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Recently, an animated adaptation of the comic strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn was cancelled by Nickelodeon, who claimed that boys won't watch cartoons with female protagonists. This incident shows how out of touch TV executives are with the audiences of their shows.
Contrary to popular belief, gender doesn't matter. A good show is a good show, and if it's good, then anyone, including boys, can watch it, and history has proven that time and time again. Here are just a few examples:
- Winsome Witch is a series of Hanna-Barbera shorts that aired during The Secret Squirrel Show. Even in the 1960s, Hanna-Barbera knew that boys can watch shows with female leads. Winsome Witch is about a witch named Winnie, and the magical mishaps she gets into. She's just as clumsy and hilarious as any other male H-B character, and she doesn't have a sidekick. While she is obscure nowadays, that's just because the various backup segments in Hanna-Barbera shows aren't very well-known in general.
- Also from Hanna-Barbera is The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, a spinoff of Wacky Races, featuring one of the most popular characters, Penelope Pitstop. She dresses in pink and is often a damsel in distress, but she's still able to save herself, and sometimes even saves the all-male Ant Hill Mob. If there's one thing H-B was good at, it was keeping in touch with their audience. If you look at the Amazon reviews for the complete series DVD, you'll find a lot of male reviewers praising the show, if only because they found Penelope to be hot. Guys WILL watch your cartoon if it has an attractive female character.
- Speaking of which, there are a whole bunch of anime starring cute girls (known as 'moe' or 'bishoujo') and guess what? They're targeted at male demographics (such as shonen, young boys, or seinen, adult men). Shows such as Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, and K-On! are popular with boys and men not just because of their cute girl characters, but because they're funny and relatable. In particular, Konata Izumi from Lucky Star behaves a lot like the average otaku.
- Going back to Nickelodeon, they don't have very many Nicktoons with female leads. Just one of them is The Mighty B! It's a show about a young girl, Bessie, and is just as absurd and slapstick-filled as SpongeBob. Though short lived, it was a big hit for the network, getting 1.92 million viewers in the 2–11 demographic AND beating out Bakugan, a male-oriented anime, in the ratings.
- Another short-lived 2000s female-led cartoon is Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. At the time it premiered, it was the Cartoon Network's top-rated hit for kids 6–11. It has a cult following today, a good chunk of which are guys who think the characters are cute. Again, guys WILL watch your cartoon if the girls are cute.
- A much more notable Cartoon Network show is The Powerpuff Girls. Admittedly, the pilot didn't do well with a test group of 11 year old boys, but the actual show became a huge hit with everyone including boys. Everyone can enjoy watching little girls beat up bad guys.
- Lauren Faust, who worked on PPG, would go on to create My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And we all know how the story goes: it was bashed for being "the end of creator driven animation" and "smarts-shaming" by people who hadn't even watched the show. A certain image board watched the show to see what all the fuss was about, and thus, Bronies were born. It's important to note that Faust deliberately made the show in such a way that everyone, from boys to adults, can enjoy it. And did she succeed. Once again, guys like to watch cute girls kick ass.
- Exactly ten years ago, a spinoff of Avatar: the Last Airbender premiered: The Legend of Korra. Nickelodeon was hesitant with the show at first. They thought that boys wouldn't like the show because Korra is a girl. They were dead wrong - the boys in the test audience didn't care that she was a girl -- they thought she was awesome.
Despite all of these girl-led cartoons being popular with guys, TV executives still seem to believe that boys don't want to watch cartoons about girls. In a Discord server I'm in, someone noted that The Casagrandes was forced to shift its' focus from Ronnie Anne to her cousin, Carl, so that boys would watch the show (I don't watch the show, so I wouldn't know). Compare that with its' parent series, The Loud House. We have one boy and ten girls, but boys still like it, even after the sisters got just as much, if not more, focus than Lincoln. Despite all of that, Lincoln still gets over-promoted and put in the title cards, even if he doesn't appear in the episode. Nickelodeon is so out of touch, it's not even funny.
Cartoons transcend gender. Whether its' cute girls doing cute things or girls in action, a good show is a good show.
Comments
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olwst
Of these, my favorite is The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and hurdle is my childhood sky.
RyGuyHill
My favorite cartoon is Bob’s Burgers and pretty much all the main characters are female. And Gene (the boy) cross dresses and is very feminine. I worship this show and I’m a male.
GRIFFEN
we can pretend like this is a new statement but it's not. every top of a company is out of touch somehow and it always sucks
HeartOfGold
It's really disheartening to hear about the cancellation, especially since I was a big fan of the comics when I was younger. I'm a guy (albeit a trans one) and as a kid I was fine with the girls getting the spotlight. Not to mention that Phoebe in the comics is pretty boyish at times if memory serves. It just doesn't make sense, why are boys the only demographic they care about anyways? It's nearly 2023 goddamnit!