The reason Patty is thought to be a lesbian is simple: she’s a tomboy, and she has a very devoted female friend that seems to want to be a bit too close.
Problem is, that doesn’t work. It only says that Marcie might be a lesbian. So why is that never the story? Why do we always focus on Patty?
The answer I came up with? It’s just basic shipping. Charlie Brown wants to be with the red-headed girl. and has shown no feelings towards anyone else. So, naturally, being the main character, he gets what he wants. This means that Patty can’t have him, so we have to pair her up with someone. And she is very good friends with Marcy, and Marcy very much seems to have a girlcrush on her. So, make them lesbians, and they’re happy, too. Throw in Schroeder and Sally, both who very much act like kids who like each other, and you have all the good people having a happy relationship. (Snoopy is to asexual for people to care.)
Though it does suck that it leaves Pigpen with Lucy. More likely, since he’s not really a main character, he finds another character, and mean old Lucy winds up with no one.
Anyways, I think people naturally “ship” characters in their head, and that’s what led to Patty being a lesbian.
Yes, and to the best of my recollection, Peppermint Patty was never referred to simply as “Patty” in the strip. (And Charlie Brown was never referred to as just “Charlie.”)
No, they didn’t. Parody is protected, so they had no basis to do so. However, after having a conversation in which Bil Keane asked him nicely not to produce DFS anymore, Spinn acquiesced.
And yes, I know I’m responding to a six-year-old comment.
The rest of your post makes good sense, though. It does just come down to shipping fun - and though I think Patty probably wasn’t intended to be a lesbian, there’s nothing dirty minded about pointing out that she does have quite a few traits associated with lesbianism, or with interpreting the character that way. Basically, the question is, is a character ONLY what the creator strictly states he/she is? Or is interpretation beyond the author’s intent legitimate, if enough evidence backs it up?
That reminds me of the one element I liked in the otherwise hamfisted parody But I’m a Cheerleader, about a group of teenagers sent (voluntarily or otherwise) to an “exodus”-style camp to cure their gayness. One of the girls had a buzz cut, loved sports, bascially met every tomboy/lesbian stereotype, but eventually came to realize that she wasn’t actually gay. She liked sex with boys, but because she was not “cured” in the desired manner (i.e. came to heterosexuality through repentance and discipline), she got bounced from the program. She’d been sent there originally not specifically for being a lesbian, but becasue she didn’t conform to someone’s ideal of femininity - her parents and friends had told her repeatedly that she was acting like a lesbian, and therefore must be a lesbian, and therefore must be cured of being a lesbian, that she bought into it.
Of course, it’s possible I’m reading too much into this - it’s just that it occured to me that it wasn’t important to sort people into categories as either¸straight or gay, which in some small way undercut the movie’s pro-gay message.
Welcome to the SDMB, BluntDinerz. You make an eloquent argument for what you say were Schulz’s intentions, but I’m not persuaded. One reason is that I know (to my own satisfaction) that he could be somewhat tone-deaf.
I vividly recall reading a series of Peanuts strips in the newspaper, in which Peppermint Patty was displaying some rebelliousness. Her epithet of choice about everything that aroused her displeasure was “dork,” or “dorky.” I can’t find any of those strips in the anthology books, and I’m comfortable with my supposition that the reason for this is because he was alerted to the current slang meaning of the term before they got republished, leading him to decide to suppress them.
One little thing before we start. If you check the timestamp under over the poster names, you’ll notice that this thread is more than six years old. It’s generally best not to respond to old (AKA “zombie”) posts, as the people who posted in them in the past may or may not be around anymore, and if they are, they probably aren’t paying attention.
This is what the forthcoming lesbian zombie jokes will be about. Probably either a variant of ‘zombies like a girl with BRAAAAAINS’ or some wordplay involving eating in the oral sex context.
I don’t think I agree with your analysis. The problem is the same with all the PP+M shipping: They clearly don’t like each other very much.
They don’t hang around with each other because Marci is after amazingly toned ass, they hang out with each other because they’re both social outcasts (PP is a tomboy before that was cool, Marci is the weird foreign student) and hanging out with someone is better than being alone. Even if you resent that someone for reminding you of what a loser you must be to be with them.
Most of thier dialog together is mean, and a good part of it isn’t even conversation, just two people talking AT each other about unrelated things and not listening to the other.
Not (necessarily) gay, just a disfunctional geek ‘friendship.’
I still think the three-way scene that got cut out of You’re a Man Now, Charlie Brown! should have been left in. Things can get better, even for freaks and outcasts.
The ages of the characters, both relative and absolute, are inconsistent over the course of the strip. But for most of the strip’s run, Linus is already in school (and infatuated with Miss Othmar), and since he’s Lucy’s little brother, most of the other main characters must be older than him.
Watching as a child, I always thought Mercy was gay and Peppermint was just an ugly boyish girl. I got that notion, because there’s an episode where a boy like Mercy and she beats the shit outta him. I don’t think any straight girl would act that way, even if she didn’t like him. I never got gay vibes from Peppermint. She does things to make herself near Chuck, as she called him, and be girly. Like the time she put bows in her hair and looked worse. I remember when the creator died, SNL did a skit and Mercy came out as a lesbian. I thought “I knew it”.
Peppermint Patty was based on a tomboy cousin of Schulz’, named Patty, who was a woman and not gay.
I need a really convincing cite for that or I don’t believe it. I know a whole lot about Peanuts and Schulz and have never heard of the book or its banning.