As a mother of three young children, I do as much as I can to keep them occupied and stimulated. However, there comes a point in most days when dinner is on, the children are tired and hungry and need a different type of activity. This is when the frazzled mother turns to the television for support!
“What would you like to watch, darlings?” “Peppa Pig” is the resounding reply. And there it is, peace. Three little faces transfixed by the electronic box in the living room.
But do you really know what they are watching and are you, as a parent, happy about it? Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure (?) of watching the episode about ‘Princess Peppa’. During this particular episode, the main theme was that Princess Peppa was most keen to spend her time looking at herself in the mirror to make sure that she was beautiful.
What messages are we sending our children? Do we not think that there is enough pressure on how we look, the colour of our skin, the size of our waist, the style of our shoes? These subliminal messages about ‘how beauty should look’ are all too much and too soon for children. I am all too aware of the pressures on teenagers regarding their body image (which is the making of several other blogs), but when are we going to stop and think about what potential damage we are doing? Surely, a better message to be delivered would have been that beauty is not how you look, but the person that you are?
In the same episode, Peppa then goes on to wake up her sleeping brother in the bunk below, because she felt that he should have been listening to Daddy pig’s story. Why didn’t she get reprimanded for such unkind behaviour? I know many a parent would go crazy if the elder sibling had woken up the younger child out of sheer selfishness.
I have to say that I am disappointed and somewhat concerned about these messages being delivered to young children through such innocent means. As far as I am concerned, Peppa is an unkind, rude and thoroughly selfish little pig, who is more concerned about her own body image than she is about the rest that her little brother George needs and gets.
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