I've been ruminating on this for a while. It is, perhaps, a particularly touchy subject at the moment, as I try to slowly get rid of the weight I gained in 5 months on steroids (and the weight I needed to lose even before I started the steroids). But I was recently reading a book where a woman is described as 5'4" tall and 120 pounds in her mid-thirties, and it started me thinking about the numbers we see in books.
I mean, seriously, 120 pounds?? I am 5'4" tall. I once made it to 130 pounds through a combination of pathological exercise (running every day, lifting weights a couple times a week, never relaxing), watching every single thing I ate, and generally obsessing over my body to the practical exclusion of everything else. In 2001, after an extended stay in the hospital, I was 128 pounds. You could see the bones in my chest, in my face, in my arms. As soon as I started putting muscle back onto my body, I gained weight.
What's a realistic weight for my frame? 140. I can get down to 135, but it requires more maintenance than is practical. Now, I'm not a little girl. I have small hands, little wrists, but I also have broad shoulders, actual hips (even when I am too skinny and my bones stick out) and, oh horrors, a chest. I have a friend who's pretty much my height but has a much smaller frame than I do, narrow shoulders, no chest, and manages to keep her weight to 128. She's also a personal trainer, whose whole life revolves around working out. (If you need a great trainer in Westchester, NY....)
Where are authors getting these numbers? Back in the old days, women used to be told that they could find their "ideal weight" by allotting 100 pounds for their first five feet, then adding 5 pounds for every inch over. Well, that would give you the 5'4", 120 pound "ideal woman" all right. But it's been years since anyone went by that...er..scale. The "BMI calculators" you find on the 'Net have such wide ranges as to be pretty much useless. Check them out...after 8 days NPO in the hospital (nothing by mouth, just IV), I still didn't qualify for underweight. In fact, I'd have to spend several days decomposing before I got down there. I checked--I could weigh in at a mere 108 pounds and still be considered "normal." I could also weigh 145 and be "normal." What's wrong with that picture?
We all know about the horrible body image promoted by fashion magazines, etc, but I have to wonder--what about novels? What do we take away from reading books about seemingly strong, independent women who think they need to lose ten pounds when they weigh 130 pounds? And .45-toting women who weigh 120 pounds? Please. The recoil would kill them.
I don't like to give numbers in my own character descriptions because I tend to think the number is far less important than the way the character feels about the number, whether that number is size, weight, or age. I have done it on occasion because it seemed right, but when I do I do it from my own experience of various weights.
When I read about that 120 pound woman, and then consider my 150 pound heroine (who knows she needs to lose ten pounds), I wonder if the experience of that other writer is so widely different from mine. Has she (well, they--I see that number a fair amount) been 120? And readers...do they think my character is a slob for only wanting to get down to 140, for not aspiring to that 120? Should I avoid numbers at all? That doesn't seem realistic, either...after all, almost every woman I know spends a fair amount of time considering the numbers in her life. A character who didn't would stretch the bounds of credulity.
What do you folks think? As readers? As writers? As women? As men?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Watching Your Weight
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5 comments:
It was great to have 5 WoM at last night's Sisters in Crime mtg. Nan- thank your sis for the pretty swag!
As I was saying last night, I don't really need numbers, just a general overview of the silhouette and capabilities as it applies to the plot and relationships. Sometimes, to me, bald numbers feel too much like assigning a pass/fail grade to a female character, and it's more creative and interesting to read other ways of unpacking her physicality. (I feel the same way about simplistic characterization by brand name, too.)
As a tall, broad-shouldered, big-limbed, non-sylphlike gal, more likely to impose than flit across a scene, I'm not trying to cast stones. However, many of the women writers I've met who formulate these equations for readers are nowhere near them. Perhaps they don't know what it would actually look and feel like, aside from the genetic outliers on runways? Perhaps it's a little wish fulfillment?
I'm not suggesting that heroines ought to be less attractive or fit, though there are some fascinating ones who aren't traditional beauties! But there are lots of realistic shape and size combinations that can make sense given a book's premise and the situations one expects her to encounter. The preponderance of one list of bullet-point attributes signifies lack of creativity to me as much as anything.
Have more fun! Make her zaftig, or tall as an NBA player with trick elbows, or short and curvy-wide, or so middle-of-the-road it bothers her, or always hungry, or always cold, or needing help to lift things and see above a crowd, or a brawny gymrat with deodorant worries, but make her real! When characterization reads like a lazy bunch of stats, I tend not to develop any more concern for a heroine than her creator shows.
As strictly a reader, I find when I come across a description like that (5'4" - 120 lbs) I compare to when I was 5'9" - 125 lbs. (I was 20 something, very young! But not gaunt - or dieting.) I naturally think short and a little heavy, unless they have added that the character is in exceptional shape.
Like Clare2e and yourself, I would much rather have a good description than facts.
My brothers at 6'2" have always hovered around 150 - 160 lbs, so again, a description of a man at 6' 200 lbs, would give me a picture of either a body builder type or chunky monkey. If you want me to see rippling muscles on a tall darkly handsome man, that is all I need to read.
Good post! I've never thought about how someone obsessed with numbers would view them in a novel.
Laura, good luck losing the steroid weight. I have been there and it is not easy and now I am back yet again, this time without the excuse of steroids.
Thanks, Reb - only half the weight I need to lose is steroid-related...the rest was, sadly, entirely my own fault....
Chiming in a few days late--the story of my life...
Another reason not to give numbers is that they often date a book. This is especially true of numbers describing the human body. The "ideals" are constantly changing. Back in the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe, in terms of weight to height, was the ideal; today she'd be considered overweight. Back in the 1970s and '80s, size 10 was considered slim. Now I hear commercials for diet programs and products that give size 10 as the disgusting "before." My goodness, we're down to minus-0 now!
As an editor, I always recommend to my authors that they leave out anything that dates the book. Perhaps this falls in that category.
I'd rather read a description, like "lush and curvy" or "tall and rake-thin." And honestly, when I try to visualize a woman who's 5'4" and 120 pounds, I have no idea what that looks like. All I have to compare those numbers to is my own height and weight.
(I do want to point out that some women are naturally thin, just as some are naturally curvier. I don't mean this to sound defensive, but I'm 5'10" and weight 130. It's just the way I'm built and the way my metabolism works.)
I recently finished a Jennifer Crusie book with an overweight protagonist. Never once did Crusie tell us how much the protag weighed.
Frankly, giving the height and weight of a character is just lazy writing.
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