http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteGloves

Bobby Zimmeruski, An Extremely Goofy Movie "Do you ever wonder why we're always, like, wearing gloves?"

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Common accessory for 'cartoony' characters, especially those from the early 1900s and shout outs based on that era. Simply, the character wears puffy white gloves, even if he doesn't wear much else. The gloves can be any length, and at least cover the whole hand (and all four of its fingers). Those that cover only the hand may occasionally have a wrist band and knuckle indentations as well.

They may have been partially inspired by vaudeville and Blackface performances of that era where minstrels would often wear big gloves as part of their costume. It also had the practical effect in an era of black and white cartoons where a mostly dark colored character could hold his hands against his chest and still have the hands be visible; Felix the Cat is notable for not wearing White Gloves and demonstrates why this is a problem.

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As culture and technology have marched on, it's stuck around simply as animation tradition. Though they still help emphasize that a Talking Animal actually has hands and makes it much easier to display hand gestures and movement. Oddly enough, characters based on birds don't wear white gloves and are often depicted with Feather Fingers instead.

Cartoon characters that have white feet, like many cartoon cats, usually also have white hands that have the same effect as White Gloves.

Note this entry is for inexplicable white gloves on cartoon characters, not realistic humans that wear gloves as part of a normal outfit.

Compare with and Subtrope to Conspicuous Gloves.

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Examples

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Advertising

M&M's: All the M & Ms characters have worn these since the 1980s.

Cookie Crisp: Cookie Crook and Officer Crumb wear these. Fittingly, they have Four-Fingered Hands.

Anime and Manga

It's hard to say with Black Cat Detective. Nearly every mammal on the show wears them, but most of them are Chinese police officers, who actually wear white gloves from time to time.

Ragnarok from Soul Eater wears full white gloves in his big form and has little circle-hands after losing most of his souls.

Don Patch from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.

The Spacy Brothers and Himespetchi from Tamagotchi!

Comic Books

Fan Works

Films

The title character in Disney's Pinocchio has both white gloves and Four-Fingered Hands as a puppet. He loses the gloves when he becomes a real boy, as well as having a proper set of five fingers on each hand. All of the Funny Animals in the movie (Jiminy Cricket, Honest John, Gideon) also sport gloves.

'''Shrek: Pinocchio has white gloves that are white color painted on his hands.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Since Roger Rabbit is already white, he wears yellow gloves.

All the male food characters in Sausage Party wear white gloves, this is an intentional Call-Back to the old advertisement cartoons with living sentient food that inspired the movie.

Spinel from Steven Universe: The Movie has big gloves a lighter shade of pink than the rest of her clothes as part of her homage to Inkblot Cartoon Style.

Literature

In the Polish series Koziołek Matołek, the protagonist (a white, anthropomorphic goat) always wears a pair of yellow gloves.

The title character of The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss wears white gloves.

Live Action TV

Patas Verdes the anthropomorphic toad in Odisea Burbujas. The reason probably is that he considers himself to be a very fancy toad (is in his theme song) and he also uses bowtie, vest and a top hat.

The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss: These appear a lot in Season 2.

Magazines

Lampshaded heavily in a classic 1950s Mickey Mouse parody in MAD. On the first page, a gloveless cartoon character is being dragged off by the police for dressing indecently in public. Later, Mickey explains that his gloves are actually tattooed on, so he can't take them off, not even for swimming.

Pinball

Toys

Mr. Potato Head's arms are white, but he still wears white gloves (assuming he doesn't just have severely malformed wrists).

From Mixels, Magnifo has white pincer hands instead of the standard grey or colored ones, to make him look like he's wearing white gloves.

A few of the Trashies from The Trash Pack are given pairs, some that lack arms in the first place.

Video Games

Visual Novels

Irving Onegin in Time Hollow wears them, mostly so that the developers could pull off a reveal crossed with a Chekhov's Gun at the end of chapter five.

Webcomics

The One Electronic from Rice Boy wears a pair of these. He appears to be one of the only people in his entire universe who wear gloves at all.

Thomas K. Dye justifies this with the hands-vs.-paws argument in Newshounds; a short spinoff featuring the puppies of some of the cast was called Kid Gloves, too, and one storyline with Lorna (the only human of the main cast for a long time) had her think she was one of the dogs; one of the first things she does is get a pair of gloves.

Although Sam from Zebra Girl wears relatively realistic clothes, his gloves are a clear takeoff on the classic Mickey style. They allow him to slip his ropes when kidnapped by werewolves , because they didn't think about relative bulkiness of hands in gloves vs. ungloved. In his world, they're a religious symbol , with the lines representing the wounds of Saint Jiminy, making them a useful weapon against vampires .

, because they didn't think about relative bulkiness of hands in gloves vs. ungloved. In his world, they're a religious symbol , with the lines representing the wounds of Saint Jiminy, . The characters of Newton the Newt wear gloves. At least, the frog and the newt do.

Kali of Enjuhneer acquires a pair of these when the rest of the cast has a Plot-Relevant Age-Up. She says they simply fell onto her desk.

My Roommate Is an Elf. All characters wear these, and they have Four-Fingered Hands. Lampshaded in Almost Night. Apparently everybody on the colony of Gamma wears them and they are seen as an oddity by the people of Tau. They're enchanted so to allow texture.

Ultra-Car from the various WalkyVerse comics like Shortpacked! has these.

Web Original

In The Cartoon Man, Roy's transformation begins when oversize white gloves spontaneously appear on his hands.

In The Grossery Gang webseries, Grosseries in the past (hinted to be the 1930s), are given white gloves to give them a look that hearkens back to classic cartoons.

Websites

The Cracked article "Hey, Sorry, But 5 Of Your Favorite Things Are Racist" discusses how the white gloves worn by cartoon and video game characters are modeled after minstrel shows.

Western Animation