Miss Piggy: life coach

Last month when one member of my life coaching team passed away, I wrote about it on my blog about the 80s television show The Facts of Life. David Bowie and Jo Polniaczek from Facts are two of three famous/fictional influences that significantly shaped who I am today. Their influence on my acceptance of my own gender nonconformity was crucial. I don’t want the third member of my life coaching team to be overlooked, though, so I want to dedicate a few words to her today.

Here’s to you, Miss Piggy.

Jo and Bowie have the whole gender-nonconformity thing going for them, and that speaks to me for obvious reasons. Piggy, of course, is the femmest of the femme. She’s obsessed with clothes and hair and makeup and has a large number of “way to not be a stereotype” moments. She is also a pig. Who dated a frog. Talk about nontraditional expressions and preferences.

By the way, yes, she “dated,” past tense, a frog. In case you hadn’t heard, Kermit and Piggy broke up last summer. Kermit then started dating another pig named Denise who is not anywhere near as fabulous as Piggy.

But lately on the new show, which you should catch up on before the season finale on Tuesday if you’re not already watching it, sparks have been flying. Piggy and Kermit are meant to be, and they will eventually get back together. I so hope they do. They remind me of me and my husband, except my husband is the pink one and my skin has more of the green tinge.

There’s also this Piggy:

Piggy has never been unable to take care of herself. She is strong and powerful in addition to being beautiful, and being interested in her beauty. When I began to reject gender norms and/or gender entirely, I was often unfair to women like Piggy; I thought that in order to be part of the solution you had to reject the norm (beauty) entirely. I never judged Piggy's commitment to the beauty norms, perhaps because she's a pig.

But the solution – and what Piggy ended up teaching me – is to encourage girls and young women that however they choose to express – traditional beauty, androgyny, tomboy-looking, sporty – is just fine. They should understand that anything is an option, but not be criticized if they voluntarily choose the traditional one. I do still worry that the messages sent to girls and young women is that traditional beauty is “norm” and anything else is “variant,” which takes away some of the voluntariness of the decision. But it's getting a lot better.

So Piggy, as a woman who chose beauty and also strength, imbued in me an understanding that beauty did not mean weakness. I didn’t completely process that message until recently, but its influence growing up certainly contributed to the way I see things today.

It must also be said that Piggy is an original champion for body-acceptance. She is a pig. She is thick and curvy and she doesn’t apologize for it. And just a couple of weeks ago, when she had a wardrobe malfunction on the red carpet...

...she – and all her wonderful friends – helped the population understand that they should #unveilthetail.

One of my most influential childhood books was Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life. I still have it, and I need to go dig it out of the garage and consult it again. Except for her obsession with diamonds, which are evil, her wisdom is wonderful guidance to a life of joy and levity. From her brilliant quotations to her consistent, daily existence as a pig woman who knows she is fabulous, Miss Piggy is a great role model for anyone.