Many parents are shocked and outraged at the new Disney ‘Baymax’ animated series for children.
A new Disney+ animated kids series Baymax!, features what is believed to be the company’s first transgender character, buying tampons at a supermarket.
The Big Hero 6 spinoff, which is a series of shorts, features robot nurse Baymax caring for residents in the futuristic, fictional town of San Fransokyo.
In the controversial episode, Baymax is browsing the menstrual product aisle at a supermarket on behalf of a 12-year-old girl, when he asks his fellow shoppers for help.
One of those customers is a trans man, wearing a transgender flag shirt, who hands him a box of pads and tells the robot: ‘I always get the ones with wings.’
The scene was shared by Disney Entertainment Studio’s YouTube page this week.
Conservatives were quick to condemn the appearance of a trans character in a kids show.
However, not every parent disagreed with the scene, and highlighted the many young girls in the US are getting their periods as young as 10.
“Kids GET periods. Statistically, at younger ages than they used to. Talking about periods and how to take care of yourself when you get a period in early and non-scary ways is good,” Twitter user L. McMill wrote.
A father named Karl praised Disney for normalizing men buying period products for their daughters, wives, and girlfriends, even if he did admit that Disney has been ‘doing some sketchy s**t.’
Disney recently announced that going forward, it aims to have 50 percent of its characters represent minorities, such as the LGBT+ community.
The company has been caught in political crossfire since publicly coming out against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ bill, which bans discussing sexual orientation and gender identity through the third grade.
In the Baymax scene, Marvel Comics superhero nurse robot Baymax, is reportedly helping a girl named Sofia, 12, who is experiencing her first period right before a school talent show and appears to be picking up menstrual products for her.
Earlier in the Baymax! episode, Sofia and the robot nurse discuss her period in the gender neutral bathroom.
“I wasn’t prepared for this!’ Sofia reportedly tells Baymax. And the dispenser’s empty! And I don’t even have a thing! A tampad. A pad-pon. A maxi-pad-pon with wings.”
The controversial scene shows Baymax standing next to a woman in the tampon aisle looking at the mass amount of products on the shelf, before asking her, “Excuse me, which of these products would you recommend?”
The woman appears to be utterly shocked as she stares at the robot in horror before schooling her facial expressions.
She replies, “Oh, um…well…these are the tampons I usually use. She then hands the box of Gentle tampons over to the robot.”
This incites the entire aisle to jump in to offer suggestions for Sofia, from wingless to winged pads, from products meant for first-time period experiences, to environmentally conscious products.
However, many parents and social media users were more astonished by a transgender character offering a period suggestion than by the openness of discussing the coming of age experience.
