I'm not sure if this post should be here or in the Media section. I'll let the mods decide.
Recently, over the past month or two, I started watching cartoons again. It all started because I couldn't find anything on TV that I wanted to watch, which seems to happen a lot, lately. Anyway, I was channel surfing and I came across the network "Boomerang". What's funny here is that I had this channel, and a lot of other "kids" channels, "blocked out" of my set top box, because I just never watch them, as I have no kids in the house. Well, whatever night that was, I decided to go back into my "controls" for the TV and turn back on the channels that I had blocked in order to see if I could find something to watch. That's how I found Boomerang.
A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and I saw that "The Flintstones" was on. I watched it and it brought back a lot of good memories. These were made in the 1960s. I know I was watching The Flintstones when I was around 2 years. I watched a few more episodes at various times, over the next week or so, when this one episode I was watching had Fred and Barney dressing up as women. Hmmmm. I thought that was pretty cool.
I, also, discovered "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" on Boomerang, another childhood favorite of mine from the 1960s. Sure enough, I watched a few episodes of "Scooby" over the next week or so and then they had an episode where Shaggy and Scooby both crossdressed.
That got me to thinking. First, I realized that seeing Fred & Barney and Shaggy & Scooby crossdressing was my FIRST exposure to crossdressing. I make that statement with a slight caveat; that is unless my much older sisters dressed me up in their baby girl cloths when my mother was at work and they were babysitting me. That I don't remember and I've never been told that. Anyways, these shows were already on for a few years when I was around 2 and I know I was watching cartoons at 2 years old. At 2 years old I highly doubt that I was crossdressing at home personally, be it playing with my mother's shoes or whatever else. I know at 2 that I didn't know what CDing was. I truly think that my first exposure came from watching these cartoon characters crossdressing.
I, also, started wondering if this was an impetus for my crossdressing? A switch that turned on an already there inclination? Or a subliminal message of some kind? There are probably even new, current cartoons, which I haven't seen, that also show crossdressing male characters.
I know crossdressing in TV and movies has always been around, think Milton Berle or Some Like It Hot, but that was geared towards adult audiences. Young kids are impressionable. I just thought of another show geared towards kids where there was crossdressing: Saved By The Bell. Didn't "Zack" and "Slater" also crossdress in an episode? Now that I think of it, didn't "Danny" and "Joey" in Full House also crossdress in an episode?
If crossdressing is so frowned upon by society, why would "they" make cartoons for children that show crossdressing male characters? That really doesn't make sense, does it? And they are still showing them today.