The women of VeggieTales are wearing wigs

Thanks for bearing with me last week. I had a wonderful Mardi Gras. What did I get up to? Here’s my only statement about that:

This week I have an extremely red string on a cork board theory about VeggieTales. Aren’t you glad I’m back?

If you have a loved one who is very into Christian children’s cartoons and/or wigs, chuck this post their way, they’ll love it.

That vegetable is in a WIG

Here’s a thing I noticed yesterday that I can’t unsee: All the VeggieTales characters with human hair — particularly the female ones — look like they are wearing wigs.

Maybe it’s the primitive pre-Dreamworks animation style of the early episodes continuing to influence character design today, but even Mirabelle in this promotional image for “Beauty and the Beet” looks like she’s wearing a wig. And when you think about it, why would these vegetables be able to grow human hair?

Now I’m not saying that a technologically remarkable Christian cartoon from the 90s needs to make biological sense, but there’s good reason to believe that in-universe, all characters with human hair, (at least early on before the Big Idea production company was sold off) are actually in costume and wearing wigs.

As I point out in this Twitter thread of my initial thoughts, in the first episode, “Where’s God When I’m S-Scared?” all hair on the veggies is made out of leaves or florets/asparagus tops, which makes sense, right? Later on, it’s more common to see vegetables with human-like hair.

My understanding about the VeggieTales universe is this: Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber and their friends are all real vegetables in the “real world” who are trying to share God’s love with children by making a TV show in the kitchen they live in. They themselves cannot receive salvation because they are only vegetables and Jesus is not a vegetable.

From Relevant Magazine:

You can’t show Jesus in VeggieTales. Moreover, none of the vegetables can be shown to have a “redemptive relationship with God.” This is real, confirmed in 2002 by TIME Magazine.

…

I think about Bob and Larry telling kids about the magnificence of grace that they themselves know only secondhand, like the very angels themselves. Think of the wrap-up, with Bob telling kids, “God made you special and He loves you very much.” Made you special. Loves you very much. Always “you.” Never “us.”

The veggies share the good news by reenacting biblical stories and other moral tales as well as singing silly songs. The veggies do not actually time travel to biblical times or traverse the multiverse to visit parody versions of classic literature — these are all tales told by the veggies (it’s in the name!), and what you see on screen kind of takes place in the viewer’s imagination.

Anyway, the point is, in VeggieTales there’s the “real” part of the show and then the “story” parts where characters are often seen wearing costumes appropriate to the setting of the story they’re in. Lots of characters are mostly only seen in the story sections, but will make occasional appearances on the countertop with Bob and Larry. This makes me think they get into costume and act out the story like a church play to help the viewer imagine the story better.

As I point out in my Twitter thread, in episode one, the only non-asparagus female character is bald, and is confirmed to wear a wig in-universe when she appears with hair in later episodes. Later, Madame Blueberry is also confirmed in-universe to be a wig wearer. In episode two, “God Wants Me to Forgive Them!?!” 3/4ths of the Grape family appear with hair, but they only appear in the story section. It’s entirely possible they are wearing wigs and stick-on eyebrows/moustaches like Bob and Larry do in the same episode.

I conclude that the only character that definitely, actually has hair in the show is The Peach, from the Hairbrush Song during Silly Songs With Larry. These songs clearly take place on a constructed set on the countertop, and The Peach’s hair is his entire reason for existing as a character. Also peaches do kind of have hair IRL.

Note that I’m not counting the Netflix series VeggieTales in the House/City as canon, because it is an abomination and the character design is completely different. It’s possible that the newer The VeggieTales Show has returned to canon but I’ve never watched it.

In conclusion, my theory is that even if you see a character with hair “out of story” on the countertop, they are actually in costume wearing a wig, having just walked “off set” to speak with Bob and Larry. Also, I reckon Mr Nezzer’s hair and eyebrows are actually white mould, on account of he is a 53-year-old zucchini who was probably found at the back of the crisper. Same goes for Scooter Carrot.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk. Oh by the way you should subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t already. There’s more where this came from.

A very sombre Mark Wahlberg’s 40 day challenge to you

Take me to snurch

Travis and Pat posted this in the group chat and it caused a cascade of snail emojis and other snonsense.

I am absolutely obsessed with these two panels of a comic I saw on Tumblr

It continues, “I have complicated gender feelings about Judas”. Read the whole comic by @incendavery.

Another interesting Tumblr find: A theory that ‘white people names’ are actually Mormon names.

Single people at church

It pleased the Lord and it pleases me too

Lastly, a picture of Richard Dawkins that was absolutely not made with AI. It is a real picture of Richard Dawkins

There are a whole series of them!

Ok, my friends have just arrived at my place for dinner I will have to leave the rest of the posts for another time!