Shh, no one tell Senator Alex Antic that Jemima's been wearing overalls since 1966. Sure, there's been the occasional day where she's dressed up in ballet outfits and pretty little frocks, but for the most part when Jemima's been keeping those bears in line (bears, who, mind you, have spent the best part of 55 years butt naked) she's been rocking a pair of sensible pants.
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On Tuesday, in Senate estimates, Antic was questioning ABC boss David Anderson about an episode of Play School where for storytime drag queen Courtney Act read a book about dressing up.
The episode featured the book The Spectacular Suit where a girl rejects her mother's request to wear a dress on her birthday because she wants to wear the spectacular suit. This is how part of the exchange went.
Antic: "The program was rated G and has been heavily promoted on TV and on the app. Why is the ABC grooming children with this sort of adult content?"
Anderson: "Senator, I don't see that as grooming children with our content ..."
Antic: "Female children in male children's clothing, you think that's not ..."
And then Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young stepped in: "You mean young girls wearing pants? Seriously."
Apparently he was.
There were quite a few things to this exchange which disturbed me. First of all the allegations of grooming. Let's not trivialise one of the most abhorrent actions against children. Children are groomed online and in the real world, by teachers, by family friends, by their own family. A story about wearing pants is not grooming.
"I think sexual assault survivors right around this country will be deeply offended, deeply offended by you playing politics," Hanson-Young said, speaking for us all.
Antic stood his ground, saying programs such as this contributed to Australia's "gender dysphoria problem" and that transgender issues and such things as cross-dressing were "adult concepts" that had no place in children's programming.
I'm wondering if Antic has ever watched Play School? For those of us born in the same year, the program has been a core part of our lives. When long-time presenter John Hamblin died in September part of us died too.
Let's face it, it's gentle "subversiveness" is part of its charm. Not that we ever noticed as kids. Watching it now, you notice how cheeky Hamblin in particular was, from his actions to the song Johnny Works with One Hammer, to wearing tails on the wrong side of his pants. Noni Hazelhurst even told him to keep his sausage to himself in one episode when they were eating a make-believe meal.
And that's just what it is - make believe. A story about dressing up is not a manifesto. It's a story about dressing up.
One of my own children's favourite books when they were little was Kaz Cooke's The Terrible Underpants.
Here our heroine Wanda Linda gets ready for the day, only to realise she has no clean underpants, and the only pair available are the terrible underpants. They're baggy, stained with holes in them, loose elastic.
Nevertheless she pops them on, perhaps to feel properly dressed, but they spoil her whole day. She can't playing upside down on the money bars, nor jump over sprinklers, nor do handstands, without someone noticing her underpants. So she took them off.
Did I never think that this story was about encouraging children to wander around half naked? No. Did I ever think there was anything harmful in this story? Not even once.
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Indeed I went to a dress-up party myself last weekend. As Princess Leia.
Was I influenced by the thousands of people who now identify their religion as Jedi in the Census data? No. I liked a make-believe story.
And yes I did have nice buns.
And so does Courtney Act. I encourage everyone to search out the episode where she talked about gender on the ABC's Little Kids Big Talk program in 2021. (Obviously Antic has never seen this show either.) It's the most heart-warming six minutes you'll ever see.
Let's teach our kids to be kind and generous and open, teach them to be good listeners and good friends.
Does it really matter if they're wearing pants? Or spectacular suits.
