OK, leave Spongebob alone.  He helps me so much.  All I have to do is pop in one of his DVDs and my kids calm down, they laugh, they scream.  Oh well, I guess once they started attacking one of the teletubbies for being gay, every other cartoon character is fair game.  That's life.  I like Spongebob the way he is.  He really is like a kid I guess.  Well, if you've seen the Spongebob movie, you know what I mean.  Hey, when is that coming out on DVD?  Ok, read on.

Grungebob

By BARBARA HOFFMAN

LOSE the shorts and necktie. So say those who'd make SpongeBob SquarePants a manlier, more John Wayne kind of sponge.

Their advice comes after James Dobson, president of the conservative group Focus on the Family - irked by Bob's tendency to hold hands with his starfish friend, Patrick - claimed the sociable sponge was spreading "a gay agenda" to porous little minds, who might perhaps be moved to redecorate their playpens.

Whether or not you think SpongeBob is gay (and we'll never really know unless he's caught with Patrick in more compromising positions than holding hands), it's clear he has an image problem. Those long eyelashes, short pants and cherub cheeks hardly shout manly man.

Style experts have some definite ideas for making the mild-mannered sponge a tough, more Brillo-pad-like guy.

"I don't think SpongeBob is gay, but SpongeBob TIGHTPants is gay," declared Robert Verdi, lifestyle expert and host of the E! network's "Fashion Police."

"Right now, he's wearing tube socks, platform shoes and a tie. He's got this '50s meets '70s look going on, and the shorts definitely make him look gay ...

"I'd put him in a pair of Timberlands, an LL Bean flannel shirt and a pair of Diesel jeans."

Top it off with a Yankees cap - "being a sports fanatic would help" - and you're nearly there. Almost.

"He's gotta lose Patrick," said Verdi, tongue firmly in cheek. "Pat's a metrosexual and, well, if any of your friends make you look gay, you shouldn't have them around."

Turning Bob's home of Bikini Bottom into an undersea Hooters might help, too, Verdi said. "And you just might want to have him at a NASCAR (news - web sites) event."

Bruce Pask, style director of the men's shopping magazine Cargo, sees SpongeBob's dilemma as "less a straight vs. a gay thing and more like childlike vs. manly."

"He's wearing a school uniform, basically," Pask says. "Let's put him in pants and help him stay true to his name."

Pask favors jeans - preferably darker and stonewashed.

"And lose the necktie," Pask adds. A long-sleeved, open-neck shirt would be more in keeping with a manlier sponge.

He stopped short of suggesting a 5 o'clock shadow:

"That might be a little disturbing on a sponge," he said, with a shudder.

Drinking beer directly from the can would certainly up SpongeBob's butch quotient, said Ted Allen, the resident food and wine expert at Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

"Ditch the canapes and French food, and have SpongeBob eat more hamburgers and cold pizza," he said.

Even so, Allen wondered whether SpongeBob would pass as a metrosexual, let alone homosexual.

"Looking at him closely, he's only got two teeth and a kind of pebbly face. I think Dobson needs to do a little more research."

Finally, since gestures say so much, The Post asked Patti Wood, a body-language expert, how the sponge could straighten up his act.

"SpongeBob should watch old John Wayne movies and see how he holds his arms away from his body - very manly and macho," she said.

Looking or staring more aggressively would also make him more of a He Sponge, she said. And he shouldn't smile nearly as much.

"What I find fascinating," Wood added, "is that what's feminine is also perceived as more friendly, while what's masculine is perceived as strong or aggressive."

SpongeBob's creator, she says, was "probably after a friendlier, but not necessarily feminine sponge."

"It's a sponge, for crying out loud," protested a spokesman for SpongeBob's home station, Nickelodeon. "He has no sexuality."

Indeed. But should the world need a rougher, tougher sponge, this would be the way to go.