Well, I just learned that Sheik was a popular term for an awesome young man in the 20's. I thinhk that the LOZ crew tried a little TOO hard to make Zelda's guy form, "sheik" be a little TOO much like a guy.
I guess my point here is that we except the reality most comfortable to us.
...Sheik IS Zelda, my whole thing I'm trying to point out here is that maybe the guys tried so hard to make sheik be a boy, that it almost turned. Or at least I would have figured out should I have not seen any parody and knew that a sheik was a young fashionable man.