A great change is in the carbs

I was going to go with "Hot Potato" but figured everyone else would too

It is likely that we will never know the full story behind the gender neutralization of Mr. Potato Head, but the fact that you have read that phrase in legitimate reference to current events in a year during which public health officials race against the viral mutations of a worldwide plague and the world’s two most populous nations clash along their shared border tells you an inordinate amount about the uncanny days in which we’re living. There are some culture war stories which come as though pre-masticated, like the worms in a mother bird’s mouth, ready to be fed directly into the maws of perpetually-apoplectic Fox News Baby Boomers and defended just as passionately on Twitter by their post-structuralist grandchildren. Whether my own purely speculative theory — that some well-fed Hasbro executive listening to his niece describe her grad seminar over the family Christmas Zoom realized he could score three days of free worldwide media coverage for a toy that no one has talked about since Alf crashed through Willie’s roof and into our hearts — is on the money, or if this is a tip-to-tail sincere attempt to create a better world for our children by blowing open the confines of their imaginations, will be for each of us to divine.

The CBC news story on the announcement compares the move to recent aesthetic democratizations of Barbie, which “has shed its blonde image and now comes in multiple skin tones and body shapes.” Leaving aside the somewhat jarring editorial choice, in a piece naturally pointing towards pronouns, to refer to Barbie as “it,” I can’t help but think this parallel more than slightly inflates the role played by Mr. Potato Head specifically in enculturating cisheteronormative masculinity. Over the years, we’ve heard harrowing and heartbreaking stories about eating disorders and cosmetic mutilations besetting women and girls raised to think that Barbie was the epitome of Anglo-American femininity. Contrarily none of us, as boys caught crying in front of our buzz-cut fathers, was ever berated with: “Oh, the little pansy’s gonna cry?! Be a man, god damnit! A real man, like Mr. Potato Head!”

Of course the only way to prevent these stories from becoming culture war fodder is not to notice them; not to talk about them or write about them, and so I am already part of the problem. If three months from now, when literally no one including the people who work at Hasbro can remember that this even happened, some little kid who was still wearing their Halloween tiara on Sports Day can play with their toy with even a scintilla less anxiety, why not? There is no sane or balanced adult with any actual investment in Mr. Potato Head’s masculinity, and so let anyone’s being overly bothered by this be a sign to you that they are in very desperate need of your help.

Which leaves us with the only reasonable complaint, and it’s not small: the new name. Potato Head. Just Potato Head. As Q-Tip said, “Joni Mitchell never lies” — we didn’t know what we had until it was gone. Never has a simple, two-letter honorific done so much heavy lifting. That “Mr.” brought all the personality and charisma to the name; shorn of it, the naked “Potato Head” sounds vaguely like an anti-Irish derogation, an epithet hurled by Sean Hannity's ex-girlfriend in the white (very white!) heat of an argument. What’s more, as we move into a society whose titles of address are, reasonably, increasingly gender neutral, those of us invested in more inclusive language need to be careful that we don’t merely strip vivid, specific, and particular patriarchal language to replace it with bland nothingness. “Potato Head” is merely a neuter; therefore, I would like to conclude with a handful of name suggestions which move our spud into a non-binary future without sacrificing verve or imagination:

Rabbi Potato Head: this one is a natural, setting up a line of Hasbro Latkes™ certain to dominate Chanukah toy sales for years to come

Commodore Potato Head: a draw for children interested in either the navy or Lionel Richie

Professor Potato Head: “What do we mean when we say ‘potato’?”

Comrade Potato Head: Welcome to the fight for a better world, Hasbro. How much are the Indian and Vietnamese workers who manufacture our newly-liberated tuber getting paid?