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I recently had the awkward pleasure of explaining to my non-girlfriend why the prospect of boning Princess Jasmine was more exciting than the prospect of boning her.

After a few ambiguous mutterings about the smoothness of Jasmine’s animated curves and her spicy Indian attitude, I gave in and admitted that my real live non-girlfriend was much more attractive than any 2-Dimensional floozy.

This however was not true.

Jasmine is way hotter than my non-girlfriend or any girl that I have known, period.

At first I thought I was weird for feeling this way and tried to hide my attraction for cartoon women. Thankfully, the internet is a big place, and everyone can find their niche. I discovered I wasn’t alone. Toon porn sites abound on the internet, and former pervert doodlers like Jab! can become virtual celebrities if their Mrs. Jetson sketches come close enough.

I realized that what some consider an “abnormal fetish” for cartoon women is actually just a pretty commonplace attraction that often runs parallel to most men’s attraction to real women.

So what is it about these cartoon women that turn us on, sometimes more than pictures of “real women?” (I use quotations here to point out that photographs of live women are also 2-dimensional and often so photoshopped as to be considered animations themselves, but that is a debate for another day)

I blame Disney.

Like the generations before us, we grew up watching the Disney movies. Our concepts of right and wrong, our perceptions of violence, our introduction to love, were all rooted in these animated films that we watched over and over and over. As each Hero or Heroine overcame their obstacles, we saw them rewarded with an ideal romantic partner. Aladdin won Princess Jasmine, Ariel won Prince Eric, etc.

As children, we looked to the Heros for our perception of masculinity and the Heroines for our perception of femininity. Carl Jung calls this feminine perspective the Anima, or “the unconscious idea of the feminine.” Jung believed that the Anima is formed most heavily from a man’s mother, but is also influenced by other females encountered in a man’s life.

To grossly oversimplify, we as males our often guilty of being attracted to and falling in love with women that we unconsciously feel fit our idea of the Anima. As a generation that grew up with the TV, our Anima (and more generically our concepts of love, sexuality, and gender roles) has been heavily influenced by cartoon women. The Disney Princesses are, for many men, the ideal manifestation of the female.

When we see an image of a cartoon woman, we see a reflection of all our expectations of the female, with none of the physical, emotional, or logistical reality checks to hold back our imagination and sexual appetite. How many times have you seen a picture of a beautiful woman that was perfect except for one small thing that just didn’t do it for you? Cartoon women are devoid of these perceived “defects,” and are created with the sole purpose of conjuring up a mental projection of an ideal woman. (Plato’s Forms anyone?)

Long story short, next time your girlfriend or non-girlfriend tries to give you some shit about wanting to do Pocahontas in her hot leather mini-skirt, quote some Jungian psychology and watch her scramble for some justification. Because we all know girls don’t read!