What I Hate About Spring

[mrissa]

Pastels.

Do I look like a delicate @#$%& flower to you?

Only answer that if you have the right answer.

But speaking of delicate @#$&% flowers, I'm amused, because one of my rants came back to inform a bit of subplottiness: I have talked (*cough* all right, raved with borderline coherence) about the fantasy novel trick of attempting to cast the heroine as the ugly duckling and get the reader's sympathy for her as the beautiful swan all at once. This is usually expressed as something like "her chin was too strong for beauty" (because what we all like is girls who are all neck up to their nose) or "her hair was an unfashionable red" (because nobody likes redheads, in the reading audience -- fantasy readers in particular have an irrational hatred of red hair, which is why you will never, ever, ever see anyone at a con who even knows what henna is). And particularly galling, the heroine is stated in authorial voice to be too slender, and that is that, and no one ever grouses about getting her to eat more or treats her like she must be mentally deficient just because she's a thinnish girl with tits who can dress herself and doesn't talk a million miles an hour like coastal people do unless she's really excited about something --

Riiiiiiiight, okay, but returning to the fiction, there are sensible reasons for a society not to prefer skinny people. And some of those are coming up right now and biting my character in the butt, while her sturdier foster-sister is assumed to be both appealing as a mate and highly competent. And without the asides in authorial voice about how so-and-so was too this for that and the other thing. Let the characters do it!

Lazy author types....

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It bothers me in the occasional Regency romance I read that often the heroine is cast as undesirable because she doesn't match the prevailing beauty preference, while her description shows that she perfectly matches our prevailing beauty preference. OK, I can see that it would technically be true, if Regecy beaus preferred short, plump, curly-headed blondes with sloping shoulders and bee-stung lips, that a modern redheaded, toned Amazon with strong shoulders and Angelina Jolie lips would be outré&, but ... I'm rather tired of the redheaded Amazons stalking through the pages. Why not someone who doesn't fit either definition and yet wins the hero anyway?

Or who gets fed up with the whole thing and flees to the Continent to become a nun.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't read any genre romance, but I've heard this kind of complaint before: that the "ugly duckling" heroine type is no more flexible than the "society beauty" heroine type. Frustrating. But if she fled to the Continent to become a nun, I'm not sure it would be genre romance any more.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, no, it wouldn't be, but it'd be a refreshing change.

After my mom retired and finished reading her way through all the cozy mysteries she could get her hands on, she switched to Regency romances, because she loves social history and the 19th century, which means I tend to pick them up and read them when I visit her. We bond a lot while making fun of the covers and the plot coupons the characters collect.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Actually, I retract my statement: I have read two Georgette Heyer novels and will probably pick up another next time I think of it at the library.

[brooksmoses]

Do I look like a delicate @#$%& flower to you?

*fx: looks at you, looks at Bob the flower, looks at you, looks at Bob....*

Nope, not going there. Though I don't exactly look good in pastels either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bob is a blonde. I am a brunette.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

You mean it's not a continuing homage to Anne of Green Gables?
Ah well.

Chill out on the pastels. I like pastels, and I will benchpress anyone who claims I am a delicate flower. And then I will make them do pushups (and charge them $50/hour for the privilege)!

(Daintily adjusts pretty-princess tiara)

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, I am a delicate @#$%& flower, much to my irritation. (And this is why I pay the $50/hour. Pilates rules. Someday I'm gonna be one tough flower.) And I generally don't care for pastels, especially a certain sort of grayed-down-pink color that I see often.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Pilates indeed rules, but I wasn't sure how many people on here would get it if I said, "and then I will make them do teasers!" Besides, I'm not done with my instructor-training work so I cannot in good conscience charge for Pilates.

(checks Sculpin's profile) Ooh, hey, you're from around here! Where do you do Pilates?

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

Hi, neighbor!

I do it at Pilates NW, in Lake City. I'm very happy with them there; I looked around pretty hard at the local Pilates places, and this was pretty definitely the place for me. I've been going there once a week for about a year and a half, and the results have been absolutely spectacular. And, wow, it's totally fun! (Except for the hundreds, which I still loathe.)

When I first got there, I was so weak I had trouble getting my feet into the reformer straps. (Long story, and delicate flower.) Now my instructor and I are just starting to work on Teaser. Sweet @#$%& mother of @#$%&, that's hard. Teasers plural? Now that's a threat.

Where do you train to become a Pilates instructor?

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Balance Within (http://www.balancewithinpilates.com), in Redmond.

I would *love* to geek out about Pilates for a while, but we should probably take this somewhere other than Mrissa's journal. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad you've found each other and stuff to talk about, though!

[callunav.livejournal.com]

"grayed-down-pink color"

This color, known variously as "dove pink" or "ashes of roses," is actually a plot point in Connie Willis's Bellwether. She doesn't seem to like it much, either.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

The pastels bug me less than the neons. Yeargh. I'm always happy in August when the women's section switches to blacks and greys and burgundies.

I went to Target yesterday and there were NO black long pants in the plus sie section. NOT ONE.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have removed my previous ban on additional black or red garments. I will live in little black dresses all summer if I have to, and that will be that.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

My black and red ban is still on, though my clothes seem to be wearing out and I should probably start tiptoeing away from the ubiquitous brown that is taken over my all-too-serious life.

Couldn't I be frivlous or fascinating in Emerald?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I really, really, really like green, but I own very little that's green because they won't sell me good greens. Mopemope.

My favorite green thing is quite frivolous. It's a pareo. Way too cold for a pareo right now, but I do love it.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

OK, I so didn't know that. You really, really like green?! I'm with you on the pastels though...

About half of my closet is green. Well, minus the pants. I haven't gone that far yet. Ok, it's pretty hard to find nice green, or greenish-blend dresses as well. But shirts? I have everything from celedon/mint to dark forest green. Which greens are you looking for?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Celedon and mint do very, very poorly on me. We're similar in coloration, but not identical, and I look dead in some of the paler greens I've seen on you (and to me, celedon and mint are both pastels and therefore right out). Something darker than kelly green, really -- around your bathroom color or darker.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I cannot begin to tell you how hard this entry made me laugh. I started laughing uncontrollably at, "neck all the way to their noses," progressed to convulsive through, "who even knows what henna is," and at that point stopped reading because I was laughing too hard to see the screen. I kept trying to quote it to Julian (who had read it already, in any case) and having my efforts dissolve into wheezing.

Ahem.

Thank you. Yes.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on. There's always navy. And navy-and-white strips. And navy with white piping. And navy with big white collar. Spring fashion has lots of choices. :-)

Societies tend not to like skinny people in places where it's #$%@ cold and the skinny people are likely to die before spring (well, let's not say they didn't like them. Let's say that their thinness was alarming and worrisome.) Before the mid twentieth century, fat babies were very desireable. Same reason. People of European heritage still tend to have fatter babies than folks with ancestry in warm climates.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There's always navy. And navy-and-white strips. And navy with white piping. And navy with big white collar.

And "sailor" is right up there with "fragile flower" on the list of things I want to dress like. Sigh.

If I could find plain navy, like a sleeveless cotton-knit easy-wash long navy dress that would hold up all right and was of a sufficient weight to hang decently and tailored so that I did not look pregnant and...oh, well, that's such a big "if" that I am nearly giving up on it.

And yes, the society in question is up to its collective buttocks in snow at the time of this particular novel, and there is much outdoor work to be done, and not everyone is sure that Skinny McSoutherner is up for it.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all the comments, so pardon me if this is a repeat. I have met very few flowers that are actually pastel colors. Most are vibrant and quite hardy. Be one of those kinds of flowers.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

have sort-of olive skin which got a great tan in NM

Which means you can wear yellow and orange and nice vibrant colors like that. Those colors make *me* look jaundiced, but I look cute in pink.

...but in purple, I'm stunning!