Using their ultra-superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil. But in a newly rebooted series of Powerpuff Girls, the trio turns its attention to breaking down gender stereotypes.
Following the appearance of Manboy — an evil villain with “all the power of a man in the body of a boy” whose dastardly plan was to make Townville more manly — producers have introduced a transgender pony who so desperately wants to be a unicorn that he goes around wearing a fake horn. “I may not have a horn but I do have a heart,” says Donny the Pony, in new episode Horn, Sweet Horn, “and in that heart I know I’m a beautiful unicorn!”
“I don’t think you can be too young to start talking about those issues and thinking about those things and just presenting an attitude,” Executive Producer Nick Jennings told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a whole [episode that asks], ‘What are you on the inside? What are you on the outside? How do you identify yourself? How do people see you?’ There’s a lot of subtext in that.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Powerpuff Girls has addressed notions of gender. In fact, their very creation — out of sugar, spice, everything nice and an accidental pinch of chemical X — is a subversion of Professor Utonium’s idea of the “perfect girl.” I mean, why be the perfect girl when you can be a crime-busting, patriarchy-bashing, and gender stereotype-breaking superhero?
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Text Tish Weinstock