Whether you love it or hate it, “Baby Shark” is all the rage these days. Even drag queens have gotten in on all the hype.
Back in March, a video of Marti Gould Cummings – who is a drag queen and uses the pronouns they/their/theirs – singing the tune to a 2-year-old went viral.
See, Cummings was hosting a drag queen brunch event when child asked them to sing “Baby Shark.” Of course Cummings obliged – and later posted the video.
Responses to the video were mixed, but what really stood out to the performer were the people who reacted negatively to the interaction, claiming that drag is inappropriate for kids.
“Anyone who thinks drag isn’t for children is wrong,” Cummings told NBC News. “Drag is expression, and children are such judgment-free beings; they don’t really care what you’re wearing, just what you’re performing.”
And so, Cummings set out to educated grown-ups about drag, releasing a full-length music video to the song that started it all.
In the fun and colorful video, Cummings wears a pink one-piece bathing suit as they sing and dance along to the song alongside LGBT-positive personalities including drag kid Desmond is Amazing and fellow drag queen Jan Sport, among others.
At the end of the video, Cummings shouts out The Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBTQ youth and the Hetrick Martin Institute – two organizations that support LGBT youth.
Once again, Cummings seems to have drawn a mixture of positivity and criticism. On YouTube, many commenters left notes about how fun the video is and how their days were made.
Meanwhile, an overwhelming amount of Twitter users called the video disturbing propaganda – some even said that it was child abuse and accused Cummings of being a pedophile.
And, in my opinion, it’s these comments that are what’s most disturbing about the video.
We’re all people and we all deserve love and respect – it shouldn’t matter what we do for fun, what we wear, how we identify or who we love.
You don’t have to like what someone does (we live in a free country, after all), but as long as they aren’t hurting anyone, you don’t have to go out of your way to be a jackass either.
Let your child watch the video or don’t. That’s your choice as a parent, but the fact is there are people out there that aren’t the same as you, and your child is going to run into someone who does things a little differently sooner or later.
It’s far better to teach children to be kind and accept another person’s differences – which most kids would do on their own anyway – than it is to teach your child that it’s OK to hurt someone else if your child doesn’t like what they’re doing.
Bottom line: treat others as you would like to be treated – and teach your kids to do the same.
As far as the video goes, outside of the obnoxious song that I can’t get out of my head these days, it’s totally fun. I think most kids would probably dig it.
What are your thoughts on the video? Would you let your kids watch it? Let us know in the comments.