Not from around here.

[mrissa]

Sometimes when reading a book, I have a moment of thinking, "You're not from around here, are you?" It's come up again with men's sizes: Ted Morgan's Reds (about McCarthyism) refers to a man as a "behemoth." The height and weight given? 6'4", 270#. And okay, that's a big man. Not in any sense a small man. But "behemoth"? Come on, Mr. Morgan -- nobody would stare at a guy that size on the street. He's just not bigger than dozens of men you see every day at the grocery store or Bigdale.

And then: click! Oh. Not from around here. Right.

Sigh. Still. I've run across books referring to huge men, giants, really really big, who were six foot two and over two hundred pounds, oh golly!, and it throws me way out of the book. If it's fiction, I don't think you need the numbers; if nonfiction, I don't think you need the adjectives, unless you're clearly talking about how the people of that person's time/place perceived him/her.

Comments

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that as well. I've had two or three different doctors tell me about Logan's size now and comment in almost exactly the same way, "well, that has to be expected, when children have exceptionally large parents - no offense."

Now, I know Jason and I are not tiny by any stretch of the imagination, but the idea that we would be "exceptionally large" or "very large" or some such variation is still very shocking to me. I see us as average height and overweight. That's hardly the stuff of "exceptional" size, at least in my mind. Where are these tiny people that the rest of the world sees as normal, if Minnesotans (and New Orleanians, and Mississippians, apparently) are so large by comparison??

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

California. Seriously. There were lots of adults shorter than me when we lived in the East Bay. Lots and lots and lots.