Stacey’s Mom has got it goin’ on — or at least, the animated moms of Pixar do. Since the 1995 premiere of “Toy Story,” the world’s first animated film made using computer technology, Pixar has become a household name. The studio is best known for its animated children’s films, from “Finding Nemo” to their most recent release, “Luca.” The name Pixar has long been synonymous with childhood — and now?
Pixar’s “The Incredibles”: Children recall the slapstick humor of Mr. Incredible; parents fondly note the hidden, wry comedy that made the film a multi-generational hit. For others, it’s the firm, round backside of Mrs. Incredible’s peachy-keen cheeks; the tight elastic of a super-suit that clings like saran-wrap around her wide, womanly hips; the perkiness of a bum, the audacity of an ass, the perfection of a pear figure — aged by 40 years like a bottle of something fine. That’s right, Mrs. Incredible is a MILF. Sorry, not sorry.
Shocking, I know. Some readers may even be turning away in thinly veiled disgust. How dare we sour the sanctity of a Pixar film with softcore erotica written in fervent devotion to Mrs. Incredible’s poppin’ figure? We dare in the spirit of journalistic integrity, a devotion to seeking the truth. Because we aren’t the first to call Mrs. Incredible a MILF — that dubious glory belongs to the Internet and the horny little shits who live there.
The MILFs: Who, What, Where
But first, what exactly is a MILF? As Urban Dictionary describes it, a MILF is a “Mom I’d Like to Fuck, or Mature I’d Like to Fuck.” MILFs usually apply to “hot moms,” but the term is liberally applied to any woman above the age of thirty. The MILF obsession is no niche Internet kink found in the recesses of Reddit but an ever-growing phenomenon found across adult films, platforms like Instagram and even dating apps. According to a 2016 survey by the adult website GameLink.com, “interest in MILF porn has risen 83%” between 2012 and 2016. This trend has continued to grow in prevalence since.
Many consider the 1999 cult classic film “American Pie” to have launched the modern MILF obsession. The raunchy comedy follows a group of teenage boys competing to lose their virginity by their high school prom. In the film, actress Jennifer Coolidge (“White Lotus”) has sex with her son’s friend — the true MILF fantasy. However, it is important to offer credit where credit is due to 1967 classic “The Graduate,” where actor Dustin Hoffman (“Rain Man”) is seduced by a beautiful, neglected housewife: Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft, “The Miracle Worker”). In 2003, Fountains of Wayne released their iconic hit “Stacy’s Mom,” a serenade to Stacy’s (supposedly) hot mom. As adult film star Tanya Tate remarked in a 2014 interview with Thrillist, “there are plenty of guys out there who really had crushes on their Mom’s friends (as teenagers).”
In fact, the target age group for MILF content on adult websites is between the ages of 18 and 25; this age range lands neatly between the naivety of adolescence and the “wisdom” of adulthood. It also correlates with the widely accepted peak period of horniness.
The classic MILF lover is a not-yet man who washes his sheets every three months (optimistically), shotguns Natty Lights and advertises “MILFs only, seriously” on his dating profile. He believes women his age are “crazy,” “clingy” and far too sexually inexperienced to possibly please him. He longs for an older woman who promises a brief, scalding affair of “no crap,” who will usher him into manhood through the power of her perky, never sagging triple-Ds and lust for a barely-pubescent, skinny, frat pledge’s medium-firm abs. It is this dazzling specimen of raw masculinity that drives the MILF-ication of Pixar moms.
The Evolution of the Pixar MILF and Evolving Beauty Standards
Pixar MILFs walk a fine line between the celebration of motherhood and pandering to societal beauty trends. On one hand, moms can be and are hot. Our critique of MILF culture is in no way a rejection of hot moms. Moms deserve to embrace their femininity and womanhood, to embrace themselves, to be a woman as well as a mom. On the other hand, in consideration of evolving beauty trends over the last twenty years, there is an undeniable parallel between the developing animation of Pixar moms to emphasize curves and contemporary beauty standards.
While the definition of the ideal body changes, women will always be subject to damaging and often unachievable beauty standards regardless of the form they take. The idea of the “perfect” ass, or, if you’ll allow me, “booty standards” has varied wildly, reaching all ends of the spectrum in the last three decades. Pixar, of course, animates the women who appear in its films to comply with such booty standards, sculpting and reinforcing the image to which real women and girls compare themselves.
In the ’90s, as Bustle puts it, “the ideal (…) butt was super tiny and kind of flat.” The original Toy Story hit theaters in 1995 and, accordingly, Andy’s mom, the only human woman who appears in the film, has an unremarkable, flat behind (and zero impact whatsoever on the plot or any character development). Andy’s mom is also known as Ms. Davis (little-known fact, courtesy of Pixar Wiki) and is a secondary or even tertiary character, background to Andy, who is background to the real stars of the film: the toys, who compete for Andy’s affection.
As the flat ass went out of style and the Kardashian-style (read: humongous, typically cellulite-free and expensive) booty began to take its place in pop culture, Pixar’s animation choices reflected the change onscreen. In 2004, Pixar unveiled the Incredibles and thus the MILF of all MILFs (and, with her, the dump truck ass of all animated dump truck asses): Mrs. Incredible, AKA Elastigirl. The matriarch of the Incredible family is the most iconic superhero mom of all time (and unquestionably hot). In the first movie of the franchise, she’s got a more than ample size booty and a stick-thin waist, giving her curves so dramatic that she’d fall over if she were real.
Jump to 2014, when “Big Hero 6” blessed us with sexy-ass MILF Aunt Cass who is also, to put it mildly, well-endowed in the behind area. Then, in 2017, “Coco,” a musical tale of a boy with a dream to realize his stardom and the history of his family, hit the big screen. The boy, Miguel, finds himself in the land of the dead and among many of his ancestors, including Mama Imelda, his great-great-grandmother. Despite Imelda being not technically human but an adorned skeleton (thus lacking any flesh or muscle), the animators make use of her bones to give a suggestion of her figure. They suggest, of course, an enormous ass. Imelda wears a royal purple dress that flows out at her hips and behind, suggesting the big booty underneath that once was.
Mama Imelda’s imagined backside was nothing in comparison to that of Mrs. Incredible in the second installment of the Incredibles franchise. In “Incredibles 2,” released in 2018, Mrs. Incredible’s ass reached new heights, or, more accurately, new voluptuous extremes. As we’ve stumbled through the 2010s into the 2020s, the size of the ideal booty has grown dramatically alongside our enormous existential anxiety. Thus, Mrs. Incredible’s perfectly smooth and gigantic ass (which was already highlighted by her new suit) needed to be bigger, too.
Fan Art of Pixar MILFS and non-MILFS
When Pixar does fail to animate a woman character in compliance with exaggerated beauty standards, “fans” take matters into their own hands and hypersexualize the characters themselves. The result? Fan art. In this case, crude illustrations and photoshopped images of MILFs and non-MILF characters alike. If she’s not a MILF, she becomes one. If she is, the features that make her so become even more exaggerated. A quick Google search for images of Ratatouille’s Colette yields a drawn resemblance of the character, but with a dramatically contoured face, pouty lips and a big, bulging, smooth ass.
The aunt from “Big Hero Six” is another serious offender: Aunt Cass is regularly photoshopped in illustrations to have Hooters-level pornographic cleavage. Her polite, crew-cut neckline swapped for a scoop-neck design barely able to contain her overflowing breasts. The image practically drips with the drool of horny men who salivate every time a woman bends over.
It is in the hyper-sexualization of Pixar moms in fan art that MILF culture truly becomes apparent. Where Pixar may be guilty of pandering to popular beauty standards — elevating moms who are often absent from and even rejected by fashion and beauty trends to a level of femininity offered only to the young (and perky) — fan art reveals the sheer infatuation fans have with fucking moms.
Although these female characters have enough ass for everyone, the actual number of Pixar mom characters is limited. This only communicates that more important than the personhood of a mom is her body, because her primary value will always be as a sexual object; her primary purpose to, as an asshole once yelled at me at a reproductive rights protest from his truck as he drove by, “go make a baby.” Women get to be either caring mothers or bad bitches; then they’re forced into two-dimensionality. These characters exist to serve men — be it by birthing them and caring for them directly, or by offering themselves as sexual objects. In this light, Pixar’s work doesn’t empower moms but rather harms women and girls because it doesn’t glorify moms as they truly are. Instead, it suggests that they can only achieve glory or even be worth anything if they embody these impossible standards.
Why MILFs?
This discussion leaves us with one final question: Why MILFs? There are several arguments to consider. The Oedipus complex suggests that children form an unconscious sexual desire for parents of the opposite sex and a sense of competition with the parent of the same sex. In this sense, young men begin to idolize older women as sexual partners due to lingering envy and desire for their own mothers. In other words, “mommy issues.”
Absent mothers can push men to seek maternal-sexual affection to replace or make up for that neglect; overbearing or extremely affectionate mothers can prompt men to project their relationships with their mothers onto other women in their life. For some men, it’s a question of helplessness. Unable to cook, clean, dress or navigate the wild, these young pups find themselves defenseless and unwilling to adapt to the newfound independence of adulthood. Traditional gender roles emphasize women as caregivers — perhaps MILFs developed through a fetishization of the traditional housewife role as women become increasingly independent.
Perhaps the most common drive, however, is the perception of older women as sexually experienced, mature and taboo. In this relationship, the young man offers nothing but their hot-stud body. The MILF would cater to their pleasure while simultaneously acting as a caregiver: maternal and comforting for the sexually inexperienced. MILF culture is obsessed with what women can offer to men. There is no sense of a woman’s sexual pleasure — if she does benefit, it is through the ability to “catch” a young man. Notice how the condemnation of “cougar” and the fetishization of “MILF” are simultaneously incongruent, yet strikingly similar.
Even in the supposed renaissance of the older woman, mothers are still constrained to the desire of men, eternal caregivers. When’s the last time a man between 18–25 years of age found the clit? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
As perhaps the MILF-man (a “mommy boy”) would put it best: “Mommy? Sorry. Mommy? Sorry. Mommy?” — Mommy, not sorry.
Daily Arts Writer Emmy Snyder can be reached at emmys@umich.edu.
Daily Arts Writer Madeleine Virginia Gannon can be reached at mvmg@umich.edu.