F*ck You Sesame Street: Standing up for Bert and Ernie’s romantic love
Bert and Ernie are a couple. This confirmation came from Mark Salzman, who used to write for Sesame Street, that he had always written them as being gay and being together. Their storyline was in fact based on his own relationship with another man at the time.
Sesame Street then released an official statement this week, writing “As we have always said, Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation.”
Now you may say, “So what? Who cares about two puppets on a kids television show?”. As it turns out, I care. A lot.
Reading all of this sent me into a deep spiral of rage and I spent much of yesterday afternoon trying to figure out why this seemingly small piece of news had such a profound effect on me.
On so many levels, this is a blatant double standard. It has been an unspoken understanding for many people that Bert and Ernie were a couple, something that had never been officially confirmed or denied. I had never given it a thought until Sesame Street came along to quash any romantic nature of their relationship. Not only this but that they had the balls to use the excuse that they are “just puppets” and they “do not have a sexual orientation”.
Compare this to other characters on the show including Kermit and Miss Piggy (a straight puppet couple) who, as indicated by the fact that they had a fucking wedding on air very clearly DO have a sexual orientation.
So Sesame Street, I say a royally giant fuck you.
If it was true that no other puppet characters were in relationships on the show, I might believe you. But all that publicly denying Bert and Ernie are a couple achieves is the continued spreading and reinforcement of a damaging message. You didn’t say it in these words, but it is a statement that same sex couples should be invisible. That same sex couples are less valid than their heterosexual counterparts. That same sex relationships are wrong, shameful, and so many other things that should have no part in our present day culture.
The next thing that fuelled my internal fire was the number of people online trying to defend Sesame Street’s position as “They are doing it to protect the children” and stating things like “Children should not have to be exposed to this type of thing, save it for when they’re older” and so on.
Ahem. Excuse me for a moment while I crack my gay lady knuckles.
If you purposefully hide same sex couples from children, they will only end up more screwed up because of it. Seeing Bert and Ernie in a relationship is not going to turn anyone gay. Take it from a person who tried for a really, really long time to be NOT gay.
If you are gay, you cannot wish it away.
Believe me. I tried. Like, really hard. No amount of seeing only straight couples on tv, in your family, online can make you straight. Equally, exposure to same sex couples will not make you gay. You will love who you love. Simple.
It is so damaging to your mental health to keep secrets like this.
Particularly one that relates to a fundamental part of who you are. For me it took a mental breakdown in my GP’s office, then six months seeing a psychologist at age 22 that eventually saw me to a place where I was able to come out to my family. However, I still had gotten a new job in a new city that I had strategically organised to start right after I told all of my family and friends.
This was because I thought it was a realistic possibility, perhaps even probable that I would lose them on revealing this part of myself. I had a plan and a place where I could start a new life on my own if I had to. Turns out I didn’t lose any of them, but I moved away anyway. It didn’t have to be that way.
All of your relationships suffer when you cannot be yourself.
When you spend every conversation holding something back, analysing every part of your language, stressing that they are going to find you out, telling lies to cover and pretend, it stops you from building meaningful relationships. For me, sometimes the pressure would become too much and it would come bursting out when I couldn’t control it. Once I told a good friend that I was gay when I was very drunk on a night out, but I made her promise not to ever tell sober me that drunk me had told her. It was over a year later before I finally plucked up the courage to tell her for real.
When I was able to come to terms with who I was and I accepted myself, categorically all of my relationships improved across the board. After I came out, I found out there were people in my life that were so hurt because I kept it from them for so long. All they wanted to do was be there for me and they felt awful that I had been going through all of it all on my own. Family members cried, friends cried, I cried. It never even occurred to me that others could react with the depth of emotion that they did, about something that I naively thought only affected me.
“Vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It is the magic sauce” — Brene Brown
My family and friends reacted amazingly. Which should not have been a surprise to me, but it genuinely was. I have the most loving, supportive, progressive, parents and sisters. The reason that I didn’t believe in them and believe in my friends is due to the fact that there was (and still is) such a huge lack of positive story telling around coming out and same sex relationships in general.
All the stories I saw on television and heard about as a young person that involved a gay storyline were usually these angsty, tattooed teenagers from a rough part of town. They came out and they got beaten up. Or kicked out of home. Or lost their best friend. There were stories of suicide attempts and substance abuse.
So where were the positive stories? Where was the girl on tv that did well at school, that hated practicing the the piano but loved the guitar, that had the a loving family? Where was the girl that expressed who she was, that was accepted, that got to fall in love and be happy beyond her wildest dreams?
If that was a story I had seen, if that was a story being told, I can say for sure that my road to accepting myself would have been a hell of a lot better. To know that it was an option that everything could work out and be ok.
So again I say fuck you, Sesame Street.
For continuing to propagate this shit that has hung over my head for so long. I’m done with it. I’m sick of feeling like a second class citizen. Sick of being told I need to hide. Sick of hearing that my relationship is unnatural or damaging to children.
I don’t want any other kids, any other teenagers or any other adults to have to go through what I went through. Because it’s just not necessary. We can play our part to help.
After many years I am now strong enough to stand up and tell my my story with the hope that it reaches someone. To have it out there as an option for how it can go.
The remedy is visibility. The remedy is story telling. These stories matter. Stories can be the difference for someone that makes it, or doesn’t make it out of this difficult time in their lives.
So for fuck’s sake Sesame Street, let Bert and Ernie love each other.
