Dedicated to Frank Oz and Eric Jacobson.
“It’s because I’m a pig isn’t it? … I did not get the nomination for best actress … can you honestly say I am not Oscar material? … In this male chauvinist, non pig world, did you ever think I even stood a chance?”
Miss Piggy to Johnny Carson at the 52nd Annual Academy Awards.1
I should begin with honesty. A very good place to start. I am not a Muppet fanatic. I have not always adored Miss Piggy as much as I adore her now. I was, for a long time, much more of an establishment Disney villain queer. A devoted worshipper at the shrines of Cruella De Vil or Ursula the Sea Witch. That said, I can happily watch a Muppet film with a glass of wine and enjoy a pleasant giggle.
Something about Miss Piggy struck me more deeply than the usual queer coded Disney villains. It could be the wig. It could be the dress. It is probably the karate chops. As a queer man, I am constitutionally inclined to admire a confident female character who can karate chop a villain with one hand and cradle her amphibian lover in the other.
There is something irresistibly special about Miss Piggy.
Her position in the public eye fascinates me. How could it not.
Miss Piggy has been a still performing celebrity since her debut in 1974 as Piggy Lee, a parody of the singer Peggy Lee, in a Jim Henson television special. 2 Since then she has done everything. She has starred in multiple feature films including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show and The Muppets Take Manhattan. She has hosted, guest starred, sung duets, delivered monologues and stolen scenes with alarming ease.
Through all of this, Piggy has developed a distinct comedic persona, one that draws heavily from the work of earlier comedic and dramatic female stars. She is a vessel for those classic feminine sensibilities, preserving them, exaggerating them and carrying them forward into the present day. In a strange way, she functions as both archive and performance.
Miss Piggy does not age. She is, much unlike myself, unvarnished by time.
Because she does not age, she is spared the usual indignities that accompany celebrity longevity. There is no physical decline to be commented on, no descent into public cognitive fragility, no late career unraveling that forces audiences to renegotiate how they feel about her. Unlike so many real celebrities of the past, she does not become an awful person, nor is she reframed through hindsight as someone whose opinions now make us wince.
Stars of her era tend to fall into familiar categories. Some become venerated icons, endlessly rehabilitated and re-contextualised, like Jane Fonda. Others quietly disappear into the fog of nostalgia, remembered fondly but vaguely, like your Tallulah Bankhead or Lauren Bacall. Miss Piggy exists in both spaces at once.
She is a figure of nostalgia and an active character in the contemporary media landscape.
She is a kind of immortal Carol Burnett, who fittingly appeared as a guest on The Muppet Show in 1980.
Because of this, Miss Piggy acts as a bridge to the previous century and to older, conventional ideas about femininity. She embodies them so fully that she is able to subvert them, twisting tradition into something that still resonates with modern audiences. Her exaggerated glamour becomes commentary rather than costume.
Modern pop stars even echo her influence. Chappell Roan, for example, has been rumoured to draw inspiration from Miss Piggy’s theatrical silhouettes and unapologetic excess. 3 This makes a strange kind of sense. Piggy understood the power of costume long before the internet turned fashion into a language of identity.
I am always interested in who Miss Piggy appears alongside.
On the original Muppet Show, she sang duets with John Denver, Elton John and Raquel Welch. Piggy is endlessly adaptable. She bends just enough to fit the guest star of the week without ever losing herself. Her personality is strong but elastic, capable of surviving any context.
In the most recent iteration of The Muppet Show, she appears beside Sabrina Carpenter. What is striking here is that Carpenter subtly adjusts herself to fit Miss Piggy, rather than the other way around. That alone says a great deal about Piggy’s accumulated cultural weight. By embodying stereotypes and gleefully undermining them, she has somehow become a modern trendsetter.
This is not something all boundary breaking celebrities manage.
Plenty of stars who once seemed radical now feel awkward, dated or outright troubling. Scarlett Johansson and Diane Keaton (until her death) continue to defend Woody Allen. Nicki Minaj has called herself Trump’s number one fan . Patti Lupone being Patti Lupone . 5 6
Divas age. They change. Often the media reacts badly to those changes, often unfairly. But Miss Piggy avoids this entire cycle. At the end of the day, she is literally put back in a box and stored until she is needed again, perfectly preserved.
Sabrina Carpenter is an interesting choice, but not an inspired one. The new Muppet Show is intriguing, yet it ultimately feels like a retreat into familiar territory. If you love The Muppet Show, you might as well just watch the original. It remains sharper, stranger and more alive than its successors.
Miss Piggy’s greatest appeal is her ability to function as a bridge. On the surface, she is just a pig puppet in a wig and a dress. Beneath that surface is a personality capable of making people feel seen, affirmed and entertained all at once.
As an entity, Miss Piggy also works as a quiet teaching tool. For audiences still learning about pronouns, identity and gender norms, she offers an accessible example. You can point to her and say, notice how this character refuses to be defined by what society expects of her. That is a deeply uplifting thing, even when it arrives wrapped in satin gloves and dramatic eyelashes.
Diva worship is basically my religion, and Miss Piggy absolutely deserves a niche, if not a full altar.
My favourite historical nugget is Miss Piggy’s 1979 campaign for the leading actress Oscar for her role in The Muppet Movie. It is what I love most about her. It felt like a genuine expression of character rather than a corporate publicity stunt. That campaign even produced a wonderfully absurd exchange between ABC’s Hughes Rudd and Academy President Fay Kanin.
“To see Miss Piggy is to think of Olivia De Haviland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Oscar winners all. So why shouldn’t Piggy have an Oscar?”
“You know we all do love Miss Piggy,” Kanin replied, “but the rules of the Academy say that we give awards and nominations to actors and actresses, not to characters, and since Miss Piggy is a character, we just can’t, we can’t do that.”
Miss Piggy, of course, would disagree. And she would be right in doing so.
Social Media Generator
✖