Originally Posted by
The Moocher
As a newbie, the male/female split in this forum interests me. It doesn't surprise me. I've always found Betty to be popular with either gender.
Why?
It's obvious why men like Betty. She's very attractive. She also has a real figure, unlike the bone-thin glamor girls of today. She doen't mind showing that figure. You get the impression that she wants to be looked at, and won't be at all offended.
Also, she won't let me down by human weakness and scandal. She won't kick her dog. She won't grow old.
And she's a cartoon, so my wife doesn't mind at all!
As a sad old man with an expanding waistline I like to look at pretty girls. When I was a fit young man with a trim waistline I liked to look at pretty girls. Men look at pretty girls. Women look at handsome men. That's how it is.
So why do women like Betty? I'm hoping some will tell me. I'll speculate a little though.
If a flesh and blood celebrity had Betty's taste in clothes, and Betty's figure, would she be popular with her own gender? But Betty is a cartoon, and obviously a cartoon. She is not a proportional drawing of a human female. Her head is too big, her eyes out of proportion even to her head. She is attractiveness and cuteness taken to an unreal degree, so that it is no longer a threat.
She is also, at least in pre-Hays days, a fiesty little piece. Betty doesn't wait around for a man to solve her problems, she sorts them herself. She doesn't have a human boyfriend, nor does she seem to need one, although she has a healthy, straightforward, honest interest in the opposite gender.
Or maybe, because she is a cartoon, she gets off with antics that girls would love to try but never do. Boop was standing on top of hot air gratings when Munroe was but a child.
Post Hays it's not so clear. She is the (unmarried) housewife, the secretary, the waitress. She is the meek, respectable little woman in the background. Her continued popularity with women when men were rapidly losing interest has always puzzled me.
OK, I've said enough. Topic open for discussion.
Mooch
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