Popular UK based children’s cartoon Peppa Pig has surrounded itself with controversy yet again. A 2009 episode from the TV show got slammed by the London Fire Brigade for using an outdated stereotypical term ‘fireman’. The episode called The Fire Engine, that first aired in 2009, begins with “Mummy pig is dressed as a fireman.” The London Fire Brigade shared a meme from its official Twitter account and criticized it for promoting sexism. They wrote, "Come on @peppapig, we’ve not been firemen for 30 years. You have a huge influence on kids & using out of date stereotypical gender specific wording prevents young girls from becoming firefighters. Join our #Firefightingsexism campaign."
The London Fire Brigade said that the language used to refer to the firefighters as 'men' is sexist, when women can be firefighters too. Currently, the brigade is running its 'Firefighting Sexism' campaign to address gender imbalances in the workplace, noting that 354 of London's 5,000 firefighters, or seven percent of the workforce, are women. In order to awaken the knowledge that women can be firefighters too, LFB has slammed the cartoon.
Soon after the London Fire Brigade’s tweet, war of words ignited among the netizens in which some slammed the cartoon for hurting the sentiments of people, a few others put to notice that the episode mentioned is actually based on how a female takes control of an entire fire station and called the LFB’s accuse as baseless. Twitterati also stated that the cartoon has several times over showed strong female characters which is why they don’t deserve to face the heat and being called sexist.
On the other hand, London Fire Brigade also found a lot of supporters for its movement. The handle soon after tweeted the iconic Barbie donning a fire suit on her 60th anniversary and tweeted, Great to have another supporter in our #FirefightingSexism campaign. Welcome Barbie! She's coming to the rescue, helping girls & boys to imagine everything they can become by joining the Brigade, in our new gold kit too.”
This is not the first time that Peppa Pig has found itself in a pool of controversy. Earlier also the British cartoon was slammed for not wearing a seat belt in one of the episodes.
For more trending stories, check out our BUZZ section.
