One thing I appreciate a lot about Wild Kratts is the lack of toxic masculinity.
Both Bros seem perfectly comfortable wearing female creature power suits (like in the kangaroo episode where Chris used a pouch which only female roos have, in the bird of paradise episode where Martin was a female Lawes Parotia bc all the males were gone, in the mudskipper episode where Martin pretended to be a female mudskipper to get into a male’s burrow, in the opossum episode they had pouches which only female opossums have, etc.)
In the aardvark episode when Aviva was starting to work on an aardvark power suit, she jokingly said the bros were gonna have the most gorgeous nails around, and Martin said “Gorgeous nails? Don’t you mean digging power?”, but he didn’t seem offended, cus he was still smiling, and Chris didn’t even react at all.
↑”Don’t you mean digging power?”
In the osprey episode Chris was trying to touch a hummingbird, but tripped over some potted plants and ended up getting flowers in his hair, which attracted the hummingbird, and he seemed to be perfectly fine with that. He even laughed and said “Perfect!”
The Bros will put their arms around each other, climb on each other, and will physically comfort each other when they’re sad with no judgement. They even slept on each other in the monarch butterfly episode. They have no reservations about physical affection.
They can be very soft and gentle towards animals, like how Martin cared for Plato the platypus and Chris for Gabby the chimpanzee.
The only instance of even a whiff of toxic masculinity I ever remember seeing was in the zebra episode when Aviva said she wanted to make their crew jackets pink and the Bros didn’t like that idea. However, they seem to grow out of this eventually as a few seasons later Martin wore a pink bandana in the Aya-Aye episode, and then later both he and Chris were very excited to be pink as a flamingo and even fought over who got to use the single disk.
↑”So you’re using stripes and pink?”
“I can’t remember the last time I wore pink.”
(in Spongebob narrator voice) A few seasons later:
”I’m pink, you’re pink, we’re all pink! Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink!”
↑Now that’s what I call character development, lol.
They don’t make fun of or look down on “girly” things, because they don’t see being “girly” as a bad thing. They don’t feel threatened by traditionally feminine things, because they know that they don’t have to present masculinity all the time. They are men, and having a flower in their hair or wearing pink won’t change that. Even when they transform into female animals, they still feel fully secure in who they are, because they know that their identity is not dependent on what they look like. You don’t have to “prove” who you are.
This is healthy masculinity. And I love it.
