Dear Author has an interesting post today about idealism vs realism.
Now I am the first person to raise my hand and say I am a cynical lil bitch but I question how short Bob Meyer’s seems to sell men. Jane says:
Bob Mayer, the male half of the writing team of Crusie and Mayer, wrote in an interview with All About Romance about the difference between a male writing and a female writing male characters. In Don’t Look Down, the hero, JT, is faced with a naked starlett and does, according to Mayer, what any unattached male would do, and has sex with her. Mayer writes that a female author would have had JT walk away from the starlett but that JT, as Mayer has written him, represents the true male POV.
Really? Don’t get me wrong I agree some men are whores and will fuck anything that stays still long enough and says ok. Some don’t need the ok, but really no need to get into Anna Campbells book right now *g*.
But most boys do grow up and become men or it turns green and falls off. ::poof problems solved:: I find it funny such a degrading thing is being said by a guy. Is that to be all macho and cool in front of the lil women romance readers? Or is it just a bad interview?
I mean really from the tone of it I wonder why in the world he is even writing a book that has women as the main audience. I didn’t take realism away from Bob’s thoughts on ‘real’ men. I took away the male fantasy of what a man’s man is, was that just me?
It’s hard, isn’t it, to see where the fiction ends and real life begins? I’m kinda on the fence about this one, but when I’ve got a man telling us little women what we should accept and not accept that just puts a little bur under my saddle.
Men, really, are not animals. Hard for us women to admit, but really it’s true. They make poor choices but then so does anyone. It’s just poor logic to make that sort of comment about “real men”.
Cheeky, Miz Sybil, cheeky!
As someone who’s work has been rejected because the hero was deemed “too real mannish,” I— actually, I have no point. I just wanted to point that out.
If I were a dude, however, and unattached… and a naked starlet shook her chachas at me and threw herself at me, I’d do her.
clearly I don’t know the difference between who’s and whose.
I’m with bam. Hell – if a nekkid hunk shook his (erect and of a certain size) wanger at me and said “Do me” I would. I don’t even think I’d get all my clothes off before I did. And, no, it actually doesn’t even embarrass me to admit that! (surprised me too)
That just means he is sexist too. And that you are both whorzes!
I like that about you though.
I’ve discussed this many times with my deeply wonderful husband, and he and I both concur that yes, in the “real” world, an unattached man wouldn’t kick a naked starlet from his bed. But we’re not talking about the “real” world or even men in general–we’re talking about *heroes*.
Heroes don’t operate on the same code as men. We expect them to be better than men. That’s why they’re heroes in romance and not, say, the protagonist of a Jonathan Franzen novel.
Well THAT explains the red light out front of my house! 😉
You could be right Zoe. I guess a part of it is, for women at least, sex isn’t always a ‘given’ as a good time. Where as with men 95% of the time it is gonna end the same way. Hmmm or is it 98% *g*. So as a woman if you have a brain you are going to learn at some point one night stands aren’t worth the trouble of taking off your clothes.
At the same time… it is easy to SAY if this happened I would do this. When the chances of that happening are uh slim. Soooo who knows. At the heart of it, I hate generalizations.
gwen, gwen, gwen… it is tough being the the good girl in this group I tell ya