Miss Piggy started as an unnamed chorus pig and outsold Kermit
In 1975 she was a nameless, beady-eyed blonde pig in a Muppet pilot sketch. Within a few years the writers realised a lovesick pig could carry far more than a running joke, and Miss Piggy was selling more merchandise than Kermit and topping bestseller lists with her own guide to life.
Her first known appearance came on an Herb Alpert television special on October 13, 1974, where she sang softly and sweetly, nothing like the diva to come. By the time The Muppet Show launched in 1976 she had the familiar look: big blue eyes, silver gown and long white satin gloves. Hildegarde, who wore such gloves before her, claimed the gloves were her idea, and the name nods to the jazz singer Peggy Lee.
Frank Oz, her principal performer, gave her an unusually detailed backstory. As he told The New York Times in 1979, she grew up in a small town, lost her father young, had a cold mother and entered beauty pageants to get by, hiding real vulnerability behind her hunger for fame. His private shorthand for the character during development was a trucker who longs to be a woman. Oz considered her one of the rare Muppets with a fully rounded personality, unlike the flatter Fozzie Bear.
The sweetness and the karate chop became her signature combination, often aimed at Kermit, whom she smothered with kisses one moment and sent flying the next. The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984 ended with the frog marrying her, apparently without realising it. Jim Henson Productions officially ended the romance on May 10, 1990, planning a publicity push, but Henson died days later and the campaign was abandoned; the couple split again in 2015.
Her late-1970s boom was enormous. Miss Piggy's Guide to Life spent 29 weeks on the New York Times list, peaking at number 4. Eric Jacobson took over the role in 2002 and openly calls it one of the most famous drag acts in show business. In 2015 the Brooklyn Museum's Sackler Center for Feminist Art gave her an award for challenging gender roles in entertainment.
Source: Miss Piggy
