic masculinity at home, or “Bing Bong Zoo”, a psychedelic meditation on the concept of self.
Peppa, for his part, did not take the rejection well.
Perhaps one of the most difficult pills Peppa had to swallow was the criticism he received from one of the most beloved erotic actors and mixologists in the world, Stanley Tucci. In a lock journal for The Atlantic published in May, Tucci led readers through his ridiculously charming daily routine. He jumps on a trampoline, shares four different recipes, and then there’s this painful part about Peppa’s show, which his kids love:
(There is no doubt that my wife and I, along with many parents, wish the creators of that annoying animated pig a slow death, but they are so rich that they probably bought immortality. And yet, at the same time, said pig allows for a break. half an hour or more every day. May God bless these creators.)
Damn it. Imagine being called an “annoying animated pig” by Stanley Tucci when you are still hurt by the Grammy scorn and are also only 4 years old. Poor Peppa.
Tucci was not the last celebrity to choose violence when it came to Peppa. Two days after Christmas, rapper Cardi B lamented the negative impact Peppa had on his daughter’s shoes. See, inspired by one of the Peppa Pig episodes (she doesn’t say which one, but maybe it was “Muddy Puddle”, the episode where Peppa and her friend play in a muddy puddle), Cardi’s daughter Kulture is stomping on your feet in puddles and ruining your shoes. “That shit makes me so tight!” Cardi wrote. “Run away from her uggs … Deum, you peppa pig … TELL YOUR FUCKING DAYS!”
Peppa did not respond to Cardi’s threat, instead sharing clips of her joyful family Christmas, with her shoes visibly dry. Maybe brag?
That’s it for now, but we’ll update this post if / when more Peppa feuds arise.