Brunettes have more fun, or the True YA Prince has dark hair? xD

KateSmash said:

Right? At this point I mostly want a career so red headed smart guys get to be YA spec fic boyfriends for once.

I seem to recall David from Uglies being sandy haired. Maybe. It's been a while.

Something loosely related I've noticed: most of these YA SFF LIs are also the action hero type. Which, is cool, I guess. But where are the smart guys? The skinny Mage or tech guy? A guy healer? Just someone not equipped to swoop in and save the MC? The closest I can think of is Farmer from the last Beka Cooper book.

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My recently published book has an auburn haired shy/awkward LI and my MS closest to being ready to be sent out into the world of submissions has a nerdy/smart ginger as the LI.

P.S. Just remembered - isn't the LI in The Girl in a Steel Corset auburn haired?

natpenna said:

But, on the other hand, I like it when an author doesn't actually mention anyone's ethnicity. That way, people can picture them being whatever nationality and colour they like.

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And then those same people get furious when film casting comes around... (Rue? Even though she was described as having dark skin?)

And I don't usually care about hair color. I'm usually too busy scanning for descriptions of facial hair <3

natpenna said:

But, on the other hand, I like it when an author doesn't actually mention anyone's ethnicity. That way, people can picture them being whatever nationality and colour they like.

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I like this idea in theory, but the sad truth is many people will take "no ethnicity described" to equal "white." :/ So I always try to make my characters' ethnicity explicit, since I think it's important. Obviously that's totally author choice, though.

BUT EVEN THEN!!! Yeah, people being mad that Rue was black. Ugh.

lenore_x said:

I like this idea in theory, but the sad truth is many people will take "no ethnicity described" to equal "white." :/ So I always try to make my characters' ethnicity explicit, since I think it's important. Obviously that's totally author choice, though.

BUT EVEN THEN!!! Yeah, people being mad that Rue was black. Ugh.

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Yeah, there's another thread where this is discussed - if no race is mentioned people automatically assume "white".

Samsonet said:

I'm kinda sad that teenagers don't usually have grey hair. I mean, it's pretty. Or maybe I'm just weird.

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Right?? I love long grey hair, I think it's beautiful.

I made a lot of characters different with some technicolor hair based on their element types.. using Sci-fi as a crutch to be flexible with this, I have the hotheaded male with red hair, and the ice cold bitch with black hair and frosted white/blue tips.. the cute little girl who has red hair with orange and pink highlights, and the timid heroine who has long grey hair.

I definitely noticed that trope.. a lot of boys recently in YA with dark brown hair and not even all the time as the TDH or dangerous type. They were starting to feel a little cookiecutter

I think people usually create heroes that look like those they would want to look like or are attracted to.

lenore_x said:

I like this idea in theory, but the sad truth is many people will take "no ethnicity described" to equal "white." :/ So I always try to make my characters' ethnicity explicit, since I think it's important. Obviously that's totally author choice, though.

BUT EVEN THEN!!! Yeah, people being mad that Rue was black. Ugh.

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I had someone read an opening chapter for a new book I was fooling around with. I pictured a secondary character as looking a bit like Chris Pratt a la GOTG, and then they said they pictured him as a really muscular black man. I have to admit, I actually preferred the way they saw him. I didn't change anything in the portrayal of him in the rest of the prose, but started to hint that this is more likely to be his ethnicity.

Yeah I hate when people complain that there aren't enough racially diverse characters in books and movies, and when they are put there, people say it's just because they're trying 'too hard' to appeal, or they openly complain about the person not being as they pictured. Like 'The Princess and the Frog' with a black Princess. I thought it was wonderful! I loved that it was a more diverse cast, and Tiana was a fantastic character. (Not to mention the songs) And yet, it was totally panned. Then people complain about all the white princesses looking alike. Hello, they gave you what you wanted and it still wasn't enough!

And I thought that Hermione could have worked as a young black girl, and I know a lot of people who read the books before seeing the adaptations said the same.

The same can go for sexuality of characters. If you don't mention it, people always assume straight. If you mention it too often or too much, you're doing it because you're 'trying too hard'.

Annoying, much?

indwig said:

And then those same people get furious when film casting comes around... (Rue? Even though she was described as having dark skin?)

And I don't usually care about hair color. I'm usually too busy scanning for descriptions of facial hair <3

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Yeah, that's what I thought too. I heard some people thought Rue would be a dark-skinned Hispanic, but I always pictured her exactly how she was cast.

natpenna said:

As for the 'all white' thing, I can't speak for all YA authors, but I think there have to be a few titles at least where the cast of the book isn't white washed. In my book 'Sea Foam', the female lead is white, but the love interest is of Hawaiian descent, and her friends are a real mix, and none of them are stereotyped. In another book, the love interest was Japanese. But, on the other hand, I like it when an author doesn't actually mention anyone's ethnicity. That way, people can picture them being whatever nationality and colour they like.

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I think the debate on this has two facets: what people consider the neutral "default", which is generally white. And what the goal of the book is. Some books are written to be escapist of as self-insert fantasies for the reader or author, in which case it can make a lot of sense to avoid major description that pigeonholes a character with one physical description. And then there are books that are not written for that purpose, or where there is a target market or an author ideal of LI attractiveness, in which case it generally makes more sense to use enough description to get the character's intended appearance across.

This is honestly the only example I can think of, and he does get the short end of the stick a few times, but Alex Lind from the Burn for Burn series by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian is a redhead.

Though the hair color is mostly all dark in Sanctum by Sarah Fine, a book I recently read, one thing I love is that basically all the main characters are people of color, and it's just not a big deal. I love that.

Most of the people I see in real life have dark hair. Most of the blonds I see have dark roots. I never trust that a blond woman is naturally blond. The same is true for redheads.

I know one naturally blond guy and a few kids whose hair may be darkening as they age. This may be why blond is associated with youth.

I can't think of a natural redhead that I know.

My own hair started going white when I was around 17, so some teens do have white hair, some white hair. I never dyed it.

This experience may impact the hair colors in what I write. Everyone in my MG has light brown to black hair except Grandma whose hair is white. Mom dyes her hair red.

Race is a whole nother issue. The MC and his family are white, but many of the people around him aren't because they just aren't. That reflects my experience too.

Debbie V said:

Most of the people I see in real life have dark hair. Most of the blonds I see have dark roots. I never trust that a blond woman is naturally blond. The same is true for redheads.

I know one naturally blond guy and a few kids whose hair may be darkening as they age. This may be why blond is associated with youth.

I can't think of a natural redhead that I know.

My own hair started going white when I was around 17, so some teens do have white hair, some white hair. I never dyed it.

This experience may impact the hair colors in what I write. Everyone in my MG has light brown to black hair except Grandma whose hair is white. Mom dyes her hair red.

Race is a whole nother issue. The MC and his family are white, but many of the people around him aren't because they just aren't. That reflects my experience too.

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This is so weird to me. I mean, most people I know have brown or blackish hair. But I know plenty of natural blonds, and some natural blondes. And several red-heads. Most people I know who dye their hair red don't dye it natural-ish red.

It could be that blond is so many things. Many people referred to as blond seem really light brown to me. It's all gradation. My own hair, the not white parts, is really dark brown if you look at an individual strand, but the effect is of black.

I should state that I have two friends whose natural hair color is a mystery. They dye so often, I'm not sure what's real. One may be a blond.

I'd rather say someone's hair is the color of straw with whitish strands than call them blond. That's a clearer description to me.

Maybe describing the actual color instead of falling on the common labels will help us diversify.

One book I've read described two characters as having blond hair so light it was almost white. To this day I've never been able to figure out what that's supposed to look like. (These are 11- to 12- year-old boys, if that helps.)

Platinum blond! My dad and his brothers (Finn/Northern Italian mix) all had essentially white hair as young kids. They all darkened as they got older, but my dad rocked fair blond hair and a bright red beard in his twenties.

Debbie V said:

It could be that blond is so many things. Many people referred to as blond seem really light brown to me. It's all gradation. My own hair, the not white parts, is really dark brown if you look at an individual strand, but the effect is of black.

I should state that I have two friends whose natural hair color is a mystery. They dye so often, I'm not sure what's real. One may be a blond.

I'd rather say someone's hair is the color of straw with whitish strands than call them blond. That's a clearer description to me.

Maybe describing the actual color instead of falling on the common labels will help us diversify.

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I mean, I've been fooled by dye jobs before. And I totally get light brown being confused for blond. But for the record, I was talking about actual blond/blondes, who I don't think anybody could argue just have light brown hair.

I spent part of my son's school concert looking at the audience and the kids' hair because of this thread. Kids are less likely to have dyed hair. I saw one natural redhead. Neither parent has red hair.
I also saw a couple of blondes who may be natural and one mom and son who also have the same curls. They were platinum.
I spotted a mom with blonde roots who dyed darker too.

Maybe I never paid enough attention before.

So as those blond kids darken, and many do, where do you draw the line between blond and brown?

I'm sure someone somewhere has some sort of objective way to distinguish. You might be able to tell from a genetic test:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Saller_scale

I usually just go with my gut, and know some folks will disagree.

I'm sure it would be hard to draw the line for every stage of darkening. I'd have to to look at some real-life examples to say for sure.

It's strange that we talk about all these subtleties of "blond" but never of brown or black.

Curious - how would you describe subtleties of black? I keep trying to think of some, but they all sound more like 'ways in which this hair is not quite black.' (blue-black, 'a brown so dark that it was almost black'...?)

Brown variations I've definitely both seen and used. 'Honey-brown,' 'mouse-brown' and 'mahogany' are so over-exposed as to be cliche, though they do give an immediate mental image. I suppose if I was really interested in adding some variety there, one way would be to go to the drugstore and look at the names of all the hair dye shades. (Though I can't imagine actually using, say, "medium spice reddish brown" in actual prose. But 'a spicy sort of red-brown' might work, depending on POV voice!)

Well black hair is not quite black. True black is an all-consuming void of nothing and I don't think I've ever seen hair quite like that. Black hair usually is either going to be "brown-black" (warm spectrum) or "blue-black" (cool spectrum). How you see black hair has is going to be especially dependent on the texture -- eg afro-texture hair reflects light differently than straight hair, etc.

Brown has a warm and cold spectrum too, but because the color perceived as "brown" is really low-saturation warm-spectrum colors, the "warm" is going to be reddish ("chestnut") and the "cool" is going to be yellowish ("ash").

Oh, I understand about how the variations look - I'm certainly not saying that all black hair looks the same! I was wondering specifically how you'd go about describing 'subtleties of shade' of black in prose context, going off of your earlier comment. Brown-black gets at what I was fumbling towards above, which is that the only things I could think of were descriptors which pull the colour away from black, in one direction or another.

True black is an all-consuming void of nothing and I don't think I've ever seen hair quite like that.

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Perfect Carlos and his perfect hair, an all-consuming void of black nothingness from which a thousand thousand screaming voices occasionally burst forth...