ponies and bullies

Miss Baby loves My Little Ponies. We have books ponies, tv ponies, and ponies (Miss Baby tends to put her adjectives after her nouns, as though she’s speaking French). Remember these inane pastel ponies? They have names like Pinkie Pie (Miss Baby’s favorite), Scootaloo, and Rainbow Dash. I figure, they’re better than Barbies, and much better than Bratz, even with the flimsy plots and characters. It seems that she likes them for little girl reasons: they are pretty and colorful, live in fantastic castles, sometimes fly, and are ponies on top of everything.
The odd thing is that the Little Guy likes watching the Pony cartoons. There are evidently various incarnations of the cartoon, and we’ve downloaded several from youtube. He always insists on watching them with his sister. We’re not bothered by the gender thing, but I have been wondering why he’s interested. He acknowledges that he likes the ponies, and is aware that it is a little unusual for a boy of his age to enjoy cartoons about dancing pastel ponies.
I have a theory, of course. Pony plots tend to focus on emotions: the unicorn whose horn lights up feels unhappy because she’s different, but learns to understand that her difference makes her special. The Little Guy is concerned with these kind of issues: he gets bullied at VBS, but goes back and makes friends with someone else and they stand up to the bully together. Substitute pink and purple ponies and add some cheesy songs, and there you have it.
It’s interesting; he’s the kind of boy who gets picked on by older boys, but he doesn’t just take it. When he got picked on at VBS, I told him to lie low, stay quiet, and they’d go pick on someone else. He responded, “I don’t want them to pick on someone else. I want them to learn their lesson.” Now he’s going to the Thursday events at church (fishing and the like); last week, he got picked on, but this week he made a friend, and they were silly together all day. Last week, the bully went after him by calling him stupid, and telling him he didn’t know anything about trains (the kids know what’s important to the Little Guy). He responded by telling him, “Stop it,” every time the bully said something to him. It’s interesting; he’s not a tough kid, but not a doormat either.
So, ponies all around.