I have to admit, I didn’t have the male model David Gandy having a pop at Daddy Pig on my 2025 scorecard, but there he was last Sunday, bemoaning the cartoon character’s depiction of a domestic male, writes Simon Burch.
Instinctively, I found myself agreeing with him, adding something else to the long list of things I have in common with an impossibly handsome, rich man who looks good in a pair of pants.
Go David, I cheered, inwardly, as he railed against how Daddy Pig’s depiction on the kids TV show Peppa Pig as a stupid, lazy and joke example of a father figure represents a poor example of masculinity.
Daddy Pig is cut from some pretty familiar cloth, and is similar to another hopeless cartoon dad I remember from my reading-books-to-my-children days – Mr Large, the head of the Large clan, a house-dwelling family of elephants, who once had a storyline to himself when Mrs Large had to take to her bed through ill-health, and, predictably, made a hash of things.
I must have read that story to my boys dozens of times, not realising at the time that I was pouring anti-male, feminist propaganda into their young ears.
Tired and demeaning
And, presumably, they’ll be corrupted every time they watch the Simpsons, or should they watch old episodes of pretty much any sitcom you can think of which has a dad in it, where they’ll get a glimpse into a future where they will be outsmarted by their partner and their children, will be the doofus who trips over the things and, invariably, have their puffed-up opinions of themselves brought down to earth.
At first glance, it’s disheartening, tired and demeaning. I can totally catch David’s drift.
But not so fast.
There is no doubt that David Gandy has a serious message. He was on TV as a representative for the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), upholding its core themes that a strong, stable family is essential for children’s wellbeing.
And, the CSJ says, this creates a need for positive, inspirational father role models in society and the media, rather than hapless, useless Daddy Pig and all the Homers, the Ben Harpers and the Phil Dunphys – the stereotypical sitcom dads populating the rest of TV land.
Good men to counteract the bad
In the year characterised by Adolescence and the continuing concern about toxic male influencers, it’s certainly true we need some good men to counteract the bad and give young boys someone to look up to.
It’s a strong and alluring message, but, the reason I didn’t immediately burn my Y-fronts in solidarity with my brother’s call to action, is that I was forced to admit that there is probably a grain of truth in the way Daddy Pig is depicted.
More of this later, but my main issue is that, when I look at Daddy Pig, I don’t see a failure.
I see an (admittedly exaggerated) character who is loved and respected, and assumed to be so secure in his own skin as the de facto head of his household that he is able to handle being the butt of the joke.
David Gandy seems to be falling into the trap of thinking that all the (very many) things dads are laughed at for – dad jokes, dad bods, dad dancing, etc – are being used against them to bring them down in a hostile sense.
Teasing is a sign of acceptance
In fact, the opposite is true. It is a truism that when we gently tease someone it’s a sign of inclusion and love and it’s designed to show them that they are accepted into our clan as equals.
However, if you’re bigger, stronger and more prone to being angrier than everybody else (classic dad traits), then you can only be regarded as equal if that physical dominance is kept in check, which tends to involve putting you in your place with some gentle ribbing.
Your role is to accept the deal – to take the jokes, and even play up to them, to reassure everybody that you accept you’re not brilliant at everything, and that you’re cool with that.
Daddy Pig plays a blinder in this respect. Daddy Pig is, let’s not forget, a successful architect who – as long as he doesn’t make the classic fictional porcine blunder of designing houses made out of straw or twigs – presumably enjoys status in his working world.
Pratfalls and a bit hopeless
At home he also has status, but it’s as an equal and comes with a cost. He has to show his family (including us, the viewers) that his male ego is under control and he does that through the pratfalls and by being slow on the uptake, indicating that he can be accident-prone and a bit hopeless.
As a result, everybody likes Daddy Pig and nobody feels threatened by him.
That to me is a win for “good” masculinity, but there is one aspect of these characterisations which we males must accept as a defeat.
Although it was written by – shock, horror – two men, Peppa Pig exists for children, but is also watched by mums, who presumably watch a lot of children’s TV, since they do the greater share of the childcare.
They seem to have no problem with a dad being depicted as being rubbish and lazy when it comes to doing stuff around the home, presumably because, sadly, this is art imitating life, where wives and mums still do the lion’s (or lioness’s) share of the chores, and do them rather well.
Being sent a message
Whether you put the blame for this on genes or conditioning, it doesn’t matter.
Men are being sent a message, and if we really are fed up of the tiresome trope of sitcom husbands and dads being depicted as lazy, we know what we need to do.
We need to pick up our irons and our mops and show Mummy Pigs that we’re men of action on the home front, so that through the collective power of an equal division of domestic labour, we can consign the lazy Daddy Pigs, Jim Royles and their stereotypical ilk to the dustbin of history.
