the signs were there

Somewhere in the Klein family archives, there is a video of me receiving a large-sized plush My Little Pony for what is probably my eighth birthday. Hasbro made these big Little Ponies for a short time, and I was excited, because I wanted them to be parents for my stable of smaller ponies. I already had a mom pony named Bowtie who was blue with pink bowties on her butt. Semi-traditionalist that I was, I needed a dad.

Later, there would be a line of boy ponies who had both the aesthetic and the professions of the Village People. They had names like “Tex” and “Chief.” But when I was eight, Pony Land was still an all-girls school. So my new large-sized plush “dad” pony—blue Bowtie’s husband—had wings and rainbow hair and long eyelashes. (I may have been a femmey kid, but the signs were there.)

My mom sewed them wedding outfits, because my parents were crazy enough to make my sister and I all sorts of amazing gifts by hand.

In the video, she says, “Since Bowtie already has 55 children, I made her dress off-white.”

All of which is to say, where rainbow ponies go, a certain amount of queering is sure to follow. I just found a link to this awesome My Little Pony comic via Bookslut—don’t be scared away by the part that says “must be 14 or older.” It’s totally safe for work, unless your boss has a thing against cross-dressing baby dragons.