Sarahenity: Mr. Bunny has an identity crisis

Mr. Bunny, post-adoption in Tokyo

I found out a few weeks ago that Mr. Bunny is a girl.

Let me back up for a minute.

I was inspired by different fun travel blogs (from the Follow Me guy to the simple food photo blog of Eat Your World) that use photos. I also love looking at photos of amazing landmarks, but I think I can only see so many photos of the Eiffel Tower or the Sphynx before I'm a bit bored. And as much as I love being a photo star (or Sergio would convince you), I thought it'd be a bit more fun to find someone or something to bring along.

And when I was in Toyko browsing Kiddy Land with Sally, I found Mr. Bunny, a small white bunny with an orange shirt who seemed like a perfect travel companion.

And thus began a whole series of adventures across states and continents, all detailed in a fantastic album of Mr. Bunny in a variety of pursuits and locales.

Flash-forward to our recent trip to London and York. Sergio and I were walking through the frigid cobbled streets in York when we saw a cute little bookstore. We popped into find a children's book and I noticed a wall of postcards... and on that wall of postcards were five or six featuring (you guessed it) Mr. Bunny!

Mr. Bunny is famous... as Miffy!

I snatched them up and as soon as we returned to the bed and breakfast, I started looking for more information. I had cut of Mr. Bunny's tags very early on and didn't have any information about his creator. The artist's name, Dick Bruna, was stamped all over the back of the postcards, so I was able to locate tons of information about the beloved travel buddy and -- shock of all shocks -- learned that Mr. Bunny is a girl bunny named Miffy who is wearing an orange dress.

First of all... it looks like a shirt! Not to be perverse, but I'd argue that bunnies have different parts thus pants might be unnecessary in all circumstances. Secondly, I had assumed a bow or some sort of dress more closely aligned with a female would be present -- or at least some eyelashes! I realize this is a very gendered way to approach it and, on some level, I'm thrilled that a girl bunny can wear a simple orange dress/shirt/whatever and not have to be as overtly feminine as, say, Barbie. It seems the Dutch are a little more gender-neutral than Americans.

And in case this wasn't bad enough, I found plenty of Miffy videos on YouTube -- Miffy isn't just a picture-book star for the four-to-eight set but a star of a TV show by the same name (with five-minute episodes!) that started in the early 1990s! It moved to the US and Canada soon thereafter (fun fact: Miffy has African-American bunny cousins that joined the show after the US debut -- it appears multiculturalism extends to rabbits).

This video pretty much killed it for me. I think I was a better actress at the age of six. Also -- is this what children's programming is these days? I need to brace myself for years of this crap.

An identity crisis, as you can imagine, ensued.

At this point, I think Mr. Bunny, raised and treated as a boy bunny for his natural-born days, will remain as such. Anytime I've considered anything else I hear Miffy's annoying voice in my head and decide that Mr. Bunny is here to stay.

But it might be fun to get a few Miffy books on our next stop in the Netherlands... after all, if I had more than twenty books filled with my likeness, they could call me whatever I wanted.

Hope you enjoyed this light-hearted post. I'm back with a very serious London + York recap later this week as well as a post I've been crafting for some time about my crisis of faith.

xo,
Sarah