.png){kind=small}
There's a hilarious subreddit, called Men Writing Women, that examines the unfortunate ways in which men sometimes characterize women in their works of writing.
Breasted Boobily
For instance, I like many of Stephen King's works. But even my favorite of his books, IT, falls into the trap of describing every woman by her breasts.
She awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed, the sheet pulled around her waist, her small breasts moving with her quick, agitated breathing.
He stood there for a moment, staring at her as if he had never seen her before. In a way he never had. Her breasts heaved rapidly. Her face, all flush and livid pallor, blazed.
(Side note: "Her face, all flush and livid pallor, blazed" is a fantastic sentence, don't you think?)
And suddenly—maybe it was because of the utter loathing on her face, the contempt, maybe because she had called him a tub of guts, or maybe only because of the rebellious way her breasts rose and fell—the fear was suffocating him.
I love when breasts rebel!
This kind of writing spawned a meme in December 2016, which many of you have probably seen by now.
That meme, in turn, spawned the aforementioned subreddit.
Either Beautiful or Old
I used to really like the book Pines, the first in the Wayward Pines trilogy, written by Blake Crouch. It's an intense thriller with an ending that I never saw coming.
But my appreciation waned when I started picking up on how Crouch describes his female characters.
A woman was smiling down at him. At least, he thought those were a mouthful of pretty teeth, although his blurred, double vision made it difficult to say for sure. She leaned in a little closer, her two heads merging and her features crystallizing enough for him to see she was beautiful.
“She’s five-two, five-three. Hundred and five pounds.” “Little gal, huh?” “Best lawman I’ve ever known. Short brown hair last time I saw her, but it could have grown out. Blue eyes. Uncommonly beautiful.”
Nurse Pam leaned over into Ethan’s field of vision. Beautiful, smiling, something comforting about her presence, and maybe it was just rote familiarity, but Ethan clung to it nonetheless.
He stared up into a beautiful, familiar face, the prominent cheekbones igniting his recognition.
She struck him as midtwenties. Cute, though a little on the heavy side, her black hair pulled into a short ponytail.
I think the only woman not introduced as "beautiful" or "cute" is—of course—an older woman.
At the front desk, a sixty-something woman with long, silver hair was playing solitaire with a physical deck of cards.
Women Writing Men
Anyway, I thought it would be funny to write a book that described male characters in the same vein that some male authors describe female characters.
So I wrote Sorority Zombies in Space!, a satirical sci-fi novella about an insecure college bro on Mars who gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to party on an alien planet. When things turn violent, he realizes he’s the last hope for saving humanity from a species of alien zombies.
I had great fun writing it, too. Here are some of my favorite parts:
"I'm Jake. Come with me," he shouted over the crowd, touching Todd lightly on the shoulder. A bolt of electricity coursed through him, from biceps to balls.
Even as his stomach twisted in envy, he couldn't ignore the fluttering in his balls from watching such a powerful specimen as Chad do his work.
Ziffany's intense green eyes bored into his. "You have a curious, open mind that makes you the perfect ambassador. Besides, I find you...intriguing." A surge of excitement flowed through Todd, straight to his balls.
What do you think? Does this work as a parody?
Comments