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I am a blonde because of three women: my mother, Lil’ Kim, and Miss Piggy. The last in particular has shaped my understanding of womanhood and its possibilities since I was a child in the ’90s; every holiday season, I admired her aggressive and assured demeanor as our home wore out the VHS tape of The Muppet Christmas Carol. I am not alone in my estimation of Miss Piggy.
“For me, growing up, there was a woman who I just related to. She just felt very strong. She had a really specific POV. She asked for what she wanted. She always had good jokes. And that woman was Miss Piggy,” Amy Poehler said last spring on an episode of Las Culturistas. Her comment was met with shrieks from Bowen Yang and praise from Matt Rogers. After Tim Curry’s death this week, a clip of the actor talking about his affair with Miss Piggy on the set of Muppet Treasure Island began to circulate: “Once you’ve had pork, you never go back.” On Poehler’s own podcast this year, the actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph said, “That lady, I am who I am today because of her. At a young age, that being instilled in you: You don’t take shit from men. You do your thing. Be fabulous.” She added, “That’s my girrrlll.” During Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour, Miss Piggy made a cameo as the celebrity who got “arrested” during the singer’s last show. The crowd’s response was uproarious. Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone are spearheading a new Miss Piggy–focused movie, set to be written by Cole Escola. When asked by W magazine earlier this year if she would be playing the diva, Stone scoffed in disbelief: “First of all, that is the biggest insult to Miss Piggy I have ever heard, and I will not have her name dragged through the mud, I’m sorry. Why would I play a literal star?” She continued, “Of course I’m not playing Miss Piggy … Miss Piggy is playing Miss Piggy.” Who else could?
To say Miss Piggy is having a moment would be inaccurate. Since the mid-1970s, she’s been a cultural icon, bridging the gap between comedy and the world of fashion. She’s been dressed by Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Vivienne Westwood, and Zac Posen, among others. She has reported from New Year’s Eve ceremonies and written a best-selling book. She’s appeared on the covers of Elle, Life, and even New York in 2011. But Miss Piggy is the last woman movie star. She is part of a lineage that has gone dormant: larger-than-life, carefully curated personas bolstered both by their market value at the box office and by how their sheer artistry shapes the texts that end up on the silver screen. These are women like Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Mae West. During their reign in Hollywood’s Golden Age, their lives and cinematic work played out ideals about femininity and its expectations in American culture writ large. It’s a legacy Miss Piggy carries on.
Miss Piggy has spent the past five decades building an image of delightful contradictions: She’s glamorous and insecure, bold and vulnerable, domineering and high femme. Whether sparring with Joan Rivers on Fashion Police in 2012 while wearing Louboutins (“Please, Joan, have some dignity. Or did it get sucked out the last time you had lipo?”); yearning for romance with her on-again, off-again beau, Kermit the Frog; or asking Carpenter if she’s wearing her wig in The Muppet Show 2026 special, Miss Piggy has made these contradictions into high comedic art.
Her presence is an argument: A woman can make herself into her greatest artistic work. Being full of yourself isn’t detrimental but necessary for survival. Humor is a means of self-definition. Within the oeuvre of the Muppets’ cinematic and televisual work, Miss Piggy hasn’t ever wholly been a punch line — her image is too dexterous for that. But aspects of her persona have been. Consider the 1982 song “Snackcercise,” featured on Miss Piggy’s Aerobique Exercise Workout Album. In the video, dressed in the workout gear du jour, Miss Piggy lounges while dancers flank her. “I maintain my dynamite figure with a daily aérobique workout,” she explains. “Now you go to your refrigerator and get your exercise equipment and get ready to snackcercise.” Workout moves like “banana splits” advise one to “lift the dish, grab the spoon, take a bite and chew, chew, chew, chew, swallow.” Her weight and notable appetite are integral to the musical number. But something has shifted within this decade. The Miss Piggy attributes that were once gags are now the very aspects of her character that millennials (and, to a lesser extent, younger Gen-Xers) deify her for.
One of the earliest incarnations of Miss Piggy was an unnamed, blonde, beady-eyed puppet in 1975’s The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence who spoke in a nasally whine during a film parody, “Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs.” By the time The Muppet Show premiered the next year, Miss Piggy was reborn. She was given a distinctive look by designer Bonnie Erickson: a flowing gown, satin opera gloves, and large light-blue eyes framed by thick eyelashes. She is one of the few Muppets with irises, which go a long way toward making her seem human. And thanks to her puppeteer Frank Oz, who performed the character from early in her history until the beginning of the aughts, her highly romantic and vivacious personality came to life. What’s fascinating about Miss Piggy’s journey from chorus girl in 1976 to Muppets star is how quickly her persona coalesced once Jim Henson & Co. saw her potential.
In the 1979 New York Times article “The Muppets in Movieland,” pegged to the then-upcoming fourth season of The Muppet Show, Oz shares her origin story: Miss Piggy “grew up in a small town; her father died when she was young; her mother wasn’t that nice to her. She had to enter beauty contests to survive. She has a lot of aggressiveness, but she needs a lot to survive — as many single women do. She has a lot of vulnerability, which she has to hide, because of her need to be a superstar.” All her fabulousness comes with a current of complication and sorrow: “Although Miss Piggy’s essentially humorous, to me she’s had a sad, difficult, painful life,” Oz says. On a class level, Miss Piggy is a striver, a self-made woman who acts as an argument for the power of self-determination.
In the 1981 film The Great Muppet Caper, we see this self-determination in action. Haughty fashion designer Lady Holiday (Diana Rigg) is talking about the failure of recent designs: “We have to make drastic changes in the new line before the show tomorrow. All my girls are going around looking like barnyard animals.” Off-camera, someone clears their throat.
“Good heavens, who are you?” asks Lady Holiday. That someone is Miss Piggy. Blonde hair flowing. Pearls gleaming. She casts a saucy gaze from beneath a white hat with pink florals. Her dress is white, magenta, and burgundy, matching her hat. She poses, leaning against the door. “My name is Miss Piggy, and I would like to be a high-fashion model.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Seems to be the way we’re heading,” Lady Holiday volleys, but Miss Piggy is undeterred.
“I’ve always dreamed of being a Holiday model,” she says. “May I come in?”
Miss Piggy comes in anyway. She practically hops around the desk.
Miss Piggy plops her black-cover portfolio on the desk: “Good. Here.” Noticing Lady Holiday’s trepidation, Miss Piggy says, “You may open it.” Lady Holiday listlessly turns the pages, barely glancing at Miss Piggy in various outfits.
“This is me reeking grandeur. Being aloof. Being demure,” Miss Piggy narrates. “Ah” — her voice drops a few octaves from its typical prissy, preening softness — “Daring.” While the clothes change, her pose and expression remain the same.
