Why do Cartoon Characters Wear Gloves - Director’s Cut

Since the dawn of time, one question has plagued humankind: Why do cartoon characters wear gloves? Mickey Mouse. Roger Rabbit. Bugs Bunny. Sonic the Hedgehog. Woody Woodpecker. Cuphead. And so on, and on, and on, so much so that it's actually strange to see an anthropomorphic cartoon character sans gloves. But why are they so prevalent? There must be a reason why gloves are the de facto item for the cartoon community.

Do they do a lot of gardening? Maybe a lot of crime? "Dammit, Sarge, no fingerprints, just white polyester fibers again." Are they prone to OCD, or haphephobia? Did Goofy go all social media influencer and push the animation community into a white glove craze, bringing the glove trade to unexpected heights? Is Goofy maybe not as goofy as he seems, and he gets a cut? As it turns out, there are legitimate reasons why... and perhaps more.

Cartoon Characters Wearing Gloves Helped Animators

In an interview with Vox, NYU animation historian professor John Canemaker explains, "At the dawn of animation, certain techniques to make the animation process easier were used." Animators would use round edges instead of angles, for example, as they were easier and more efficient to draw repeatedly. While the process was made easier, it impacted the practicality of the product. Primarily, in a black-and-white film, cartoon characters' black hands couldn't be seen against their black bodies.

It would be Walt Disney who might have been the first to arrive at a solution by putting white gloves on Mickey Mouse for the 1929 Disney short The Opry House. It was a simple, effective solution that allowed for Mickey's virtuoso piano performance to stand out, and per Vox, it was inspired by vaudeville — more specifically, the vaudeville artists that played minstrels while in blackface. These blackface minstrels wore loose-fitting clothes, exaggerated makeup and, yes, white gloves, and early animators — who performed at the vaudeville shows as well — studied their performances and translated them to animation. It's not a particularly unsullied beginning, to say the least, but thankfully over time, the influence of blackface performers on animation disappeared, leaving only the white gloves behind.

White Gloves Humanized the Cartoon Characters

The secondary rationale for cartoon characters wearing gloves also makes perfect sense. In speaking with biographer Bob Thomas, Walt Disney explained that the gloves exist to humanize the character. In reference to Mickey, Disney said, “We didn’t want him to have mouse hands because he was supposed to be more human, So we gave him gloves. Five fingers seemed like too much on such a little figure, so we took away one. That was just one less finger to animate." It's difficult to even envision a character like Bugs Bunny holding a carrot with a rabbit paw, or Jiminy Cricket holding an umbrella with little insect stick hands. What's fascinating is how that idea of fewer fingers has been the standard for cartoon characters, both gloved and non-gloved (except for God and Jesus on The Simpsons), since then.

What They Don't Want You to Know About Cartoon Characters Wearing Gloves

Of course, those are the reasons we've been given, and they do make sense, but what if there's a deeper truth, one that's being hidden by the same people that know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Look at it logically. If we assert that cartoon characters always wear gloves, then what is another commonality that all cartoon characters share? They're all made of ink. What does ink do? It spills out and stains things. Therefore, cartoon characters wear gloves because they are made of ink, and without the gloves, they end up going all "Bendy and the Ink Machine" over everything. How embarrassing would it be for Marvin the Martian to get ink all over his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator before even having the chance to blow up the Earth with it? Even worse, what if the ink that they are made of spills out and kills them in the process? It's not like we are comparing ducks and witches here, this is something serious.

Another commonality? An odd number of fingers. Two, three, even four fingers yes, but rarely five, which leads to a far darker reality than we presume to know about the cartoon world: chipmunk child labor. Normally, gloves have your standard four fingers and a thumb, but tired little chipmunk children working 20 hours a day in a glove-making sweatshop in downtown Bikini Bottom, under the watchful eye of notorious cheapskate Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown)? They are likely to miss fingers here and there on their work, creating gloves with only three fingers and a thumb, for instance. Rather than toss these gloves away, Mr. Krabs seizes the opportunity to market these errant gloves to the cartoon community at a tidy profit, while the chipmunk children try desperately to hold on to their paltry acorn rations with their worn fingers (cue "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan).

The Springfield Connection to Cartoon Characters In White Gloves

There is another possibility, one just so insane that it will blow your mind with its possibilitiousness (it's not a word yet, but its time is coming). There's one contemporary character that wears white gloves: Krusty the Clown, voiced by Dan Castellaneta. The same Dan Castellaneta that voiced none other than Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future: The Animated Series. So here's what went down. Cartoon Doc Brown visits Springfield, meets Krusty, and they discover together that they're voiced by the same guy. They also realize that Krusty would have been the very first use of gloves on a cartoon character. Outraged by Castellaneta's disregard for the sanctity of a monogamous voiceover relationship, they travel back in cartoon history and start the glove trend much, much earlier, giving a Mickey Mouse who's leaking ink all over the place gloves, and thus taking away Castellaneta's shot at animation history.

There you have it, the reasons why — realistic, practical reasons or far more interesting, complete bollocks reasons — cartoon characters wear gloves. Stay tuned next week when we at Collider tackle the reason why Disney princesses Cinderella, Belle, and Tiana wear long gloves. Bold fashion choice, or the act of an elitist trio of animated women lording over their Disney Princess kin, princesses whose dainty royal fingers remain uncovered?