Spout Off: Peppermint Patty = Dyke/Not Dyke?

It seems the book has been closed on Bert and Ernie. Same could be said of Ren and Stimpy, The Great Kazoo, Pee Wee Herman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sirhan Sirhan and, of course, Anita Bryant.

Many of those aren't all that surprising, once you get over the initial shock of thinking of your childhood friends in such a way (I still can't watch Godzilla v Eleanor Roosevelt without getting creeped out); and then, you start seeing it everywhere.

And here, we hope to do to Peanuts what Cherry did to Archie (and if you know what I'm talking about, am I really the only pervert here?).

Helping me with this endeavor is a good old friend of mine, a pie fetishist, and the Hairshirt-iest motherfucker I've ever met: From Harlem in NYC, Joe, aka "The Funny One," aka "White Shadow."

On the other side of this Spout Off, I'm going to break with tradition, just this once, and actually step into the fray myself.

Yes.

All this would be quite a bit more exciting if it hadn't been three months since the last Spout Off...ah, well.

As my guest, I'll let Joe go first. Joe?
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Joe Says:

People need to lay off Peppermint Patty. Seriously.

“Peppermint Patty’s a huge fucking dyke!”

“Hey, what did Peppermint Patty and Marcie do for Thanksgiving dinner? They ate out.”

“I believe Peppermint Patty is a homosexual whose occasional flirtation with Charlie Brown is an attempt to deny an inner self she finds too painful to cope with.”

I’ve heard it all. It pisses me off, especially that last one, which is just crude. For years, people have been implying—or stating outright—that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are lovers. This is not the case. And here’s why:

I will grant you a few things. Peppermint Patty is not what you’d call a “girly girl”. She doesn’t seem to have any great need to proclaim her femininity from the rooftops. She is athletic. She seems more at ease on the sports field than she does interacting on a personal level with her peers, which could imply some sort of social maladjustment, possibly indicating a degree of confusion about her own identity. These things I grant you.

These things do not, however, mean that she’s going at Marcie with a strap-on.

She’s a child, people. She’s meant to be, what, ten years old? Eleven? At eleven, there’s a high likelihood that her sexual identity is still being worked out. She may have leanings toward being attracted to other girls. She may have an inkling that she’d rather kiss Lucy than Linus. She may know that there’s more to her love of sports than just a desire to eventually win a scholarship to Cal Tech. But she’s too young to be sexually active.

Despite what we see on Maury and Jerry Springer, most ten and eleven-year olds are not yet engaging in sexual activity. So, yes, Marcie is apparently old enough to drive a car in France. She is not, however, old enough to be hooking up at an Indigo Girls concert.

Peppermint Patty and Marcie could very well grow up to be incredibly huge fucking dykes. For now, though, they are children. Peppermint Patty is a tomboy and Marcie is a bookworm. That’s it. No mas.

Now, let’s talk about what a little fag Schroeder is.
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TBO Says:

I find it interesting that my colleague has decided to latch on to the supposed verisimilitude of this comic strip, thereby handily ignoring the one thing that has become universally accepted about Charles Schultz’s Peanuts. Namely: Each character represents an adult archetype.

So, while Lucy Van Pelt represents an adult’s attachment to rationality and cynicism, Linus would represent another adult’s desire to never grow up. Charlie Brown is everyman, the curly red-haired girl is that unattainable romantic ideal, Schroeder is man’s artistic nature, etc. etc. etc.

If we continue along this path, we see that the GLBT contingent had its inaugural mascots in Peppermint Patty and Marcie.

"Tomboy and bookworm?" C’mon! In real life these two met on the Varsity Volleyball team and spent every other post-scrimmage shower thigh-locked to ecstasy.

Let’s embrace this diversity, for merely labeling them as pre-cursors to Martina Navratilova is just scratching the surface.

Let’s take a look at Sub/Dom role play. What else are we to make of this whole “sir” business? The only thing missing here are the chains and collars. You ever notice that Marcie almost always gets her way? You notice that smile of hers? Like most subs, Marcie actually runs the show between these two. I’d bet that if you were to google images of Marcie and Peppermint Patty, somewhere along the way you’d get an image you’d rather forget, but it’d feature Marcie tugging on Peppermint Patty’s hair.

Which leads us to this revelation: Marcie is the more sexually ambiguous/adventurous of the two. No really. Unlike Patty’s rather butch attempts at luring Charlie Brown (the clumsy nature of which makes it obvious to the outside eye which side of the fence she resides on), Marcie’s smiling, beguiling and toying come-ons to the perpetually confused Brown, combined with the mysterious nature that the *ahem* librarian’s glasses provide, gives her a certain knowing and scheming quality, not unlike that of a mynx.

Marcie is the Willow Rosenberg of the Peanuts gang…Sure, she’s all tics and fumbly, but remember Tara’s song in the musical episode? The sort of naughty shenanigans Willow indulged in? Marcie started all that.

In short, Charles Schultz was a stone freak.

Having established that, the less said about Pig Pen, the better.
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Joe's Rebuttal:

I’m just glad Charles Schultz never tried to lay a lame-ass season-long “Marcie is addicted to magic” arc on us. ‘Cause that’s unbearable in any medium.

And what’s your problem with our proto-Deadhead, patchouli-stinkin’ brother Pig Pen?
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TBO's Rebuttal:

Marcie may not have been addicted to magic, but Schultz’s got a bit creepier when he had his real life daughter, Jill, get freaky with Spike, Snoopy’s skeezier brother.

And there ain’t nothing wrong with Pig Pen, just that he left Franklin alone while he was on a particularly bad trip. Franklin has never been the same since, man.