You may have thought your childhood was safe until next blockbuster season when some reboot arrives to spark fury. Well, Winnie the Pooh is here to tear your little world apart. The last time we spoke of the silly ol’ bear, he’d been banned on a Polish playground because he lacked pants and sported a “dubious sexuality.” That bit of weirdness makes more sense with an even weirder claim from an investigative biography about Pooh himself.
Er, make that Pooh herself.
The shocking new book, Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear, will make you question everything you knew during childhood. The origins of Pooh’s inspiration date all the way back to 1914, which is mindblowing enough because Pooh’s namesake goes back a full century. Authors Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall practically wait for the implosion as they reveal how Pooh was based upon a female bear:
[A] small black bear cub was rescued by Canadian veterinarian Harry Colebourn, en route to treat horses in the First World War. After the war Colebourn, who had named the bear after his home town of Winniepeg, took her to London Zoo – where she met a real-life boy called Christopher Robin, who was so captivated with Winnie he would name his teddy after her.
As everyone knows, Christopher Robin was not only a real boy but Pooh’s best friend in the books. A.A. Milne crafted the fictional pals from his own son and the little lady bear, but Milne decided the story would play better if Pooh was a boy. The real-life Winnie spent most of her life in the London Zoo after Christopher Robin moved on to adult-like interests. She passed away in 1934 and was, until now, mischaracterized as a boy. Poor Pooh.
This new revelation is even more confounding than the realization that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Of course, it doesn’t matter that Pooh could be a girl, but loads of folks won’t cope with this new information.
(Via The Independent)