u/wolf_quan

Art by catu_mooon

Parents around Australia have been affected by the pretense disease. In response, the government will institute a national bedtime that will require every dog to be in bed by 7pm. Offenders can be fined 2k AUD or face timeout.

I admit. The first few episodes I watched, I was convinced Bluey was a boy. I immediately had suspicions that Bingo was a girl, but Bluey completely fooled me. And it’s not necessarily because she was blue.

As I’m sure most of you are aware, it’s not uncommon for very young boys and girls to sound alike since their vocal cords haven’t developed yet. In fact, there’s an old ad for Season 1 where Bluey’s VA is speaking and advertising the show, and I swear to God, she sounds like Rusty. Her voice just sounded a bit more mature than I was expecting. That’s not to say that girls can’t be mature. I think it’s just a result of being overexposed to American media.

See, in American animation for kids, the girl characters always have high-pitched voices, and they’re always screaming at the top of their lungs, so Bluey, along with her thick Aussie accent, just throw me off. And I was aware of the Aussie accent, but Bluey was the first show where I got to hear a female Aussie talk at length. In American culture, almost all of the famous Aussies are men. (Hugh Jackman, Chris/Liam Hemsworth, Steve Irwin, etc)

So just to summarize, I thought Bluey was a boy at first due to a combination of American portrayal of girls on TV, the fact that she was blue, and the fact that I haven’t really heard a female Aussie before.