Select character at start (by using vaiable)

Greetings,

I was able to impement this in a customer service course I created.  However, I am having the same issue that Heidi described above: the character blinks from male to female for a split second on every slide change.  I tried both of the recommendations from Diane on having the action at the top of the list, and starting as hidden with a state change, but neither seem to be working. 

Has anybody else tried this out and experienced this issue?

Does anybody have suggestions on how to correct that issue?

Thanks!