Polite society has all sorts of rules, and one of them is that if you have a thing for cartoon characters, you're some kind of weirdo all of a sudden. After all, they're not real people, a lot of them are made for children, and it just makes you feel like a creep. But why should it? They're designed by talented animators to be appealing to the eye, and in a way it would kind of be an insult to all the hard work they put in if you didn't have a crush on their characters. Plus, a lot of these films and TV shows came out when we were kids, just starting to get icky feelings about the opposite or same sex. And if most of our media diet comprised of Disney movies and Saturday morning cartoons, where else were we supposed to develop our first crushes? To this day, a lot of the characters on this list represent the ultimate ideal, whether we're willing to admit it or not. You might not actively carry a torch for some of these characters now (or maybe you do, we're not judging), but you have to admit that you did once upon a time, when you were in that same gross prepubescent stage as the rest of us.
10. Lola Bunny - Space Jam
She's not even a human, you sick freak. She's just an anthropomorphized rabbit in short shorts...in a children's movie. Why did the animators decide to make her so unbearably sexy? The world may never know. We're just glad that they did. In the Looney Tunes universe, she is a rival and love interest of Bugs Bunny. Typing the words "love interest of Bugs Bunny" felt really weird, like we're desecrating the pure innocence of our collective childhood, but hey, it was their idea, not ours. Lola was originally designed from a marketing perspective, creating a female counterpart to Bugs Bunny for merchandising, but she quickly became much more than that. She takes on a large role in Space Jam, where she plays on the Looney Tunes team alongside all of our longtime favorites, including Bugs, Daffy, Newman from Seinfeld, and Bill Murray. Playing himself. She's one of the best players they've got, which makes her athletic and beautiful. So if you were a boy growing up in the 1990s, you have this film to thank for that awkward conversation you had with your mom about how you're kind of attracted to rabbits.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
