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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

putting the "ideal" in "idealized"

I've been thinking lately about male literary characters written by women. There's a certain kind of guy in books aimed at women who, though very well-written, is obviously the feminine ideal of a man, who may or may not exist anywhere in nature (but I'm betting on 'not'). For instance (ooh, goody, a list!):

• Cal, created by Jennifer Crusie in Bet Me. Cal is well-off, good-looking, sensitive, popular, and fun. OK, you say, I know lots of guys like this. Me too. Well, not lots, but shut up Rachel, they get the picture. The thing about Cal, though, is that he is falling for this woman, Min, who is plus-sized, although we never learn how plus-sized. Now, I am THE LAST WOMAN IN THE WORLD to say that well-off, good-looking, sensitive, popular, fun, and sane guys can't fall in love with plus-sized women. Happens all the time. But for those men to find the plus size to be a positive factor? For said men to discourage -- not just politely keep their mouths shut, which all men should know is wise, but to actively discourage their plus-sized love interests from losing any weight because they prefer round women? I'm sorry, but that just smacks of female fantasy right there. Liking curves? Fine; I don't think most real men want to get into bed with a skeleton with skin on, regardless of what Madison Avenue and the Hollywood might try to tell us. Not minding the extra weight? Totally believable, because most men are not jerks who can't love a woman if she's not fresh off a magazine cover. But most of the men I have heard of who actively want their women to put on extra pounds, beyond just avoiding being "skinny", are not... exactly... as normal as Cal. Nice idea, Ms. Crusie. Great book, and thank you for the lifelong Krispy Kreme craving. But I just don't believe you.

• James Fraser in Outlander and the rest of that series. Lots of women (many of whom I have met on the Internet) are full-out in love with Jamie, who is strong and handsome and rugged and virile and sensitive and loving and not afraid to cry and just flawed enough and he has red hair and of course a nice body and he's tall and twenty-three years old and he speaks with an enchanting and linguistically inaccurate burr. And he wears a kilt. There are thousands of pages with Jamie on them, and in every one of those pages he becomes more and more of a mythic creation. Men, if you are unsure what women want, do yourself and your lovelife an enormous favor and spend a few days reading these books, and then make yourself over accordingly and you'll have scores of a certain type of single woman knocking down your door in droves.
  
  Except, oh yeah, your average ordinary guy would rather, um, not. Wear a kilt. Or cry. Or, let's face it, be an enthusiastic virgin on his wedding night as he marries an older woman with vastly more experience. (Well, maybe that one.) And a note to women: most near-strangers to whom you end up having to marry yourself under an assumed identity in order to keep nefarious and corrupt British soldiers from harming your person -- meanwhile keeping said man out of prison and possibly saving him from hanging -- will not end up being this congenial. Perhaps this is because the author was free to take her favorite qualities of a modern male and combine them with the best qualities of a 1740's Scottish hero and then put them in a form that most women find rather appealing. In other words, Jamie only works because he is completely made up.
  
  Of course, the entire romance subgenre (I am an expert in this because I read five Silhouette romances when I was a teenager) is thickly populated with unrealistic ideal men, but I'm not counting them because a) they tend to be less well-developed than the two I've mentioned, for page-count reasons if nothing else and b) nobody expects them to be real; they are there to serve the heroine and the author and her legions of readers and everyone pretty much knows that. Whereas there are many, many women -- I've met some -- who now fantasize that some kind of red-haired kilt-wearing sword-wielding Gerard Butler clone is just around the corner, because his creator did such a good job making women believe in him. I remember Diana Gabaldon mentioning, maybe at a reading or maybe in an interview, that her husband told her that Jamie Fraser isn't a real guy; he's a woman's conception of a guy, which is totally different, and exactly what I'm talking about here.
  

Rachel, you are saying, hello, fiction? Escape? Ringing any bells? I know, I know, I don't mean to sound like I expect every man ever created in fiction to be straight out of real life. The topic seemed interesting to me when I started writing ;), and I meant to be much clearer about what sets these authors and their creations apart from the ordinary imaginary men we all like to read about, but I don't have time. I also meant to do more than two, but I have a history paper to write and dinner to plan. Any others you can think of? Do you disagree with me about these?

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