In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny’s official screen debut, the United States Postal Service rolled out a sheet of Forever Stamp designs featuring the iconic Looney Tunes character on July 28.
There are 10 designs in total, depicting Bugs wearing fun costumes that allude to various animated shorts films throughout his history. But two designs that proved to be a favorite among Twitter users were ones featuring Bugs in drag.
One stamp shows Bugs dressed as the powerful female figure Brunhilde from the 1957 animated short What’s Opera, Doc?, which spoofs a handful of operas from the 19th century classical composer Richard Wagner. The other portrays Bugs as a sultry mermaid wearing red lipstick from 1944’s Hare Ribbin’. The two stamps garnered the most likes and retweets of all the designs on Twitter, with users expressing their love and appreciation for recognizing Bugs’ most gender-expansive moments.
“I wish I could buy a sheet of 20 for just this stamp! iconic queen,” one queer user tweeted in response to the Brunhilde stamp.
Another user replied: “Tbh first positive queer representation i saw in my life.”
Bugs Bunny has been cited as an inspiration for cisgender drag queens and gender non-conforming people alike. RuPaul said that the cartoon rabbit was his “first introduction to drag” in a 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview.
In the recent Sam Feder-directed Netflix documentary Disclosure, which explores trans representation in Hollywood, trans director Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix) and trans historian Susan Stryker agreed that at the time, Bugs represented a rare instance an affirming depiction of a character who could be read as transfeminine.
“There was something about Bugs Bunny that activated, in my trans imagination, this idea of transformation,” Wachowski commented.
“When I was growing up in the ’60s… the only, only positive representation of anything transfeminine was anything Bugs Bunny,” Stryker added. “When Bugs Bunny was doing ‘girl,’ Bugs Bunny was desirable and powerful.”
Some Twitter users took advantage of the commotion around the Bugs stamps to draw attention to the current push to save the USPS, which was in financial turmoil even before COVID-19 pandemic. The department is currently in danger of being defunded by the Trump administration to make way for potential privatization of the post office. In April, the White House denied the USPS’ request for a bailout, sparking the hashtag campaign #SaveTheUSPS.
