(Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, sorry)
Fred Rogers always had such a careful way about talking to children through his show. It got me thinking about how he would have talked about trans stuff.
One thing he did on his show was try to draw a clear line between reality and make-believe. There was an episode where he explored the show "The Incredible Hulk," and he showed the actor behind the green makeup and explained how none of it was real, just special effects.
He was also very much about acceptance of people. Many know of his friendship with Francois Clemmons, who was gay. Rogers also sang many songs telling kids they were fine and special, just as they were, and their bodies were fine just as they were. He sang and talked about how boys would grow up to be men and girls would grow up to be women, and that our bodies are changing and growing all the time.
I feel like a lot of these kids who transition could have really benefited from the Mister Rogers approach. I wish someone had said, "You're not a boy, you're a girl. And you will grow up to be a woman. And you can wear the clothes you want to wear and do the things you want to do, just like boys who grow into men will be able to do. There's nothing wrong with your body. It's made just right and as you grow it will change in the way it's supposed to. You don't need to do anything to fix your body because it's not broken. People can be loved just the way they are, whether they're a boy or a girl or a man or a woman."
It's so odd to me that Fred Rogers has been sort of a popular figure of late, perhaps even more so than when he was alive, and yet his philosophies have gone out the window. Now we tell children their bodies ARE wrong but that they can change their bodies and they can choose whether to grow into a man or a woman. In contrast to one of his songs, we basically tell kids it IS the clothes they wear and the toys they have that make them who they are. What a shame.
I'm sure it comes from the nature of social media. Mr Rogers is not popular because these people have watched all his shows, he's popular because people took quotes of his and slapped it on a screenshot. As with everything else, the younger generations are not seeing the entirety of his work, they are seeing memeified snippets that align with their worldview, or the worldview their social media creates for them unless they take the initiative to look deeper.