Kermit's new 'girlfriend' Denise sparks 'home-wrecking hog' fury

Despite denials from Kermit the Frog, rumours are circulating that the popular green Muppet has moved on from his former squeeze, Miss Piggy, with a new porcine girlfriend, and not everyone is happy.

BBC's Newsbeat reports that Kermit denied rumours he's going out with the show's marketing executive, Denise, a red-haired lady pig, but he also tweeted to confirm that he's dating again after he and Miss Piggy split up last month.

In an online statement on Tuesday night, Kermit said: "It is true that I am dating again. However, at this time no one woman – pig or otherwise – is my official 'new girlfriend'. We are simply good friends."

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The rumours started after a trailer appeared for a new rebooted series of The Muppets, due to air in the US later this month and in the UK in October. Producers say the rebooted docu-series, which looks at the Muppets' personal lives and relationships, will be aimed at an adult audience.

Commentators were quick to react, speculating on what the news meant for Kermit, the new show, and even feminism.

Some were pragmatic about the news. "Life, and love, move on quickly if you're a puppet with a new TV show to promote," says Alice Vincent in the Daily Telegraph, who pointed out that Miss Piggy also appears to have moved on, after she was spotted flirting online with William Shatner and Hunger Games star Liam Hemsworth.

Others, however, were clearly outraged. Jezebel called Denise a "home wrecking hog", and in The Guardian, Megan Carpentier defended Miss Piggy as "the more charismatic performer", who Kermit has replaced with a "younger, thinner and blander" version.

Even if this is just a public relations stunt to promote the new show, Kermit and his fellow producers have "sorely misjudged their audience", says Carpentier. Miss Piggy is a feminist icon, and in 2015, men no longer get sympathy for their urge to date "their exes' younger, dumber Plasticine lookalikes".

But in the New Statesman, Noah Berlatsky argues for sympathy for the frog. Berlatsky says that while "the light-hearted gender analysis has focused on Kermit as a faithless two-timing patriarchal jerk", many have overlooked the fact that Miss Piggy was a domestic abuser.

She regularly beat up Kermit, said Berlatsky, hitting him hard enough to send him flying, and if it had been the other way around there would have been a "cultural pushback". But people laughed because it was unexpected to see the woman being dominant and the man submissive and emasculated.

In the end, "it's better for everyone that Kermit and Piggy have gone their separate ways", says Berlatsky, adding that for Kermit it means the end of a long, abusive relationship, and for everyone else, "it means the end of a comedy spectacle which mocked both men and women for violating traditional gender roles".