Why are The Simpsons yellow? And why aren't we bothered by this when watching it?

Because it’s a cartoon, and since it’s been around for 20 years, people are used to it. People never questioned the color of the Smurfs.

According to another site

In 1989 when Groening submitted the idea for the Simpsons to appear on “The Tracy Ullman Show”, he handed over basic sketches. He assumed that the sketches would be cleaned up, but they were only traced over and ran as is. The piece was a hit and the characters were not changed.

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Why are we not bothered by it? To be honest, its a cartoon..i would worry about my sanity if i was bothered by them being yellow lol

RACISM!!!

As we enter 2010, if you notice any, even slight, differences in color from one person to another, you just might be a racist. Please report to your local branch of the Bureau for Racial Equality for immediate attitudinal reprogramming. The appropriate government czar has been notified of your “thoughts”.

Is someone trying to find racism where it doesn’t exist?

lol….to me though the color is just a way to be different than other shows, in way it makes the Simpsons unique, I mean imagine if the smurfs were not blue?

I think people would be bothered by it if they were asian maybe? Since they appear to be a regular american family, people don’t see it as a big deal. Or they didn’t want to cause controversy by making them white? I’m just guessing here lol.

It’s a cartoon, so they can be yellow.

It involves our “willful suspension of disbelief”, just as when we watch a stage play.
We do the same for movies with other-world characters or settings.

We choose to not disbelieve by ignoring incongruities between our knowledge or the “real world” and the cartoon, in this case.

I suppose the same reason they all have four fingers on each hand.

Or the fact that none of them have aged.

Bart should have been graduated (or flunked out) and raising his own family by now.

maybe they have jaundice

Lisa has punk spikey hair and Marge has a giant blue cloud as hair on her head… LOL… cartoons dude!

They also never age and usually wear the same clothes. It’s all a little fishy, isn’t it?

Take a look at what Smithers looked like in the first season and what he looks like now. Whoa.

It’s a way to avoid the skin color question, just as with the paintbox-colored skins of the Muppets.

@Naked_Homer yeah wasn’t he brown with grey hair?

Because yellow is the new red?

Maybe since there is no such thing as yellow color of skin, they are trying to be funny? I don’t know….
I entered “media” as my hobby, that is why I got this question to answer, but but I guess I should narrow it down, I didn’t get a menu, when I was filling in my profile. Is there a menu that gives you “journalism” as an option? Thank you.

Not everyone in the simpsons is yellow.

I heard that it was because if Bart and Lisa were ‘white’ then it’d be weird since they would have bumpy heads. So yellow is their skin and hair colour.

because they’re yellow. and why should be bothered by this?

I always thought it was because of what @Jeruba said. It avoids the race issue.