Mr Mansplaining: a rant.

The Mr Men and Little Miss books are bright and funny and gentle and inoffensively brilliant. 

They were written and drawn for many years by the late Roger Hargreaves, but nowadays they're produced by his son Adam.

(I think that's rather lovely.)

Hey, but hang on - did I say inoffensively? Ha! As if that's possible, nowadays.

There have been rumblings for quite some time about the Little Misses' being nominatively characterised by stereotypically female traits like bossiness and naughtiness (though there's now a Little Miss Inventor and a Little Miss Brainy (and there's long been a Mr Silly and a Mr Greedy, too, so it's all tosh)).

But the latest outrage has been sparked by a piece of dialogue between Mr Clever and Little Miss Curious. They're at the Forth Bridge, and Little Miss Curious asks, completely reasonably (and perhaps bearing in mind the history of that other Scottish bridge, which crosses the Tay) What happened to the first, second, and third bridges?

Now, that's a good joke: but PhD student Shelby Judge has taken umbrage because she believes this is an example of antiquated gender roles and sexist iconography. 

'It's meant to be a funny joke, but then it's always at the expense of women,' she says. '...it's the very definition of micro-aggression.'

Well, what I want to know is this.

If Little Miss Curious wanted to know about the bridge, was she wrong to ask?

And, once she'd asked, was it wrong for Mr Clever to answer?

Or should he have patted her on her question-mark shaped hair and told her not to bother her pretty little head about it?

Word To Use Today: curious. This word comes from the Latin cūriōsus, taking pains over something, from cūra, which means care.