Over the weekend, we watched Pitch Perfect 2. About halfway through, the character named Fat Amy announced that she knew three of the Wiggles. Intimately.
My husband and I laughed, but my ten-year-old Aidan paused the movie and asked, "Who are the Wiggles?" His tone indicated that he believed that Wiggles were a secret gay term for some kind of deviance. Alas, 30 years into a relationship, I no longer know the secret language of gays, and I am much too tired for deviance. But I do know the Wiggles.
Stick with me here. You don't need to have watched Pitch Perfect 2 to get this. You don't even have to know who the Wiggles are.
Seven years ago, my boys graduated out of Barney, and the next program up was a group of Australian boys known as the Wiggles. They each wore a different colored mock turtleneck sweater and they sang songs like 'Hot Potato' and 'Fruit Salad'. Kind of like Teletubbies, without the antennae.
The Wiggles were a pre-manufactured group, like the Monkees or the Village People. With characters like Captain Feathersword and songs like 'Get Ready to Wiggle', it wasn't a hard market for gay men raising children to buy into. And when my sons were toddlers, they loved them. So much so that I drove down to San Jose to take them to their concert -- yes, four singing Aussies, 5,000 screaming children and me. I remember nothing other than my three-year-old son smiling blissfully and saying "Wiggow."