The Three Little Pigs and Political Correctness

The Three Little Pigs is a seemingly harmless story about, well, three little pigs who build their own houses and a big bad wolf who has a propensity for huffing and puffing inferior structures and swallowing meaty porcine creatures. Generations of children have enjoyed this fairy tale that gives a lesson on hard work and the importance of producing quality results.

The story is fairly simple. Three little pigs move out of their mother's pen and build homes of their own. As they left, their mom gave them this bit of real-world wisdom: whatever you do, do it the best you can because that's the way to get along in the world. The first pig made his house out of straw, the second one used sticks for his home, while the third little pig utilized a much stronger construction material: bricks.

A pork-loving wolf comes along, blows down the house of the first little pig, and devours the hapless oinker. The second one also suffers the same fate as his stick house wasn't able to withstand the wolf's lung power. The third little pig proved to be the smartest one who followed their mother's advise. He remained safe in his brick house while the wolf, in attempting to get into the house through the chimney, falls right into a boiling pot of water.

Over time, the tale has had several variations. Some found the pig-swallowing and wolf-boiling parts too hideous for kiddie consumption so in other versions, the two pigs were able to escape and find refuge in their brother's brick house. The wolf was given reprieve as well and was made to get away with a burn rather than being boiled to death.

Things took a turn for the weird though when some groups pointed out that the story itself could be offensive to Muslims because it featured pigs. In Islam (and Judaism as well), pigs were considered unclean and were not allowed for consumption. A junior school in England adapted the story for their music festival and made it the Three Little Puppies so as not to offend Muslims. In another instance, a British government-sponsored awards event banned a digital book based on the Three Little Pigs which was entitled The Three Little Cowboy Builders. Judges reasoned that the story might be offensive to Muslims and builders.

Here's the irony: leaders of the Muslim Council of Britain, in response to the Three Little Puppies, called the action “bizarre” which only succeeded in making Islam adherents look like social misfits. In it's more than a century of existence, the story of the Three Little Pigs has not sparked any riots, protests, or grave unrest among Muslims, Jews, and other religious groups that consider pigs a taboo. After all, religious writings only forbid the consumption of pork; they don't prohibit the inclusion of pigs in fairy tales.

The problem is we could get too absorbed with the idea of political correctness that we end up being myopic and just plain hypocritical. There are far more offensive things to be concerned about such as social inequality, religious discrimination, bombing countries to oblivion, and automatically suspecting that someone is a terrorist just because he looks Middle Eastern, wears a turban, and has a Muslim name. It is far more important that we make the effort to educate and immerse ourselves in other cultures and religions. That would be a better way of learning to respect beliefs which are different than ours and dropping the ethnocentric mentality. And it's certainly more effective than going around revising century-old fairy tales.