Queer Coded: Why Miss Piggy Has Always Been A Queer Icon

The relaunch of Queer Coded is a monthly series focusing on characters in popular media who comment on queer identity, tropes and representation. If you have a suggestion for Queer Coded, email Monique at monique@justaddcoloronline.com or message her on Instagram or Threads (at)justaddcoloronline.

Miss Piggy is a diva, a force of nature, and a Muppet. She’s also an icon for queer fans around the world.

The Muppets are back with a new special on ABC and Disney+ on Feb. 4. As Disney promotes the show, I started thinking about what Miss Piggy means to the LGBTQ+ community, especially now, when queer icons are needed more than ever.

Miss Piggy has been a gay and queer icon for many reasons. She lives unapologetically and earns respect from her peers, no matter how they see her. Miss Piggy never hides; you always know when she’s in the room.

ToughPigs, which I think is a top resource for Muppets fans outside The Jim Henson Company, offers a heartfelt tribute to Miss Piggy and her fans. Peter Savieri, a Muppet artist and self-described “Miss Piggy expert,” wrote a Pride Month piece in 2022 calling her “the first drag performance I ever experienced.”

“While, as is true of most femme drag, she was performed by a man (initially a gay man, the wonderful Richard Hunt) then a complex and brilliant straight man (gloriously gifted grump Frank Oz), and now by the clever Eric Jacobson, she was the mathematical quandary of a being who is ALL WOMAN, ALL PIG and one hundred percent DIVA,” he wrote. “Especially when performed by the great and powerful Frank Oz, she is both a comic spectacle and a mesmerizing puzzle of identity markers. This is also the nature of drag, to synthesize and intensify the feminine (or, in the case of Drag Kings, the masculine) to celebrate all the glorious ironies of gender representation. To take the soft, the frilly, the glittery and turn them into shining armor.”

Her campy and very feminine style lets fans explore, question, and play with ideas of femininity. She gives people a safe space to try out womanhood and femme identity. Maximilian Mosher wrote for Bitch Flicks that watching Miss Piggy as a child helped him embrace his own connection to femininity.

“Miss Piggy taught me that femininity and glamour are constructs. They are costumes anyone can wear providing you have the right attitude,” he wrote. “I was a slightly effeminate little boy who collected My Little Ponies and owned a pair of Jelly sandals. Miss Piggy showed it was okay to be girly, that there was even power in being feminine.”

He also wrote that Miss Piggy’s unreturned love for Kermit the Frog, who often turned her down before their big wedding in 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan, feels familiar to queer fans who have loved someone who, for biological reasons, can’t return their feelings.

“Loving someone incapable of reciprocating is a tragedy every queer person who’s fallen for a heterosexual can understand,” he wrote.

But on the whole, he wrote that with “her diva behavior and camp aesthetic, Miss piggy is a throwback to the closeted gay world before the Stonewall Riots, when queer men worshipped Mae West and a sharp, sardonic tongue was their only weapon.”

Miss Piggy’s bold personality is also part of what makes her an icon. Here’s what Miss Piggy herself says about her influence.

“It’s an honor to have so many fans across the spectrum, and I just adore all of my fans,” she said to Out in 2021. “I think what it is is that I represent somebody who would not be put down, would not be put in her place. I’m not like everybody else. I’m not. You don’t see to many fabulous pigs walking down the street every day. And so I think that’s what it is. You gotta be who you are. You gotta be who you are and be proud. And that’s what I am.”

Miss Piggy’s influence among queer fans is still strong. Savieri’s description of how the character blends drag and cultural commentary shows why Miss Piggy remains a constant source of inspiration and fun.

“…Miss Piggy might be a pig, and she might be a miss, but she is also a man’s arm dressed as a beautiful lady, and a male performer’s inner femininity amplified and channeled through puppetry to create a formidable female character,” he wrote. “…Her origin story…has her ascend by pure grit from the muddy rural sty to the perfumed heights of at least the illusion of international superstardom. She has taken her questionable talent and leveled it up to her escapist self-image.”

Miss Piggy has lasted through the years and remains at the center of pop culture. Just last year, it was announced that Cole Escola, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Stone are making a Miss Piggy movie. Fans, including many queer fans, celebrated the news. It’s about time the diva gets to shine in her own unique, campy, and fierce way. Miss Piggy is truly a presence you can’t ignore.

If this article made you pause or see media a little differently, you can keep that curiosity going with my free resources, The First 5: 5 Thought-Provoking Media Literacy Starter Questions and Digging Deep: 5 Provocative Questions That Dig Below the Surface of Media Literacy. They’re designed to help you slow down, ask better questions, and rethink the messages we absorb from movies, TV, and pop culture—without judgment. These prompts aren’t about having the “right” answer; they’re about building empathy, awareness, and a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other.