Blues Clues | Yasmeen Owens
Growing up, I had a favorite television show I would watch religiously. I came home from kindergarten and made sure to get my homework done before the show started. I sit down in front of the television, waiting for the catchy theme music to begin and waiting for the main character Steve to ask me.
“Hello there, friend,” he says
“Hello, Steve,” I reply
“Have you seen Blue? My puppy,” he says
After scanning the screen, I found the cute little blue puppy hiding behind the green bush and screaming. “There she is,” I say.
Then the show starts as Blue comes out of her hiding place and goes into the house. As it zooms in closer, I’m introduced to the other characters like, Side Table Drawer is the keeper of the Handy Dandy Notebook, Tickety Tock, who is the adorable little clock and Slippery Soap called Slippery, for short, and lives in the bathroom of the Blues Clues House.
I was given a close-up of the purple door as it opened up with Steve greeting me, doing something interesting, whether in the kitchen making a snack for everyone in the home, or in the Big Thinking Chair. Steve would be telling me about what plans Blues has for me today, and just the pure excitement of trying to figure out what Blue wants to do today. Blue would always leave three paw-prints clues for Steve and me to find and to write down in the Handy Dandy notebook, and I would run quickly to grab my own Handy Dandy notebook and piece together all of the clues to figure out what Blue wants.
As time passed, while I watched the show, it took time to find the three paw-print clues. Steve then takes a short break to open up a letter from the Mailbox, he shows us a child telling him about their day. Then after the “We Just Got A Letter” theme song ends, we go back to figure out all the paw-prints clues and by the end of the episode, we figure out what Blue wants to do and our time and the episode for the day comes to an end.
I wave goodbye to Steve and Blue until the next day as the show ends and it goes to commercial.
I hear an announcement, “Blue's Clues will return right after the break.”
My face lights up upon hearing this news as I run upstairs to my grandmother while waiting for the next episode of Blue's Clues to come back on.
“Grandma, can I have a snack, please?” I asked her.
As the sun shines through the blinds, my beloved Grandmother finishes cleaning the kitchen. In response to my giggle, she gives me a warm smile and pats my head gently. I could hardly contain my excitement waiting for her to respond to my question as I played with my dog Yancey on the cold tile floor.
“Sure, Yasmeen, just give me a sec. Don’t give Yancey anything because she needs to eat her food first,” she says.
My grandmother opened up the white porcelain fridge to see what she could serve me for a healthy snack to eat while I was watching my favorite show of all time. Yancey is on her back as I rub her soft pink belly her fine golden fur shines in the sun as a bit of her fur sheds off her wagging tail.
“Here you go, Yasmeen, enjoy,” the grandmother says.
She hands me a flower-painted bowl filled with green grapes. The grapes look plump and sweet. When I pop one in my mouth, the tart fruit bursts, and it makes me cringe as the sour taste takes over my tastebuds. I thank my grandmother and go back downstairs to watch Blue's Clues.
The one thing that confused me was whether or not Blue was a girl or a boy puppy. When I see the color blue. I automatically thought that Blue was a boy. I kept tuning out the fact that Steve and the children kept saying “she.” In my mind, blue meant “boy” and pink meant “girl,” so it never occurred to me that Blue was a girl in the first place. It didn’t hit me until I entered high school, and I discussed with a bunch of my classmates, talking about misgendering our favorite cartoon character. When I realized that Blue was a girl and not a boy, as I initially thought, this blew my mind.
Another character, Blue's friend Magenta, was a girl who I thought was a boy because, in the old days, blue was associated with a boy, and pink was associated with a girl. But also in modern society, a girl can like blue and a boy can be very fond of pink. When I entered young adulthood, this question still confused me. I researched in more detail that all the main puppies in the show, including Blue, Magenta, and Green puppy, were all-girl dogs, and this interesting fact just blew my mind. I wonder how, in my younger years as a child, this little detail confused me so much as a young adult. I didn’t catch on to the sign sooner rather than later in life.
I remember when I grew up, my room changed different colors each time I was going to conform to the stereotypical gender norms. When looking back on this popular television show, Blue's Clues, my eyes have been opened to the fact that we can break down the gender barrier. As a girl myself, I love the color blue, and now boys love the color pink. My room changed from pink when I was around the age of five to lime-green, and I have no idea what even possessed me to pick that awful color in the first place. Then lastly, my favorite color is ocean blue, where the main wall of my room is painted this one color, and the other walls are painted swan white.
This circle of change from this supposedly girly girl to now a complete tom-boy where I can proudly say that I love the color blue in any shade. I want to thank the show Blue's Clues for showing me that a girl can love any color besides pink to let it define who I am as a person.
Yasmeen Owens is a published writer with her works published in The Rainbow Poem, Atlantis, Earth and Sky Anthology, Seabreeze Literary Magazine, Downright Creepy, Chrd Magazine, The Secret Society Of Poetry, and Adelaide Literary Magazine. She is also a Poetry Editor for Zoetic Press, DownRight Creepy. In her free time, she enjoys playing with her dogs Barney and Miracle, taking them on long walks, and reading a good book in her spare time. One day, she published her first novel series with the support of her family and friends.