Did Time Magazine Declare Birdo Trans?

As someone who once wrote and reported for a newspaper, I take no pleasure in the state of the print industry today. Typically, when I am in the grocery store check out, I give the magazine racks the same respect as I give to traffic accidents I drive by: I glance, but I don’t linger at the carnage. That would be tacky.

Last week, however, one publication did catch my eye: a Time special edition about none other than “Super Mario,” as the cover touts him, as if it needed to differentiate him from another mononymous Mario.

I bought it, less because I thought it would be good but more that I was just curious how one of these would write about Mario for a mainstream American audience. You have seen these, I’m sure; they are these standalone magazine one-offs that bear the branding of grocery store mainstays — Time, People, Sports Illustrated — but focus on a specific subject that no weekly or monthly issue ever would. Betty White got more than one after she died. Various royals get them. The famously dead like Marylin, Elvis and James Dean still get them. And more recently I saw one dedicated to Hello Kitty. No joke, my initial reaction was “Wait, did she die?” These, I can only conclude, are helping the publishing industry limp by, and the fact that this Super Mario issue ended up costing me $15 might explain why.

You might expect that I’d bash this publication. From what I read, it seems… fine. I’m fully aware that it was not written for me. Its primary audience seems more like people my age who remember the Super Mario games from their childhood and might be interested in an overview of how the franchise has grown over the past few decades. It might also be younger fans of the games who by virtue of being born in the new millennium simply don’t know the origins, though I’d wager that any kids mature enough to wonder what Mario was like before they’re born would already know, since it’s easy to research online.

But given that Time must have known that younger readers might be flipping through, I was extremely surprised by the write-up that Birdo got, because it mentions that some people consider her transgender. Clearly, this is something I was already aware of, and if you haven’t yet, read my piece “The Complete History of Birdo’s Sexuality,” please do. I just didn’t expect a publication like this to mention it.

As disposable as this issue might seem, the fact that a print publication bearing Time branding acknowledged that there’s a trans interpretation of this decades-old video game character is kind of huge. What’s more, with that phrase “Although Nintendo avoids commenting on it,” it even lowkey dings the company for pretending that this interpretation isn’t well-known. This small bit of text might be far from the scathing “LET BIRDO BE TRANS, YOU BASTARDS” posts you’ll see online but this nonetheless amounts to the most public, most mainstream-facing instance I can think of anyone pointing out that this is totally a thing even if Nintendo pretends that it’s not. 

I should probably clarify that this issue is not a Nintendo-branded publication that Time put together to plug the company’s most popular character so much as a Time venture that secured the rights to Nintendo media assets in an effort to sell copies and make money. I would imagine on some level that Nintendo has to consent to the issue being produced, though I’m also fairly sure that it doesn’t get the power to veto what goes in print, otherwise this bit about Birdo probably would not have made the cut. I can kind of imagine a conversation between the writer, Courtney Mifsud Intreglia, and her editor about how to state this as diplomatically as possible. But as innocuous as it is, it’s probably as close to criticism as you’ll find the issue’s nearly one hundred pages. On the whole, the tone is about as positive as you’d expect, in that the thesis for every article is more or less “Mario is neat and interesting,” and even the mention of Princess Peach: Showtime! skillfully avoids mentioning that it sucks. 

Of course, not everyone is happy about the mention of Birdo’s gender. It came to my attention today that people are making the kind of boneheaded accusations you’d expect when someone tagged my Birdo post on Bluesky. Here’s the thing, however. This publication isn’t written for kids, necessarily, and I’m talking about the fact that Mario is one the cover. I’m talking word choice, sentence structure and overall length of the articles. Only the smartest kids are going to be able to wade through what amounts to a junior high writing level, at the very least, and if they are, they’re mature enough to know that this aspect of Birdo has been present since she debuted in 1987. It’s central enough to her that you’d be hard-pressed to find any comprehensive bio of the character written in the last decade or so that doesn't mention it.

What’s more, that statement of “Although Nintendo avoids commenting on it” also doubles as assurance that this is something that the company itself seems reluctant to touch one way or another, and so far, it remains an interpretation that exists in the fandom and not the games. So no, playing as Birdo in Mario Kart is not going to get you indoctrinated in anything aside from a hatred of banana peels.

Again, I’m surprised — but it’s a good surprise. I’m sure negative reactions from the people who live to offer negative reactions was also considered in the publication of this issue, but those concerns were clearly ignored. As they should have been.

One more thing that I’m including both because it underscores my point about the target demo for this issue but also also because I’m just amused that it made it into a piece on Peach’s evolution from damsel-in-distress to hero in her own right.

Like, it’s not wrong. I’m just impressed that the author — who is the same person who wrote Birdo bio — tricked someone who just wanted to learn about Mario into learning the basic plot of the Ramayana. (This is coming from someone who used his time at People magazine to explain the difference between Psylocke and Kwannon.) But then again, I’d guess that the same people who’d object to acknowledging Birdo’s trasness would also be anti-Hindu mythology.