Sugar & Spice: Little Girls in the Funnies
February 2 - June 30, 2006
The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center
The second day of
Peanuts featured Patty happily
walking down a sidewalk reciting the familiar nursery rhyme, "What
are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, and everything
nice…" She meets Charlie Brown, smacks him in the
face, and continues her verse, "That's what little girls
are made of!" Charles Schulz knew about little girls
because he was the father of three of them. Once when he
was asked if
Peanuts were based his children, he
replied that the strip was based on memory, not observation. Schulz
used the wellspring of his memory to create the repertory
company of
Peanuts characters that included little
girls with realistic personalities. As in several other
aspects of the history of the American comic strip, Charles
Schulz was innovative and influential in the type of little
girl characters he conceived; and as a result of his innovation,
post-
Peanuts comic strips feature different types
of girl characters.
Sugar and Spice is a sampling of girl characters
who are comic strip protagonists, girls who are sidekicks
of leading boy characters, and comics families with daughters.
How girls were depicted in comic strips before and after
Schulz created the
Peanuts girls is the question
asked by the exhibit. The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research
Center hosted this exhibition from February 2 through June
30, 2006. The exhibit was guest-curated by Lucy Shelton
Caswell, professor and curator of Ohio State University’s
Cartoon Research Library.
There are three general categories of little girl comic strips:
those that highlight girls as protagonists; those where girl
and boy characters are pals; and strips featuring families
with female children. Schulz employed each of these in
Peanuts.
He built on the traditions of the past, but he expanded the
role of little girls in the funnies, especially with his
fussbudget character, Lucy.
The exhibition is divided into the three categories described
above.
Within each group, comic strips before 1950 (when
Peanuts debuted),
Peanuts strips,
and post-
Peanuts comics are featured.
Blondie,
Buster Brown,
Dimples,
Dennis the Menace, Family
Circus,
For Better or For Worse,
Hi and
Lois, Little Orphan Annie,
Nancy,
Wee Pals,
Ernie
Pook's Comeek, Non- Sequitur, and
Agnes document
the roles of other girls from different decades of the funnies.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Sugar
and Spice:
Little Girls in the Funnies, the handsome exhibit catalogue
published by the Schulz Museum, is available for purchase
for $20 per copy. Public parking is available in the Ohio
Union garage.
For additional information, contact The Ohio State University
Cartoon Research Library at 614-292-0538 or
cartoons@osu.edu.
A
Peanuts comic strip for one-time use is available
upon request.
