Yesterday, Entertainment Weekly posted the a poll asking which cartoon readers thought was more attractive: the Beast as a Beast or the Beast turned back into a human.  I thought, along with columnist Annie Barrett, that the answer was fairly obvious.  72% of the readers agreed with us.  The Beast as a Beast was so obviously more attractive.  I don’t know why, but Disney animators missed the mark there.  I mean, it’s a weird thing to say you prefer an unidentified animal with fangs and claws and fur to a flesh (ink) and blood man, but the results don’t lie.  And it’s not the “bad boy” thing because he was really sweet inside and she helped him realize that and changed him!  And isn’t that what every woman wants to do? 

But this got me thinking about a conversation I had semi-recently in an improv rehearsal.  We were doing an exercise where someone gives a category — favorite breakfast cereals, for example — and everyone says the first one that came to their mind.  Well, someone asked for the Disney character you’d have sex with.  I thought of mine and then hesitated.  I laughed and literally said, “Mine’s kind of weird.”  One of the other girls said she thought she knew what I was going to say, and she had thought of it too.  We start going around and, everyone else’s were fairly normal: Prince Eric, Jasmine, etc.  Then I said mine.  And no, it wasn’t the Beast.  But it was Robin Hood the Fox.  Turns out, that is who the other girl was thinking of.  And another girl in the group was like, “ohhhhh! Yeah!”  The guys were totally weirded out.  Then, no joke, a few days later, one of my friends from college had something about how hot Robin Hood was in her gchat away message.  What the heck, ladies?

Yes, I know that this is all silliness and obviously impossible hypotheticals.  But I do think it’s weird and also amazing that we can look past the fact that he is a FOX, and be like, “I’d totally do him.”  He’s just so dashing!  Disney did a bang up job on this one, creating a super sexy character that somehow resonated with women enough for them to be attracted to an animal.  So weirdly, I guess I chose Robin Hood for his personality, but the Beast for his looks.  Because the Beast as a man is just fug.