Miffy is a girl rabbit?" asks Martine, a Dutch friend of mine, as we talk over beers outside a local pub in Amsterdam. "We Dutch grow up with Miffy as a part of our childhood, but I just presumed it was a boy rabbit."
Martine turned to her wife, who nodded. "Yes, I always thought Nijntje was a boy too," she said, referring to the rabbit by its Dutch name (pronounced something like "nin-che"). They both seemed genuinely surprised to hear that Miffy is female. Or is she? And what about the proverbial flowered dress the rabbit wears, such as the one on the cover of "Miffy's Birthday"?
A few days later I was hot on the trail of the gender-bending bunny, a path that led me through the city streets of Utrecht, Nijntje's hometown in Holland. Soon I was hopping over canals, shimmying through traffic and scampering through the old museum quarter until I finally spotted the city's famous lagomorph. After taking a selfie with the oversize bunny with lengthy ears, round full-stop eyes and a recumbent letter X mouth, I entered the adjacent Centraal Museum, on the prowl for the curator and "Studio 9."
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