Mulan.

When Disney's Mulan gallops off to join the army as a man, millions of little girls get their first taste of a thrilling new world of possibilities. Strictly speaking, of course, Mulan's switcheroo isn't new; women characters have been disguising themselves as men in the movies for years.

What is revolutionary about Mulan is that she wears her pants in this year's Disney summer animated blockbuster, thus joining an elite list of film characters designed to appeal to all families all around the world. It's hard to imagine a more sweeping mainstream validation.

Based on a 2,000-year-old Chinese folktale, Mulan tells of a young woman who chooses to pass as a man and go to war rather than allow her ailing father to be drafted. With shorn hair and wearing her father's armor, Mulan proves to be a formidable warrior. When her identity is revealed, she overcomes society's constraints and becomes a great leader and champion of China.

Like Mulan, women characters have traditionally cross-dressed in film not for kicks but for a purpose--to achieve something impossible to do as a woman. In 1982's Victor/Victoria, one of the best-known films of the genre, Julie Andrews takes on a man's identity simply to make,. ends meet. Unable to find work as a woman, Andrews turns herself into the effeminate Count Victor, who makes "his" living as a female impersonator.

Likewise, in the 1983 musical Yentl, Barbra Streisand disguises herself as a man so she can learn the teachings of the Talmud, which women aren't allowed to study. In the title role of 1933's Queen Christina, Greta Garbo poses as a man and flees her palace to dodge a political marriage. Katharine Hepburn takes on a male identity in the 1935 film Sylvia Scarlett to escape from the police.

All these passing women are newcomers compared to Viola in Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night. Donning a man's uniform to defend herself when she's shipwrecked in a strange country, Viola has delighted audiences since 1602. In 1996 Imogen Stubbs played the part in a film version that allowed the disguised Stubbs a tantalizing flirtation with Helena Bonham Carter.

Even in cartoons, women have worn men's clothes--though to entertain rather than to pass. Critic Leonard Maltin recalls Betty Boop "imitating Maurice Chevalier in a film called Stopping the Show from the early '30s." Regarding Mulan, Maltin says he "cant dunk of another case of an entire story--especially a feature-length cartoon--being bitched to a gender switch."

"People in drag have appeared in most forms of entertainment, including animation," notes John Canemaker, author of the forthcoming book Hangin' Out the Wash: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards. "In terms of Disney, there hasn't been really that much, maybe because the roles of men and women were so firmly defined in the films."

Both Maltin and Canemaker see Mulan as part of Disney's efforts to update its animated female leads. "Mulan is probably one of the strongest heroines they've ever done," Canemaker says. "She's assertive, she's bold, and she's equal to men physically."

And, of course, she's not a lesbian. Whether live action or animation, that's the fairy tale no one's seen yet: the cross-dressing heroine who suits up, comes out, and gets the girl. If Disney ever gets around to making that one, let's hope the studio doesn't forget its signature ending: "And they lived happily ever after."

Ortega's writing appears in newspapers around the country via the TVData Features Syndicate.