Nickelodeon’s Pride Post is One Big Flop

The children’s entertainment network Nickelodeon decided to get on board with Pride this year by making this twitter post:

Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month ???? ⁣
(????: by @ramzymasri) pic.twitter.com/pENmTaQB0h

— Nickelodeon (@Nickelodeon) June 13, 2020

Not all fans were impressed with this, myself included, and here are a couple of reasons why. First off, the no-context post led many people to believe that the star of his self-named show, Spongebob Squarepants, had been outed as gay. Rumors were further spread by TMZ’s article whose headline originally read ‘Spongebob is Gay’ but has since been changed.

However, in an interview back in 2005, show creator and marine biologist Stephen McDannell Hillenburg made a comment that the popular children’s character was asexual. While this could be cause for aces to rejoice at some level of representation, it should be mentioned that this was not meant to be a nod to the LGBTQ community but rather an accurate depiction of the sexual functions of sea sponges.

On the bottom right, they’ve chosen to stick a picture of Korra from the 2013 Avatar the Last Airbender spin-off titled The Legend of Korra. The show ran on air for three seasons following the teenage avatar and her friends, and hinted heavily at a brewing love triangle between Korra, Mako (male), and Asumi (female).

The show’s final season was taken off the air and released solely online due to “the adult audience” it had attracted. In the final episodes, it’s revealed that Korra and Asumi have developed feelings for each other, and the show ends with the two walking together hand in hand.

The last picture is of Michael D. Cohen, a Canadian actor and trans man featured in the newer, live-action series called Henry Danger. Cohen’s character in the show is cisgender, and he only made his transition public information last year.

In summary, to celebrate Pride month, Nickelodeon posted pictures of a sponge who’s sexuality is modeled after that of relative sea life, a bisexual character who’s bisexually was notoriously erased, and an actor they hired who happened to be a trans man. Not a great start when your biggest competitors have been including more and more LGBTQ characters in recent years. It’s time to step up; it’s time to do better.