I’m too old to have watched Mr. Rogers as a child. But as I watched him forty years ago with my own child, I found some of his messages a little obscure. For example, there was the song that follows, which I thought unnecessary at the time. What did “fancy” mean in this context, and why did kids need reassurance about remaining boys or remaining girls?

I have come to think of the song as both important and prescient. Perhaps Fred Rogers was merely concerned at the time with castration anxiety in kids, or something of that sort. The idea that “some are fancy on the outside” and some “on the inside” seems to be a cute-ish way of referring to boys and girls, respectively. The message is of body integrity, goodness, and wholeness, about which today’s children probably need a ton of reassurance. Unfortunately, they’re not watching Mr. Rogers anymore.