The Bimbettes

Claudia, Laura and Paula, or better known as The Bimbettes, are a trio of exceedingly boy-crazy, beautiful blonde women who fawn over Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. They wear red, amber and green dresses respectively, and wear differing hairstyles that switch constantly throughout their appearances in the movie and House of Mouse.

Background
The Bimbettes, whose real names are Claudia (with the red dress), Laura (with the amber dress) and Paula (with the green dress), are triplet sisters working as waitresses at a local tavern in the unnamed French village that is the home of Belle. Like most of the young women of the village (according to the 1994 Marvel comics), they are infatuated with Gaston, showing neither awareness or concern over his truly boorish and misogynistic nature, but he has no interest in marrying any of them because he wants the most beautiful girl in town as his wife. Like Gaston, they only like someone just because of how they look, never by their personality. Although they are not smart, they have had moments of cleverness, a notable instance being when one of the Bimbettes (Claudia) realistically disguised herself as Belle, anticipating that Gaston would want to choose Belle at a wife auction, not letting up the disguise until after she won Gaston during the auction.

Appearance
The Bimbettes are three identical triplets, with blonde hair and green eyes. They possess voluptuous bodies. Aside from varying hairstyles that switch at random, the only discernible difference between them are the color of their dresses and hairbows: red for Claudia, green for Laura, and amber for Paula. Their dresses are slightly similar to Belle's ballgown, only slightly less elaborate. They also wear bloomers and matching black shoes.

Personality
In regards to personality, from what we see of them in both the film and musical play, collectively the Bimbettes act like the fan-girls of any cute, attractive Hollywood celebrity, or schoolgirls that are infatuated with the cute boy in class. They think Belle is crazy for not admiring Gaston as much as they do. They also get upset very easily too. Additionally, like most of the women in the village, they are also exceedingly boy-crazy, which is what sets them and said women apart from a woman like Belle, who spends most of her time reading and studying rather than shopping and looking pretty for men. This is one of the girls' positive qualities as well, as it has endeared them to quite the huge fan-base in recent years.

My Disney Experience Official Description
Unfortunately, the Bimbettes do not have an official park description just yet.

Beauty and the Beast
They first appear in the introduction song of the film, where they are remarking on how Gaston's dreamy, cute and a strong brute. They are so busy singing about how much they love Gaston that they accidentally squirt water on LeFou (as they are getting water (presumably for making beer in the tavern) and don't realize it. Afterwards, they, while witnessing Belle rejecting Gaston's advances, state how Belle is crazy because of the way she deals with Gaston. They are also devastated when Gaston decides to marry Belle, as they are seen crying and sobbing vigorously when he is announcing that he will propose to Belle, although they later comforted him at the Tavern after his plan to marry her backfired with him falling into mud. During "Gaston", the three Bimbettes are sitting on a bench and Gaston picks the Bench with them up and shows off his muscles to the Bimbettes and then throws their bench back down onto LeFou. They were apparently also in support of Gaston's plan to blackmail Belle, but despite this were not present at the Lynch Mob that congregated at Belle's house to evict Maurice to the Asylum (probably for their own safety). The Bimbettes aren't seen throughout the rest of the film after this, nor do we see their reaction to Gaston's death. However, the coloring book reveals that they were invited to Belle and Adam's wedding, where they compete to catch Belle's bouquet, suggesting that they have let go of Gaston.

Comics
In a comic (specifically, Issue 3) released by Marvel in 1994, three years after the release of the movie, one of the Bimbettes (Claudia) managed to realistically disguise herself as Belle to get to Gaston during a wife auction (Gaston naturally wanting Belle). It works for a few moments, but the other two Bimbettes notice the ruse and rip her disguise away. To complete her disguise, she grabs a book, but hides it from Gaston because he hates the idea of women reading. Afterwards, they are seen sitting on a bench in the tavern, once again swooning over Gaston.

Beauty and the Beast (musical)
In the Musical, their roles are the same, although they are given more dialogue, Gaston pays more attention to them, and their role is expanded slightly. It is also implied that Gaston might still see them after he marries Belle when they are upset that he's marrying Belle. They are referred to as the Silly Girls in the musical (because the term "bimbette" is often considered offensive), and there can be more than three of them if a director chooses to cast more girls. However, in the original Broadway musical, similar to in the original film, they do not appear during "The Mob Song", but can appear if a director chooses to expand their role further, though they do not join Gaston during his fight with the Beast and witness Gaston's death. Additionally, some school productions of the musical have Silly Girls of different races.

House of Mouse
Despite the fact that they only appear a few times in the movie, the Bimbettes appear several times in the show as cameo characters, all voiced by Kath Soucie due to Mary Kay Bergman's suicide at that point. In the episode "Big Bad Wolf Daddy", Gaston seems to be annoyed with them singing a song with Zeke Wolf, even if he seemed to ignore them in the movie. They also acted as groupies for Donald Duck in the episode "Three Caballeros", when the duck became The Duck Formerly Known as Donald--they called Donald "super-duper duck-a-riffic". This clearly shows that they fawn over any male that they come in contact with, whether human, extraterrestrial, or anthropomorphic.

Just like in the movie, the girls retain their habit of hairdo-switching.

Disney Parks
The Bimbettes also make an appearance at the parks (with identical hairstyles rather than different ones), but they currently only appear in the stage show (during the opening scenes only) and unfortunately are not meetable characters yet, in spite of Gaston recently appearing at Walt Disney World in Florida. This is likely due to them not being the most important characters in the movie, even though they have a pretty good fan-base of both male and female fans. Occasionally in some performances of the stage show, one of the Bimbettes is dark-skinned (pictured at right). This is likely an "understudy Bimbette" in case one of the actresses playing them can't be on stage. Despite the fact that they work as waitresses at the tavern in the movie, they aren't present at the theme park equivalent doing the same job. The girls, however, were meetable at Disneyland Paris from 2002 to 2007, but were then dropped from the character roster for a currently-unexplained reason. There is an effort to get them to become meetable in the future, however, now that the Belle's Village section of New Fantasyland has been opened. A wallpaper for the Fantasyland expansion also indicated that they will make an appearance in the future. In it, they once again are swooning over Gaston. Additionally, recent Vinylmation figures of the girls are now being sold in Walt Disney World.

Their role in the stage show is the same as in the movie, but with a difference - at one point, during the Gaston number, they faint on the floor with a thud, something they only did in Belle.

Trivia

 * At one point in the movie Claudia has Belle's/Vanessa's hairstyle, Laura has Jasmine's, and Paula has Ariel's. However, at the end of the reprise to Gaston, all three girls have Jasmine's hairstyle, likely as the result of an animation error that could not be fixed in time for the movie's release. During the song and pretty much the whole time they're shown in the movie, their hairstyles continually switch around. They basically all wear the hairstyle of three of the Disney Princesses.
 * Claudia and Laura were voiced by the late Mary Kay Bergman and Paula was voiced by Kath Soucie (Who coincidentally voices The Enchantress in The Enchanted Christmas, who bears some resemblance to her).
 * In House of Mouse, they are all voiced by Kath Soucie due to Mary Kay Bergman's death by that point.
 * In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Flop Starz", the Ferbettes (Who were Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, Milly, Gretchen and Adyson Sweetwater) parodied the name, and are known for singing the song "Gitchee Gitchee Goo".
 * A few characters with a similar design and personality also appeared in Aladdin.
 * The name "Bimbette" more than likely comes from the American word, "bimbo", which means 'a physically attractive woman who lacks intelligence, and also uses her body to get what she wants'.
 * Even though Disney doesn't acknowledge the girls very much (currently refraining them from making meet-and-greets in the parks, for example) and that they are on the side of good ultimately, it is their swooning over Gaston that ultimately feeds his ego and causes him to devolve psychologically into a true monster. However, the fact that he was considered a "hero" of the village implies that he did initially have some good in him.
 * Even though the girls are called the "Bimbettes" in the film and "Silly Girls" in the musical, they're unofficially known by many other monikers, such as the "Tavern Girls", "Village Girls", "Babettes" (which is close in spelling to "Babette", a name shared with Fifi the Featherduster, who is renamed Babette in the play although with a different pronunciation), "Triplets" and even "Barmaids", "Gaston's Entourage" and "Tavern Wenches". Even their actual given names were never revealed until the Platinum and Diamond Edition DVDs were released.
 * "Babettes", one of the sisters' collective names by fans, is pronounced "babe-ettes"; while the name "Babette" is pronounced "bab-et".
 * Despite their "minor character" and "set piece" status in the movie, there has been a recent influx of fan art of the girls on the Internet by fans who love them, and are trying to revive them for newer generations on DeviantArt and FanFiction.net, among other Internet locales; they are thus three of the most popular characters from the movie, similar to how Nakoma was deemed popular in her movie.
 * Although Belle is referred to as the most beautiful woman in the village (to Gaston at least) in the film, the Bimbettes technically outrank her in terms of physical beauty, as they have larger breasts, thinner waists and overall more impressive figures than Belle has. This makes the girls similar to their counterparts in Aladdin, who also have the same "minor character" and "set piece" status.
 * Not counting song lyrics, sighing dreamily and crying (wailing like infants in most adaptations in the musical), in the movie they only have one line of dialogue each: Specifically, their expressing shock that Belle wouldn't like Gaston while swooning him. They are given more dialogue in the Broadway musical, however, and their role in the story is expanded a bit.
 * The end of Gaston confirms that the girls are indeed waitresses as Paula (with Laura's hairstyle) is seen holding a silver tray while Gaston's buddies are cheering for him.  Although non-canon, the girls were also seen holding order pads usually used by waiters/waitresses for restaurants in one of the episodes of House of Mouse, suggesting that they actually work at the nightclub rather than just being its patrons. Sadly, they are not yet presently doing this job at Walt Disney World's New Fantasyland equivalent, but this makes the girls very similar to Tiana as she is also working as a waitress.
 * Claudia and her sisters share many similarities to Rapunzel.
 * All four have blonde hair and green eyes.
 * All four have perky and sweet personalities.
 * All four were unknowing of something important (Rapunzel was unknowing of her family and identity as a royal; Claudia and her sisters were unknowing of Gaston's true sexist and boorish nature).
 * In the Belle's Village area of New Fantasyland, in the ordering area of Gaston's Tavern, there is a beer barrel on the wall that says "Les Trois Blondes" (French for "The Three Blondes"') on it. This is the girls' collective name in French.
 * Claudia and hers sisters have at least one similarity to Anna. Both called the villain gorgeous.