Okay, so I have noticed most romance novels have one of two basic heroine types, either tall and curvy but not heavy or gangly or anything or small and pixie like with tiny features but never rail thin or childish in appearance. They always are described with hair as golden as the sun, red as fire, deep chestnut brown or raven black. They are never normal looking women, always being described as stunning or whatnot. If they aren’t supposed to be beauty queens their flaw is that they wear glasses and sometimes also wear their hair up in a bun. They often meet gorgeous men, but just as often meet and fall in love with men much older than themselves or covered in battle scars or something but who have an intense quality about them the more beautiful men in the room don’t possess.
My question is would anyone read a romance novel where the heroine is heavy or scarred or in a wheelchair? Why are the heroines always physically perfect? Is this part of the fantasy really that important, or is it just unbelievable that an intelligent, successful man could fall for a woman who isn’t beautiful by media standards?
The closest thing to a romance novel featuring a heavy woman that I can recall running across is “Good in Bed” by Jennifer Weiner ( http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bed-Jennifer-Weiner/dp/0743418174/ ). It seems like a fairly popular book.
I would guess that the motive for so often portraying women as stunning beauties in romance novels is the same motive that causes TV and movies to only cast good looking people. Maybe there are people out there who would find it hard to believe a love story involving a homely woman, or just find it more pleasant to fantasize about a good looking couple getting it on than a normal or mediocre-looking couple. shrug
It sounds like you haven’t read a romance novel written since 1976.
The physically perfect woman is not so common in romance novels anymore. Hideously ugly - no. But most romance novels that I’ve read recently (in the past decade and a half or so) feature average looking women.
I can’t think of any romance novels I’ve read recently with an obese heroine, nor one in a wheelchair. I can think of one I’d read in the past year with the heroine being a recent amputee, though. Many of the heroines are described as being, in their own view, as no better looking than average. Of course when the story gets to the hero’s viewpoint, he’s not exactly what I’d consider an unbiased reporter.
I think part of it will depend on which publisher’s imprint you’re looking at. eHarlequin.com is the source of approximately ten different imprints. Some of them I don’t read because they leave me with the impression of all the romance conventions that the OP is hinting at. Others I find very enjoyable with heros and heroines (on average - I’ll still find one book a month, or so, which I can’t finish because either the herione, or the hero, or both, act like they’ve only one active neuron between the two of them.) who are believable, and enjoyable characters without being flawless examples of pulchritude.
Catharine Anderson writes Romance novels with unconventional heroines. Bethany Coulter is in a wheelchair, one of her brothers marries a woman with brain damage from a car accident, another brother marries a woman who is blind (or had been blind and will be blind) due to some weird eye disease. One of her historical novels features a woman who is deaf.
(Mary Balogh also wrote a historical romance with a deaf heroine. )
(Under mild pressure I can probably be induced to figure out the titles of the novels I’ve listed here.)
Jennifer Crusie often writes about slightly heavier heroines. One of her earlier books was about a middle-aged divorcee and a man 10 years her junior. She’s a best-selling romance author so someone must be interested in reading about these heroines.
Here’s a list of some romances where the heroes or heroines are either plain or disfigured.
I was thinking Jennifer Crusie (who is one of my favorite writers). Matter of fact, I just finished one of her books last night where the main female character was overweight.
There was a really romantic one set in the West where the heroine had a game leg. Of course she starts off fighting with the guy who is ashamed to see he has been harassing a “cripple” but they both get over it.
Yeah, that’s it. There are still some where it’s love at first sight with a drop-dead woman but often there’s something more compelling about the personality of the less stunning woman.
Not a conventional Romance, but in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, the heroine ends up marrying a handsome young doctor, even though she has been scarred from a bout with smallpox.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I have a couple of favorite authors for the genre but every time I read a romance novel & the heroine is supposed to be “average” she doesn’t sound very average to me at all. The only one I ever read who had more average main characters was LaVyrle Spencer and her stuff is very sad for most of the book so it doesn’t seem much like it is worth reading to me. I will certainly go looking for a few of the authors mentioned here though!
It’d be nice to read about a heroine who, when asked to ‘dress up’ for an event, didn’t get into something slinky and hugging because she doesn’t have the figure for it.
It’d also be nice to read about a heroine who DID dress in something slinky and hugging without having the figure for it, because at least then when the hero’s breath ‘caught in his throat’ it’d be from total shock-horror and I could have a good laugh about it.
BWP
Who hasn’t posted in the Weight Loss Thread recently but is still more than 40 kilos overweight.
I remember reading a Regency romance about a woman who was plump (and not necessarily in all the right places) who falls in love with a man who is tall and gangly and definitely not of the Beau Brummell or Heathcliff mold. I remember it being very charming, for lack of a better word, because they bumbled in the relationship in very realistic ways – not a horrible betrayal (“You killed my brother in a duel/discovered my cute and spunky and inevitably unsuccessful plan to save your estate/slept with another woman, you scoundrel!”) in sight.
Now, if only I could remember the name of the stupid book, I could re-read it.
Yep, she was the one who wrote the cowboy and “cripple” one I mentioned.
I just read one by Lynn Kurland where neither person is conventional lovely, and the guy is such a big oaf he breaks her nose when he makes his move. It’s kind of sweet.
