‘Blue’s Clues’ rings in Pride month in new sing-along, starring drag queen Nina West, celebrating LGBTQ families

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Blue's Clues celebrates Pride in a new LGBTQ-family video. (YouTube/Blue's Clues)
Blue's Clues celebrates Pride in a new LGBTQ-family video. (YouTube/Blue's Clues)

Nickelodeon is ringing in the first week of Pride Month with a special sing-along video featuring an animated drag queen and everyone’s favorite furry friend, Blue!

Blue’s Clues published a new video to its YouTube channel called “The Blue’s Clues Pride Parade Sing-Along,” featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11 contestant Nina West.

In the video, an animated version of West leads a Pride parade featuring adorable furry critters as she sings along to the melody of “The Ants Go Marching.” The song includes updated LGBTQ-inclusive lyrics celebrating the diversity of queer families, the importance of loving people for exactly who they are and the joys of allyship.

“This family has two mommies. They love each other so proudly and they all go marching in the big parade,” West sings before spotlighting another family featuring two dads.

As the parade continues marching, the song expands to more people in the LGBTQ community, including those who are trans and nonbinary.

“Ace, bi and pan grown-ups you see can love each other so proudly," West sings.

“Ace” is shorthand for asexual, a wide spectrum mainly referring to people who have little or no sexual desire. “Bi” is shorthand for bisexual, whereas “pan” is shorthand for pansexual, referring to those who are attracted to people of all genders. However, like all identities in the LGBTQ acronym, they exist on a wide colorful spectrum and vary from person to person.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 13:  Nina West attends the
Nina West, featured as an animated character in the new Blue's Clues video, is seen here in 2019. (Photo: Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)

“All families are made differently and they love each other so proudly,” West sings before adding a sweet note to allies of the LGBTQ community. “Allies to the queer community can love their queer friends so proudly… Love is love is love, you see, and everyone should love proudly.”

Lindz Amer, producer of the video series Queer Kid Stuff, consulted with Nickelodeon for the sing-along video. As a “huge” Blue’s Clues fan, they say sitting in the Blue’s Clues chair was “for sure a career highlight.”

“I definitely felt a huge responsibility consulting with the team,” Amer (who uses they/them pronouns) tells Yahoo. “It’s the same responsibility I feel in all of the work that I do bringing LGBTQ representation to children’s media. Queer folks are not a monolith and I can’t possibly make every single queer person happy, especially considering the profound lack of LGBTQ [representation], especially in preschool content. All we can do is try our best and I think we did a pretty good job!”

They continue, “The team was an absolute dream to work with and it’s for sure the queerest thing I’ve ever seen happen in the preschool space. My main goals were twofold: to try my best to bring specificity to the video, that’s where the song’s vocabulary came in using words like queer, trans, non-binary, ace, pan and bi. And second, to expand the definition of family as it applies to the queer community, so acknowledging chosen family was a big part of that.”

“I hope families and queer folks see themselves in the video,” Amer adds. “Everything I do is in an effort to spread queer joy and this video fits perfectly in that mission.”

This isn’t the first time Blue’s Clues made an effort to elevate the LGBTQ+ community. In February, it released an Alphabet Song on its YouTube channel showcasing the letter “P” to mean “P is full of Pride!”

During the “P” segment, LGBTQ Pride flags appear around the letters, including the eight-stripe flag recognizing queer people of color as well as the asexual, trans, lesbian, bisexual, nonbinary, genderfluid, intersex and pansexual flags.

While the response has been mixed, it's mostly been positive — mainly from Blue’s Clues fans themselves who’ve followed the blue dog from childhood. See what some folks are saying below:

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