The Minions have become global stars since they appeared in Illumination's Despicable Me more than 15 years ago. Gru's yellow pill-shaped henchmen have gone on to get their own spin-off movies and to appear in merchandise and memes the world over. But with Minions & Monsters coming to cinemas soon, an old question has resurfaced: why are there are no girl Minions?
While the Minions appear in various physical forms, including with one or two eyes, and they've sometimes dressed as women for comic effect, they're all male. It might seem like Gru is guilty of sexism when it comes to recruiting his henchmen, but the reason why there are no male Minions won't exactly delight the manosphere.
At first glance, you might assume the squishy animated characters to be gender neutral. Canonically, they were created in a lab by Gru's inventor Dr. Nefario, cloned from a mutated strand of DNA, and they can't reproduce, making them finite in number.
However, by the time the Minions got their own movie in 2015, people had realised that something was up. All of the Minions had male names, like Kevin, Stuart and Bob, and they were repeatedly referred to as boys.
Minions the movie failed the Bechdel test created by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel to measure whether a film fairly represents female characters (to pass, a movie needs at least two named female characters who speak to each other about a topic other than a man).
The 'most sexist kids' movie of the year," some viewers complained, calling for equal representation among the ranks of bumbling animated bad guys.
‘Minions’ most sexist kids’ movie of the year? http://t.co/Ov2fMMZ3Qv for you @margotmagowan :) #gender #media pic.twitter.com/0i2TkonyD9July 13, 2015
But it turns out that the omission of female Minions wasn't intended as a gender slight. Quite the contrary. Pierre Coffin, the French animator who continues to direct the movies and provide the main voice for the Minions, addressed the issue in an interview with The Wrap. He admitted that the Minions were all male, and said he couldn't imagine it any other way because they're too stupid to be women.
”Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls,” he said.
When it came to bringing the Minions to screen, their similar designs and limited features caused challenges for animators. Art director Pierre Leduc found that the Minions lack of eyebrows in particular made it hard to show their emotions.
Animators had to find ways to show the Minions' emotions by varying the way they moved (see our guide to the Disney principles of animation for tips). Only three main minions were chosen to be personalised to help the audience differentiate them from each other. The team used tools in Maya, including a library of poses (see our guide to the best animation software).
Minions & Monsters (AKA Minions 3) is scheduled to be released on 1 July. For more upcoming animation, see the controversy over the Disney Hexed character designs.
