But the thing that got me thinking was that we were ashamed to admit that a cartoon character could be oddly fanciable. Which is weird, because for years men have quite happily discussed the merits of various animated hotties. I once walked in on a group of my male friends having a heated discussion about who is fitter: Belle or Jasmin (it was Jasmin, by the way). Ever since Jessica Rabbit was just drawn that way, hell, even before that, with comic book and manga heroines, men have been openly lusting after 2D babes.
But women can't quite get away with it. I once admitted to having a crush on Gambit in the 90s X-Men cartoon series as a kid and just got blank looks from my female friends. Is it because women are expected to look beyond appearences when they develop a crush, whereas men are happy with a decent pair of animated breasts? Or is it because most animators are men and they don't see why they would need to draw sexy males? It's a chicken and egg situation: do artists not sexualise male characters as much as female characters because women aren't attracted to cartoons, or are women not attracted to cartoon men because the artisits don't bother making them sexy?
Maybe Disney isn't the best example - it's Disney, it's not meant to be sexy. But it's a long-standing thing in comics that women can fight crime in a thong and contort themselves into bizarre positions where both boobs and bum are pointing at the reader, but the men are covered up like monks. Yes, every so often Bruce Wayne gets out his hairy chest, and yes, all the men are drawn as a physical ideal in the same way the women are, but the women are drawn sexy, and the men are drawn heroic. I have no problem with sexy heroines - if I looked like Starfire, I'd wear a crazy purple cut-away swimsuit all the time too. But I wish the artists would bring just a little more sex appeal to the male characters.
Now, Nicola Scott, she knows what she's doing.
If more heroes were drawn like this, more women would admit to fancying cartoons. That's all I'm saying.
