Sesame Street’s Newest Muppet and Autism in Children’s Shows

I just heard about the most amazingly, heart-meltingly wonderful thing ever. Sesame Street is adding a new muppet. I’ve seen the news about her and saw some clips of her online, and she is just a dear. Her name is Julia, and she has autism. That’s right. The newest Sesame Street muppet has autism, and I honestly can’t get enough of her. She loves bubbles and butterflies. She sings songs and plays with a little stuffed rabbit. She bounces and flaps her arms when she’s excited. She only talks with only three words at a time at the longest and repeats back what she’s heard. She also has a tendency to get stuck in her own little world, but she’ll come out for anyone who is patient and kind enough with her. Oh, yeah, and she’s sensitive to loud noises.
I first got exposed to autism when I was around 8. My sister had a best friend who had a sister with autism. I didn’t really understand it at that age. I just knew that she didn’t talk for some reason and that she never seemed like she wanted to play. I didn’t become interested in learning more until I was in college. I had gotten interested in theory of mind studies in high school which led to an interest in autism. Furthermore, I had also ended up making a couple friends with autism. When I say friends, I mean the term rather casually. I wasn’t all that close with either of them, but we were on good terms, and I did like spending time with them. They were nice guys. They didn’t always express themselves in a way that I understood, but I liked them.
Anyway, Julia’s addition to the Sesame Street cast made me kind of wish and hope that MLP would do something similar. I may have actually even secretly hoped that Flurry Heart would end up developing autism, but then, I did a little, for lack of a better term, troping. After my troping spree, I did a little thinking, and I realized why MLP would have a lot of difficulty in introducing an explicitly autistic character to the show.
Firstly, portraying autism in fiction is a challenge in and of itself. When Sesame Street added Julia to the show, they had to consult with experts just to make sure they were portraying her right, and more importantly, they had to go into her introduction knowing that Julia wasn’t going to be able to represent everyone on the spectrum. That mindset is a great one to have by the way. Creating a character with the intent of having her represent everyone in the spectrum is only going to utterly confuse people. When I was 10 or 11, I read a chapter book that tried to do that. I was entertained but perhaps even less educated than I was before I read it. Furthermore, creators have to be careful not to inadvertently propagate common misconceptions about autism. (No! Vaccines won’t give your kids autism. Besides, prenatal exposure to pesticides seems to be a more likely contributor according to recent research.)
Secondly, MLP takes place in a world of magical cartoon horses which may have different standards for what constitutes as “normal”. I mean, in the first two seasons, the Mane 6 displayed some behaviors that if people in real life did them, they’d be seeing a professional, and then as later seasons went on, they just faded away because character development, which USUALLY doesn’t happen in real life, at least not that easily. Furthermore, a certain brony analyst pointed out that Luna’s psychological state in “Do Princesses Dream of Magical Sheep?” seems suggestive of clinical depression, and it just went away thanks to epiphany therapy. I’ll admit that epiphany therapy is less boring and less depressing to watch than the real, clinically effective stuff, but it’s also less likely to work in real life, at least not with the effectiveness fiction suggests. Besides, I’m pretty sure cartoons, especially cartoons with a huge comedic element, are less likely to adhere to the rules of reality than live-action media. With that in mind, what would autism even look like in Equestria? Furthermore, how would it even be treated and managed? Don’t say magic.
However, despite the obvious difficulties, I don’t think introducing an autistic character to MLP is impossible. Maybe, the staff could add one to Equestria Girls. EG seems to have toned down a lot of the girls’ normally over-the-top character quirks, probably to give the Canterlot High universe a stronger semblance of realism. The fact that CHS’s standards of “normal” appear to be somewhat similar to ours would make accurately portraying autism much easier.
Admittedly, quite a few fans have speculated that MLP has already introduced a character with autism. She hasn’t been stated to have autism, but some of her behaviors and characteristics suggest this. The three most popular suspects are Maud Pie, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle, so I did what any cartoon-loving former psychology major would have done. I looked up the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ASD and compared each of their behaviors and characteristics to the criteria, which I’m going to link here. So far, the only one who was able to meet the criteria to my satisfaction was Maud. Pinkie Pie didn’t quite exhibit any behaviors that fit criterion B other than the fact that she ate rocks growing up, and some of her behaviors that possibly fit criterion A only did so somewhat questionably. The characteristics that Twilight had that seem to fit criterion A could be explained away by introversion, and her love of books and need for schedules wasn’t quite inflexible or perseverative enough to fit criterion B. However, I would like to add a disclaimer by saying that even though I majored in psychology, I haven’t been professionally trained, so I don’t really know which behaviors to count and which to dismiss. I could be wrong, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt please. Side note though, eating rocks seems to be considered normal for some Equestrian families, which only further supports my claim in the fifth paragraph.