Letter from the editor | Jan. 31

1/31/2022 for The Front

The world is referring to a piece of candy as a slut. How did we get here?

On Jan. 20 2022, Mars Incorporated changed the design of their iconic animated M&M’s. In particular, the shoes worn by the “female” M&M’s.

As of Jan. 31, The Front has no canon information about the gender identities of the beloved characters, but the common belief has been that the green and brown M&M’s are women.

The original design of the candy animation had the green and brown M&M’s sporting high heels. The new design shrunk the size of the brown M&M’s heel and gave the green M&M plain sneakers.

The design change has caused outrage on the internet with Rolling Stone going so far as to write an article titled, “Let the Green M&M Be a Nasty Little Slut.” Right-wing media outlets have also taken on the story, but are approaching it with the angle of ‘how dare they de-gender the sexy candy figure’.

To all of this, I say who the hell cares!

First of all, shoes don’t define your gender identity. Let alone how sexually active someone may or may not be.

I’ve never even considered the fact that candy might have a gender or sex life until this week. While it’s a fun thing to think about, it’s absolutely absurd.

I never knew people wanted to have sex with M&M’s until recently. I’m not kink-shaming, but it’s very confusing.

On that note, how would an M&M even have sex? As far as I can tell, I’ve never seen candy outside of a Spencer’s that even gets close to resembling the reproductive parts of the human anatomy.

For all we know, the newly designed M&M’s could be more sexually active now that they have new shoes.

Moral of the story? Society’s definition of gender is stupid.

— Cameron Martinez, winter ‘22 managing editor