Male Author Has Female Character Appraise Nude Body in Mirror

A tale of two mirrors

It’s ironic that last time I wrote about writing it was to discuss The Mirror Moment — that pivotal moment within a scene where the protagonist engages in a bout of self-reflection, illuminating their backstory and the nature of their forthcoming transformation. And now here I am, writing about another sort of mirror moment. Oh yes, that painful, cringe-worthy scene where a female character, often underage, is prompted by a mirror to describe her nude body in lavish detail exactly as a man would — and a woman wouldn’t.

It’s even more ironic that when I last critiqued a male fantasy author for his inept portrayal of a female character (one lacking in any interior life or goals that weren’t merely compulsions and plot conveniences) I rounded it off with:

To be fair, the Mistborn series (at least up to book 2), avoids some of the more egregious pitfalls typical of men writing girls and women. At no stage does the underage female character examine her nude body in a mirror while describing it in the manner of a slathering middle-aged pervert, nor does the book glamorise or romanticise prostitution — my top two pet-peeves. — Link

Can we put this “woman nude in front of the mirror waxing lyrical about the size of her breasts” trope out of its misery already? It’s embarrassing, the way it’s slowly limping around the show-ring, begging to be retired to the glue factory. Ah, if wishes were horses then male authors without a Nobel Prize would be capable of the “incredible” feat of writing a woman who comes across as a human being and not a magical mall mannequin.

I think I’ve identified the culprit: a lot of men consider a woman’s appearance to be the most important thing about her. Naturally, when he comes to write from the point of view of a girl or woman, she reflects this view as though she too considers the size of her mammary glands to be her defining character trait. It’s as if a hunter wrote a story about a hare and came up with, “I go really well with shallots, garlic, and roast potatoes”. It really tries my suspension of disbelief.

“The Rook” — a totally not hot female character

This brings me to the particulars of my complaint. Let me tell you what has prompted this rant (and raised my blood pressure, and strained my extraocular muscles). It’s The Rook by Daniel O’Malley, a zany fantasy book gifted to me by an erstwhile friend to help me overcome my “I’m not allowed to have fun writing, I must write serious fiction about professors with prostate cancer” psychological block. Which is, I think, a joke Stephen King once made about literary fiction.

Frankly, they should call this book The Hook. Let’s take a look at the first line, “Dear You, The body you are wearing used to be mine”. Then, just a few paragraphs later we’re told the protagonist has been reading a letter from herself in the rain with “a ring of bodies […] scattered around her”. Each and every one of these dispatched assailants are wearing latex gloves. It’s fairly intriguing. Alright, I’m done being charitable. The kid gloves are off and the, er, punching gloves are on.

The trouble is that shortly after this cold opening, Myfanwy — rhymes with “Tiffany”, I’ll leave you to figure out how —showers in a hotel and examines her new, or at least, unfamiliar body in a mirror. I repeat: after showering. Were there no mirrors in the bathroom? The hotel lobby and elevator? What about the taxi rear-view mirror? The window in the taxi? Does she never look down, or notice that relative to other people she is short? Did she apply the loofah with her eyes tightly clenched? Is a mirror really required, or is it just an unconscious use of a familiar trope? This could have been done so much more skilfully — a series of observations woven into action and not a tedious static scene with the character nude in front of the mirror.

Is imaging the world through a woman’s eyes so difficult you don’t realise that when she looks down she can see her body from the neck down? Myfanwy observes her skinned knees in the mirror — wouldn’t that absolutely sting under running water? A lot of writers fall into the trap of neglecting all five senses, and this was certainly a missed opportunity to branch out beyond the visual modality.

A nondescript face but very describable breasts

What does “she” have to say about her nude body — what it is imperative for the audience to know in order to sympathise with her and be invested in the plot — as she appraises it in a full length mirror. (Same old sad show pony, fairly creative amnesia pretext.) What Myfanwy’s point of reference is, we do not know, perhaps some ideal feminine figure. Here is a description of her face, which she notes has two black eyes, presumably from fighting off those medics or Subway Sandwich Artists® earlier:

“The face that looked back was narrow, and although it was not beautiful, it was not ugly. I am nondescript, she thought.”

Oh well, no point in describing your face then. I’m not a lazy writer, I swear, her face just happens to be “nondescript”. (Seriously, does this character suffer from prosopagnosia? Is she unable to recognise faces, including her own? Oh, gosh, I mean, there were two eyes and a nose but I can’t tell you much beyond that.)

No descriptions of her age or ethnicity are given at this stage. I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty stoked to find my body wasn’t that of a liver-spotted octogenarian’s — you know, if we’re continuing on with this conceit that her body is unknowable without use of a full length mirror. After this perfunctory description of her average — and therefore attractive — face, Myfanwy (rather, the author in his woman skin suit) immediately moves onto more important things, namely describing her breasts.

By the way, why is the protagonist described as being unremarkable, as though the most you can say of a person’s skin tone, freckles, acne, the thickness of their brows, the shape of their face, whether they have downturned eyes, an upturned nose, thin lips, hazel eyes, a beauty mark, small teeth, a huge forehead (really, I could go on) is whether they are hot, cute, or ugly. How reductive. How mind-numbing boring. What a waste of words.

In most of the good fiction I’ve read I can’t remember the character’s build or colouring. It’s often irrelevant, unless their physiology dramatically affects their daily routine or social interactions. However, I am intimately acquainted with their emotional topography if not the exact contours of their face. If your description of a person is that they are “nondescript”, why bother?

The only time I’ve seen “nondescript” employed successfully is when a character uses magic to be forgettable, like some sort of Clark Kentish glamour. In real life there’s no such thing as a nondescript person. Seriously, Google Images fails me here. I’m sitting in a café writing this; everyone looks pretty damn unique and describable to me.

No one wants to have an ugly female protagonist; no one wants to be thought shallow

Here’s what’s going on — the psychology of it. No one wants to have an ugly female protagonist (it’s the worst thing a woman can be, after all), but somehow it comes off a little immature, a little gauche to only populate your stories with Calvin Klein models.

The trick is to describe an attractive person while claiming they are plain. Another way is to have everyone react to your character as though they were a modern day Helen of Troy, lusted over by sparkling vampire and broody werewolf alike. If your character is attractive, just say so. You can’t eat your cake and have it too, I’m afraid. Speaking of which, take a look at “her” word choice:

“She opened the robe and looked critically at her body: Lots of adjectives beginning with S are appropriate here, she thought grimly. Short. Scrawny. Small breasts. Skinned knees (although presumably those were only temporary).”

So grim. I, too, use alliteration to catalogue my bodily “flaws”. Short women don’t have it tough, very short guys and very tall gals do, and even then “grim” is overselling it. “Scrawny” is not a word I’ve ever seen used for an adult woman — Good God, I hope this character is an adult woman. She’s thin. Or slim. Or slinky. Or svelte. Now those are some “S” words for you! She’s short and slim. We, in the real world, call this “petite”. She’s the dainty feminine ideal — why attempt to obfuscate this?

Also, yes, skinned knees are indeed temporary. If your character is questioning this, well, thank you letting us know she is mentally challenged. That’s actually some pretty revealing information. Consistent with this, just a little while later when she’s referred to as a “Rook” she wryly thinks she’s not a bird. Oh come on, as if a normal person wouldn’t assume that’s their chess piece-based designation/code name. Where’s the genre savvy, I ask you? She’s already discovered cards with multiple identifies in her wallet and had a dream-world tête-à-tête with the shadowy leader of her organisation. How is she going to outrun her enemies while carrying the idiot ball?

Bodies come with physical realities

Realistically, one would think, Oh great, how am I going to fit in any off-the-rack clothing? Or the reverse, that crop-tops would suffice for the purpose of exercise and you’d save money on high-impact sports bras. Speaking of bras, why did the character hide a copy of the letter from her pre-amnesia self in the pocket of every jacket she owned? A real woman would just tuck it into her bra band every time she headed out. You have to think about these things when you write about an opposite-sex character. (“Henry sat down carefully, mindful of not sitting on his testicles” — kidding, kidding.)

But also not kidding. An acknowledgement of some sort of physical reality that comes with actually inhabiting a female body, rather merely being in possession of an object people might gaze at, is required here. Bodies are those things women actually have to live in. Also, if you were in a “new” body, wouldn’t you go into more detail, wouldn’t certain things catch your eye (without a letter alerting you to the scar on your inner leg)? I certainly have some very specific thoughts on models’ bodies when I’m sketching them.

The nipples of her body appeared to be a “Pantone 14–1316 TCX” colour and her Glands of Montgomery were particularly prominent. One nipple was sunken into the areola. Righty was approximately 3% larger than lefty. Both were tubular, long and tapered like a cassava root. A single dark hair grew upon her left breast, sprouting from a mocha-coloured mole. A stretch mark near the vein of —

Oh dear lord, maybe not that specific. That was disturbing. Sorry about the above, particularly if you were hitherto a heterosexual man. Or an interior decorator fond of that colour. Or a coffee-drinker, or a cassava root eater. To paraphrase Futurama, “You read it, you can’t unread it”.

Blessedly free of deformities such as cellulite or body hair

“Her body was not particularly fit-looking but seemed blessedly free of cellulite. Shaved legs. A conservative and recent bikini wax.”

Phew! She doesn’t have unsightly body hair, you guys, and her pubic hair is neatly groomed, but not, like, in a lady of the night sort of way. That’s what people pay attention to in a “new” body, their completely changeable level of depilation. (“My new body was wearing a hat.”) There are so many beloved characters in literature whose pubic hair grooming is a mystery to us — how considerate of O’Malley to fill us in.

Further, this Myfanwy has twirled around and observed no dimpling around her buttocks or upper thighs. Such a relief. Average, totally not hot Myfanwy has no cellulite — unlike 80–90% of women. Dear lord, give me strength.

It’s utterly bizarre to hear people speak of certain “flaws” of the female body which are wholly the result of having a female body. Cellulite is caused by women not having the same crisscross structure of skin that men have, meaning their fat cells (which they have more of) protrude into the skin. (Men can get cellulite too, it’s just much less common.) I’ve also heard women despair of their “armpit fat” i.e. that extension of breast tissue known as the Tail of Spence. To quote fashion magnate Mugatu, “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”

This petite, slim, and utterly smooth-skinned Myfanwy seems pretty pretty to me. She’s a conventionally attractive main character, stop pretending otherwise. You’re making my head hurt with a) the doublethink you’re asking of me, and b) trying to imagine a nondescript face. If the point was that your character is exceptionally vain and nothing other than Elle Macpherson’s body would suffice, this did not come across. Instead, this had all the hallmarks of bog-standard “male author has female protagonists describe her breasts to the reader for reasons unknown” nonsense. Look at the monstrosity she probably looks like, it's mentioned that she has dark, shoulder length hair at some point:

By the way, it’s fine if you have, say, a male character fixated on a female character’s breast size or hotness (lack thereof), just remember to think like a woman when writing from the perspective of one. Bear in mind that describing breast-size is typically not a useful characterisation technique when applied to the target — although it can be very revealing of the observer. And unfortunately, the author, given his narrative choices.

What size breasts did Madame Curie have? How snug was Amelia Earhart’s aviation suit? I just listened to a talk given by a female anatomist and forensic anthropologist and I cannot recall whether her bosoms were “generous” or “withholding” —the fact of which will haunt me till my dying days. (It’s imperative that a female character’s breasts are imbued with the agency, personality, and sentience that was not granted to the human being attached. That's rule number one of writing.)

But wait, you say, even attractive people can be insecure

It should be acknowledged, people do have bodily insecurities — even conventionally attractive people. Women often have fixations as a consequence of not being able to fit clothing patently not designed for them, or due to their lack of resemblance to an airbrushed, lanky 14-year old, but this isn’t the way a woman would go about expressing any of this.

I mean, surely you’d have to get used to the reflection in the mirror before you grew dissatisfied with it? It’s simply not the time or place. I’d be busy being thankful I was still alive and tending to my wounds — things I value over my physical appearance, like any rational person. I suppose I would be relieved to discover I didn’t have any deformities. Oh, wait, that’s what the author thinks cellulite is.

Let us continue, Intrepid Reader:

“More bruises had risen to the surface, but they didn’t conceal the fact that she was not possessed of an especially sexy body”

Do bruises ever conceal the “unsexiness” rather than the “sexiness” of one’s petite, slim, and cellulite-free body? (Was this a Freudian slip?) What has one observation to do with the other? My god, you couldn’t even finish describing this poor woman’s battered body without weighing in on whether she’s the pinnacle of hotness. She’s not, she’s “standard”. You’ve said multiple times now; how many more times will you tell us this?

The answer is “many”:

“I think I could do better, she thought. I won’t be able to hit the level of Hot, but I might be able to manage Cute. If I have a big enough budget. Or at least some makeup to work with.”

I’ve never considered which of the three types of women I am — hot, cute, or ugly. I didn’t even know there were three, and only three, categories. Whether I would be “able to hit the level of Hot” would not be flitting through my mind shortly after losing all my memories and fighting off people seemingly hellbent on my destruction. Is this what it says about women in the Encyclopedia Galactica, by the way? “Human women often use makeup to enhance their physical appearance.” Daniel O’Malley, you have dazzled us with your knowledge of the female psyche and its attendant habits.

Let’s reverse the genders

Bearing in mind the “Testicle Test”, let me recast this entire eye roll-inducing description as though the character in question were male so you can fully appreciate its absurdity:

“The face that looked back was narrow, and although it was not handsome, it was not ugly. I am nondescript. Slightly above average height. Lean and muscled but not super bulky. Small testicles. Blessedly free of any facial hair follicles. Shaved chest and conservatively trimmed pubic hair.’

More bruises had risen to the surface, but they didn’t conceal the fact that he was not possessed of an especially sexy body. (He would have to obtain more bruises.) I think I could do better, he thought. I won’t be able to hit the level of Hot, but I might be able to manage Good-looking. If I have a big enough budget. Or at least some hair gel to work with. Oh, but I should probably sort out why people in latex gloves are trying to kill me before heading to the make-up counter at Harrods. Er, the man make-up counter.’”

Good god, what eldritch horror have I conjured into being? Average height. Shudder. Lean but not super bulky— my heart weeps for this veritable circus freak. Frankenstein’s monster called, he wants his compact balls back. (By the way, I’m doing the Jonathan Franzen thing: rubbish everyone else and then try to live up to your own standards.) Anyway, I hope I won’t have to contend with much of this as I continue to read The Rook. They say contempt is the death knell of any relationship, but we shall see. After all, no book or writer is perfect.

Except Kazuo Ishiguro.

If you enjoyed this article you might like my posts over at Sike! Psychology for World Domination.