Bluey

How exciting is it that new episodes of Bluey are out?!!! We all just want to talk about Bluey don’t we?

I have so much to say, that I’ll be breaking one of my blogging rules of keeping posts short if I say it all. So today I’ll just share one idea about Bluey.

Bluey has received a lot of praise for breaking gender stereotypes, see here, but also challenged for not doing enough, here. What is really cool in regards to gender, is that to some extent Bluey removes the dominant discourses children rely on to understand gender.

In my research I played the episode Dad Baby to a group of 4 and 5 year olds. (I didn’t realise at the time, but Disney refused to play this episode in the US!) Predictably, the kids started arguing over the gender of Bluey and Bingo almost as soon as we started to discuss the episode. It’s not just that the characters don’t play gendered games, it’s that the show has actually removed much of the key features children use to determine gender. Across the whole episode, gendered language such as pronouns was minimal with none for Bluey and only 3 times for Bingo. The dogs don’t have any clothes or haircuts to suggest gender such as dresses and long hair for Bluey and Bingo. Their names are also not gendered.

By removing elements that are gendered within dominant discourses, the show does something very clever. It’s not just removing the gender stereotypes, it’s removing the very things that get stereotyped by gender. It’s not just girls with long hair and short hair. It’s no hair.

Where this gets interesting, and kind of fun, is when kids still want to demonstrate their gender competence and tell you Bluey’s and Bingo’s gender. Kids get more creative with what they draw on to make their claims. My favourite is that because ‘boy’ and ‘Bingo’ both start with ‘b’, then Bingo must be a boy.

Try this out and let me know what your kids use to determine Bluey’s and Bingo’s genders. Do any of them suggest they’re nonbinary?