The Journal

Issue date: 4/14/05 Section: Opinion/Editorial

Lindsey Pilcher

I can still remember a scene from "Sesame Street," in which Cookie Monster ate the moon, which was actually a giant cookie, and then felt really guilty for it. As a child, I could relate, because I was often doing things I shouldn't have been doing. Like Cookie Monster, I experienced guilt at my young age, when I cut my own hair or said something mean to my parents. But Cookie Monster won't be acting up anymore.

"Sesame Street," which has always tried to focus on the positive, wants to set a good example for its child viewers. Since obesity is a rising concern, Cookie Monster will now try to set a good example by eating cookies only some of the time. Every episode in the new season will begin with a health tip.

According to CNN, the show will feature a wider variety of characters, such as talking vegetables, and it will present parodies such as "American Fruit Stand." Rosemarie T. Truglio, the show's vice president of research and education, said the show wanted to teach children about healthy eating habits and the benefits of exercise.

"Sesame Street" has always been engaged in social engineering - it taught me the importance of basic hygiene, something kids try to resist. We shouldn't be surprised that the producers want to make healthy eating habits a focus for the show's 35th season. Kids have been growing up with Cookie Monster for years, however, obesity in children is only a very recent development.

According to the American Obesity Association, "approximately 30.3 percent of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight and 15.3 percent are obese. For adolescents ages 12 to 19, 30.4 percent are overweight and 15.5 percent are obese."

The percentage of obese children has gone up 400 percent from 1971 to 2000. Sesame Street has been around since 1970, but apparently children didn't make Cookie Monster their role model until, oh, just now.

As a child, I never emulated Cookie Monster. I empathized with him when he did something wrong. And eating bowls and bowls full of cookies was wrong; it was never presented as the right thing to do. The other characters on the show didn't get his fetish. My childhood friends and I didn't want to copy on the characters' idiosyncrasies, by living in a trash can or having a one-food diet.

Children aren't stupid. They recognize exaggeration in characters. They are also not as gullible as we would like to believe. If all their cartoon characters are perfect beings, with no bad habits to learn from, the show will lose credibility. Children may believe in a fuzzy blue monster, but they will not believe in a blue fuzzy monster with no bad habits.

As highlighted in a recent Gorlok Gauge, all of the best cartoon characters have flaws. Pepe LePeu is so aggressive, he would probably face charges of sexual harassment in the modern world. Bugs Bunny was a cross-dresser. Snuffleupagus was manic-depressive, but that doesn't mean we should prescribe Prozac. We're not perfect, and neither are puppets.

This may not be the most important news of the day, but it has generated lots of anger from bloggers and reporters and many others who feel like their childhood image of Cookie Monster has been destroyed. "Armageddon is surely upon us for the very fabric of our culture has been sullied," writes one pissed off blogger on www.musingsofachick.blogspot.com.

But ranting about it just doesn't send enough of a message. Starting right now, I'm boycotting the letter Q and the number 3.

Lindsey Pilcher, a senior journalism major, is the managing editor for The Journal.

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