Character body type - Real world vs Sexy

Most people don't go around thinking "My waist is 36, my boobs are 40, and my hips are 38" or whatever, so why would a character do so?

If you consider it absolutely necessary that readers know exactly what your character looks like, there are ways to *show* it rather than giving a laundry list of descriptions and measurements.

For example, if she's short, have her bemoaning not being able to reach the jar of instant coffee on the top shelf of her kitchen cupboard.

If she's not exactly skinny, have her wish she could wear a slinky little dress like the one in the magazine--or, better, have her be happy that she has breasts and hips UNLIKE the magazine model.

If she has good-sized breasts, have her put on her favorite shirt and think about how her date is going to absolutely love the way it accentuates her cleavage.

And so on.

Honestly, most people DON'T describe themselves or spend a lot of time thinking about their looks and measurement, other than to make sure they're presentable to leave the house, so in first person narration it's rather jarring--and for me personally, sometimes a wall-banger--if the character is sitting there telling the reader what they look like, or looking in a mirror musing about their long red hair and ample bosom. So I wouldn't advise doing it that way. It would only pull the reader out of the story.

And, putting this in a separate post because it's important:

Real-world body types ARE sexy. Doesn't matter if you have a potbelly, or your boobs are smaller than most, or you're overweight or underweight, or whatever.

As a friend of mine once put it, "When I see a naked woman, I'm not thinking about her weight or stretch marks or any of that. I'm thinking holy shit, she's naked and she's going to let me touch her!"

Sexy is a state of mind and confidence. Not a body type.

What KimJo said. With the additional caveat: very little makes me stop reading faster than a main or side character launching into grocery lists of self-described physical attributes. I stop reading even faster if there's a mirror involved.

For example, I have a fantasy novel told in first person. The female MC doesn't even see herself in a mirror until she's almost nineteen, after three hundred pages of the book have gone by, and she's only looking to check out the equivalent of temporary tattoos.

Let physical descriptions unfold from the narrative, over time.

In my stories, I tend that the best way to describe someone is through another person's eyes, so that you can get a somewhat impartial view of who they are, and it doesn't sound like a grocery list. Sometimes it's also just as good to write a single paragraph of them. But it all depends on the point of view of the story you're writing, of course!

Fell free to do as little or as much description as possible, but use it to SHOW and FEEL.

Example:

Carrie sucked in a deep breath as the hero walked by, wishing she'd invested in a personal trainer, or plastic surgery, to get rid of the nice muffin top she had going on. Finals had been a bitch and she was a stress eater, so all of those late night doughnut runs had translated into bigger breasts, which she loved, but also a big ass to go alone with it. Maybe if she dyed her brown hair blonde she could go for the Marilyn Monroe look, but a Marilyn Monroe who wore yoga pants 90% of the time and didn't giggle.


From the above you hopefully get- She's self-conscious about her weight, she's in college and stressed out, and she has brown hair with a non-giggly personality.

KimJo said:

And, putting this in a separate post because it's important:

Real-world body types ARE sexy. Doesn't matter if you have a potbelly, or your boobs are smaller than most, or you're overweight or underweight, or whatever.

As a friend of mine once put it, "When I see a naked woman, I'm not thinking about her weight or stretch marks or any of that. I'm thinking holy shit, she's naked and she's going to let me touch her!"

Sexy is a state of mind and confidence. Not a body type.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that! completely true and I wish erotica was a lot more diverse...

Nothing turns me off a work of erotica more quickly than clichéd "this is what a sexy woman (or man) should look like" characters. If I look back at significant others over my entire life, each in their own way very "sexy", I cannot see any consistency whatsoever to the physical "types" represented, and I suspect that would be the same for most people.

I tend to like both reading and writing characters that are rather minimally described so far as physical characteristics go. As a reader, my own imagination needs lots of free rein.

I don't generally five measurements or demographics. What matters is what the POV character responds to about them.

SentaHolland said:

Thanks for that! completely true and I wish erotica was a lot more diverse...

Click to expand...

Maryn said:

You and me both. Most of the real women I know who I'd consider sexually attractive to others are built nothing like models, especially by the time they're in their 30s. I'd say they're typically carrying at least 15 extra pounds, if not twice that. Yet they're totally smokin' and furthermore, they know it. They do not lack for romantic attention.

Maryn, who could easily go on a rant here

Click to expand...

Maryn, I feel you on the rant.

Here's the thing. I have tubular breast deformity, which means not only are my breasts far smaller than typical, but they're shaped weird, not the same size, and look...unusual.

I'm about 25-30 pounds overweight.

Thanks to major weight loss a decade ago, I have excess skin hanging off my arms, legs, and abdomen.

Not most people's recipe for "sexy woman."

BUT... I have learned to dress to camouflage the skin, weight problems, and compensate for the lack of boobage. I stand up straight (I didn't used to, which only made things worse). I studied the runway walks on RuPaul's Drag Race and Drag U, and practiced until I could strut with the best of them. I give attitude, not negatively but more "I love myself, if you don't, screw you." And aside from all that, I'm a pretty nice person, care about others, and am intelligent and occasionally humorous.

My husband and my boyfriend, and other men I'm friends with, have told me I'm sexier than most of the women they know. Hubby and my boyfriend might be biased, but the other guys aren't so much. And it's not because I *look* sexier. It's because of who I am and how I present myself.

So hell yes on the needing more diverse body types, etc. in erotic fiction, whether erotic romance or erotica, because people *reading* the stuff might actually be more turned on by reading about people who look like them, knowing that means that they can be sexy too.

This has been your friendly neighborhood "all bodies are beautiful" ranter. We now return you to your regularly scheduled erotica.

I've always been attracted to people who look (and are) different. I'm just adventurous that way, hmm, maybe in many ways in my life. I hate that most erotica covers show such standardized bodies (AND faces!!!)
When it comes to sex, for me, experience is everything. And I will say that I've had the most exciting and enjoyable sex with men who didn't look like standardized models. Some were even a little older! (invisible in erotica...)

Maryn, you mean Xenophilia.

Shiro, who has Editophilia.

I always leave quite a bit to the imagination. I set a few specifics; hair color, eye color, skin tone, height in comparison to someone or something else. Everything else, I let the reader visualize for themselves unless it is imperative the heroine/hero has some defining feature like a birthmark. Now, this might be because I write a lot in the 1st person and rarely does one, as someone else said, really sit around bemoaning their own characteristics. Sex, dressing, and bathing scenes work extremely well to describe a character...

One final comment - I'm tired of the alpha males so common in erotic romance these days... every single description is the same... and, honestly, how many men in the world look like them?

I no longer remember the anthropological term, but there is one for people who are physically attracted to "otherness." Throughout human history, nearly everyone wanted to stay in their own tribe or village, attracted to someone quite like themselves, but there's consistently been this tiny percentage of people who bring home someone darker or lighter, taller or shorter, more thickly build or willowy, with Asian eyes or blue ones, whatever trait the locals lack. Apparently the broadening of the group's gene pool is essential for minimizing genetic illness, which is going to occur if everybody only hooks up within the tribe or village.

Maryn, are you calling me a Xenophile?
I actually quite like that.

Are you talking about ALL of human history? Because, weren't we nomadic for the longest time before we settled down 10,000 years ago? And when you're nomadic, well, you get around.

I'd say it's just a much in our nature as sticking with the same-same.

as always with 'really old' anthropology, I do wonder, where do they get the evidence from? I believe there is a lot of bias in the 'extrapolations' - and I'm sure it's mine just as much as anyone's.
I've lived and worked in multi cultural and international environments all my life and people seemed pretty comfortable on a day to day basis. Leading to many 'non-same' pairings down the line. But that's of course not scientific, I do know that.
I suppose what it comes down to is which kind of behaviour is validated by the past. And if mine isn't, well, I'll just be a woman of the future.
Same to you!

Hartgrave said:

Hey,

I'm currently in the process of polishing up my first draft and I'm unhappy with how the character describes her physical appearance in the first person.

Should my character go into more specifics regarding her height, weight, and even measurements to give context to the average reader or should she remain more vague. It's difficult to give sexiness a waist size!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

- Hartgrave

Click to expand...

NOOOOO!!!!! *horrified scream*

*gasp of shock* *flails* *is deeded* *but now alive*

I welcome you to ignore me if what I say does not work for your story. Because you gotta do what is right with your story. *hugs*

Please don't have you character do something like this.

"MY name is Anne, I'm 5'9 and I weigh 130. I have a pretty firm ass and boobs the size of Texas. I have long blond hair that goes the the small of my back and the greenest eyes anyone has ever seen!"

ANYTHING but that. Please? I can't stand those types of descriptions. Usually I don't care about height or weight. If I do write that I'll say "she's about two inches shorter than so-and-so and she fits exactly right in so-ands-so's arms. Like they are lego pieces" or something like that. Comparison's are good. I don't do the mirror thing at all. I can understand a bit of checking out because we all do it. And I KNOW it's harder in first person. BUT anything is better than the description I wrote.

I'm so sorry. I have just read a lot of fiction online that starts out like that, and nothing makes me back button my way out of it.

Write what makes you tingle as well. If your passion doesn't get across on the pages than the readers aren't gonna pick up on it themselves.

The only thing that I write out in complete is a person's height. Often, it's the only thing that's excusable in a novel, and it also gives a point of comparison when you're writing about a character's description. However, it's not totally something that should always, always, be written; in fact, many are asked to eschew any description that uses numbers entirely!