Why did Donald Duck wear a towel but not pants?
This is a question that Chandler Bing asked in Friends.
There are a few different ways of looking at this. The first one is quite simply: Donald has had a bath or a shower, and now he needs to dry himself. If he didn’t wear a towel, water would drip off of his feathers and soak the floor.
With regards to why he never wears pants, one user on Twitter did come up with a theory that it’s because trousers would interfere with his preen gland. However, if he is showering or taking baths, why does he need to worry about preen oil?
Also, Donald Duck wears swimming trunks whenever he goes in the water, so clearly he can’t be that concerned about it. Of course that then raises the question of why he is wearing swimming trunks. Some people have suggested that it’s because it would make his feathers wet and possibly expose his private parts. There’s a degree of sense to that!
At the end of the day, it was probably most likely that Disney decided to animate Donald Duck without trousers because it was easier to draw him without any. If he wore trousers, we wouldn’t see his tail feathers, and his webbed feet would be partially hidden, so he would also look less like a duck.
In short, Donald Duck wears a towel because he needs to dry off, and he probably doesn’t wear pants because he looks better without them!