Oh, the plus size heroine. You may choose from the following options:
1. She diets her way to happy endingness, because nothings says “blissful sex and unlimited love forever after” like losing weight and having thin thighs.
2. She diets her way to happy endingness after seeing the visual holyshit that is her head photoshopped onto a thin body. Once this, she suffers from absolutely no misapprehensions as to what her body looks like and instantly adapts to a gym-centric, carrot-stick-loving life, because thin is so in. (No, Jemima J, I have still not gotten over that one).
3. She’s the plucky, plump sidekick of awesome, a sterling character inside a sexually unacceptable and therefore sexually unthreatening character who compliments but doesn’t compete with the heroine.
4. Like the heroine who is so very very accomplished but does nothing but fuck up left right and center, she’ll go on and on about how big and unattractive she is, how she’s larger than the other women she knows and it bothers her, yadda yadda – and then you find out she’s a size 10 or some shit like that.
Weight is a tricky issue for the heroine, who must be a perfect embodiment of all that is perfect without pissing us readers off too much. Lately there have been more explorations into The Land of The Plus Size Heroine in all genres, but mostly it’s a matter of omission. As Robin Uncapher wrote back in 2006
Out-of-fashion beauty was one of the main problems our thin, wide-eyed heroines had to overcome. What these girls had to worry about was being too beautiful, so beautiful the randy heroes could not keep their hands to themselves.
More recently, though, something completely new has happened in the world of romance. A small number of romance writers have been writing women who look more like most of us, not just by being plain, but by feeling overweight. Books like Ruth Wind’s Beautiful Stranger, Justine Davis’ A Whole Lot of Love, and Suzanne Brockmann’s Get Lucky started popping up.
Of course, as Robin points out, once you name a number as a size, a whole lotta women on either side of that number line up to argue about where the real “fat” line lies. Is it size 2? Is it size 14? Is it no size at all? Or is it every size, since so many women suffer under the idea that they are far, far too big for the ideal. Smart authors, if you ask me, leave it up to the reader and never name a number at all, leaving “plus size” in the mind’s eye of the beholder.
So are there plus size heroines that aren’t going to diet their way to happy endings, thereby reinforcing the damaging stereotype that only thin people deserve happiness? Are there heroines who remain their size and then move on to happiness? One Bitchery reader wrote:
I’m looking for romances that feature larger heroines. I’m wondering if you can poll the readers for their recommendations. I don’t care the sub-genre of romance, I just want to have a list of books that feature larger women.
The Rotund did a romance novel review in which the heroine was constantly bringing up her eating habits even though she was an okay size.
It got me thinking that I hadn’t read many and so I’ve gone looking and found some to order, but just want extra feedback.
Thanks to Barb Ferrer, I have read A Whole Lot of Love (among the worst titles ever, really) and it’s marvelous. The heroine, Layla Laraway, is a larger woman blessed with a hot-sex-on-chocolate-silk voice, and she’s a fundraising mastermind. When she meets The Hero, a hottie mchot executive named Ethan, he’s initially smitten with her voice, and has to adjust to the fact that his imagination of what she looked like doesn’t match reality (which he does quickly, thank heaven).
Her insecurities are real, but only part of the obstacles between them, and the heroine herself is marvy. In fact, Alzheimer’s Disease is often more of a focus in the narrative than Layla’s size. And, most importantly, her size is part of her character, not an obstacle to her happy ending – as in, she doesn’t have to make half of herself disappear to earn her future happiness.
So what other plus-size heroines have you read and liked? And which ones made you want to scream at the reinforcement of what The Rotund calls the “hegemony of Thin?”
ETA: While wandering around my house far, far from the reaches of the internet (it’s a scary place, that part of the house – there’s a mountain of laundry that never gets smaller) I realized that there are actually potentially two types of plus-size heroines. One: the kind for whom weight is a conscious issue but hopefully for the sake of a narrative not the only issue, and two: a plus size heroine whose size is a matter of fact element to the story, who doesn’t agonize over it at all.
It seems to me (and I haven’t caffeinated yet fully so I am happy to be disagreed with) that the place in which the openly imperfect heroine* most comfortably resides is historical romance. There are some historical heroines who aren’t visually perfect, for weight reasons or otherwise (note: examples blocked by lack of caffeine), but of course the hero, through the rose-colored lenses of her Magic Hoo Hoo, finds her fascinating. In contemporary romances, it might be more difficult to create an openly imperfect* heroine for weight reasons specifically because of the fatism that affects contemporary society, wherein if you’re fat you’re presumably lazy.
Are there heroines, in any time period, who are totally accepting of their size? Are there well-adjusted women of size in romance?
*Note: *I* for God’s sake do not think any amount of weight up or down is an imperfection. (My post partum ass, let me show you it. Next week.) I am referring to the standard of perfect imposed upon contemporary women, which currently seems to follow a “you should look as bony and square as a 10 year old boy” visual style. So when I say “Visually imperfect” it’s not from my perspective that I’m labeling imperfection. You look marvelous just the way you are. Really.
My hubby is 5’8” and gets called short a lot. Luckily, he could care less. He’s short AND bald and doesn’t give it one seconds thought. How sexy is that?! *wink*
Here’s a good story about that: My brother-in-law got married a couple of years ago. The other men in the wedding party ranged from 5’11” to 6’4”. We were taking pictures and the men were on the top step and the women two steps below. As the photographer was lining up her shot in the camera she points to hubby and says “I need you on the top step” He replies, “I AM on the top step” bwahahahahahahahaha She was soooooo embarrassed and my hubby thought it was hilarious. He teased her for the rest of the pictures.
His attitude is so awesome, and I find that sexy.
If no one considers Queen Latifah unattractive, she is the inspiration for my psychic heroine in Dream of Shadows. (I should probably let her know.) Here’s what the hero thought when he first saw her:
She eats like a normal woman with a rambunctious daughter, and the only time weight comes back up is the first time their intimate. Jax helps Nicole kick those fears to the curb real quick.
Those fla-damn clothes you see black women wearing in church? They’re usually in non-chain stores in largely urban areas. Ebony used to have a Fashion Fair catalog (they just do road shows now) and the Roaman’s catalog tries to represent.
Our local Catherine’s carries them and the hats. I love to go in and just try them on. Now, I may not be able to wear any of them, but I do dress in my own flamboyant way when the time is right. Which always shocks the ever living hell out of everyone.
FWIW I remember reading *somewhere* a few years back that 5’8 or 5’9 is actually considered AVERAGE! *g*
I LOVE men. I prefer tall men but I won’t rule out a short man…or a short hero *g*
And Seressia I LUV Queen Latifah! I think she’s so sexy! Thanks to everyone on all the great book recs.
She is freaking gorgeous and I would love to look like her.
The men in my life have run the gammet- from 5’5” to 6’6”. They all work the same way though!!
I hated Jemina J as well-it made me so mad!!
When I write my books I rarely give specific details about how curvaceous/skinny the hero/heroine are because I prefer my readers to make up their own minds. Size (ooh er, madam) is only worth mentioning if it is relevant to the story I’m telling-sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.
My dad is 5’6. Not that I like to speculate on his dating life, but as far as I can tell from some stories, he didn’t have trouble getting dates. (Except in high school, but the fact that he was the VP of the Ham Radio Club may have been the real reason for that.)
I generally say that I prefer taller men because if I didn’t, my children would be under five feet tall. (My grandma is 5’8; my mother is 5’5, I’m 5’3 . . .) Of course, had my fiance been under six feet, I’m sure I wouldn’t have said ‘no.’
And Queen Latifah is a very beautiful and talented woman. Seressia, I’m totally putting your book on my TBR list!
Was it Marcus in Lisa Kleypas’s seventy-trillion books that include him who was of ‘medium’ height (but, of course, built like a wrestler)? Medium height in 1840 would have been, what, five-six or so? (Found here, one of the PDF references. Assuming Marcus was born between 1800-1830, the average ht was 170 cm.) That would make him officially ‘short’ by 21st century standards (where my 6’1 fiance doesn’t think he’s ‘tall’). Although, of course, his height is never given in numbers, so we’re left to think whatever the heck ‘medium’ height is, which is probably 5’10 for today’s reader.
Here are the steps I wrote for myself after I stopped dieting. I needed a daily reminder of my goals.
Feel free to copy these steps and paste, tape, nail or glue them anywere you can see them, if you like them.
10 Steps to Loving Your Body (c)
by
Pat Ballard
1. Never stand in front of a mirror and think negative thoughts about yourself.
2. Never stand anywhere and think negative thoughts about yourself.
3. Search carefully for your good points and when you have found them, nourish them and build on them and cause them to grow daily.
4. Close your mind to any negative words, thoughts or actions that someone might send your way. Don’t allow negative thoughts into your subconscious.
5. Always conduct yourself in an honorable fashion and don’t allow your mouth to appear larger than your body.
6. Always do your best to look like you care about yourself, as no one respects a slob, no matter what size that slob might be.
7. Learn what your best colors are, what your best hair style is, and what your best clothes style is, and never leave your house without being dressed accordingly.
8. Always, and without fail, smile and simply say, “Thank you,†when you receive a compliment. Never think or say that the compliment isn’t true.
9. Stop apologizing about your size. Expect everyone to accept you, respect you, and be happy with you just the way you are.
10. But most of all, you have to love yourself. When you love yourself, others will love you and respond to you in the exact manner as you feel about yourself.
Pat Ballard
http://www.patballard.com
I’m a woman who has struggled with body image all my life. I thought I was fat when I weighed 112 pounds in college, and putting on pounds was depressing, as much as I protested that it wasn’t. Last year, having gotten up to 218 at 5’6”, I decided to do something about it. I’m now 185 and wearing a size 14. Better yet, I’m fitter than I have been since I used to ride horses in college. I work out doing cardio 5 days a week, and do weights twice a week. That’s in addition to a (when I can get to it) Pilates class and training dogs.
I admit to now being an evangelistic fitness nut. For those of you who think exercise is boring, I promise you that if you *make* yourself do it for one month, you’ll be hooked. Join a gym, get out with your dog, ride a bike. You’ll be astonished by energy and esteem boost.
And we all have time to do it. Don’t fool yourselves. I work full time, do freelance graphic design, train dogs, teach dog training classes, and show dogs on weekends. If I can do it, anybody can. Even busy Moms. (grin)
I think it’s non-PC to admit, if you’re bigger, that you aren’t happy with your weight. In this day and age, we’re supposed to be defiantly happy no matter what our size. But truth to tell in American culture women are inculcated to be unhappy with their size, and I don’t think it’s weak of me to admit that yes, I am influenced by that culture. I do feel better when I weigh less and feel I look better when I weigh less. I’m sure that makes me a pariah to some. But for me personally, weighing less does boost my self-image and self-esteem. That said, I do not think waif-like thinness is very attractive either, and I feel that true happiness along with physical fitness is far more important than any number.
Anyone wanting to know how whacked out the BMI is, by the way, should go to the Illustrated BMI site. It shows how deceptive the BMI can be in judging whether a person is really overweight: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/
As for heavier heroines in books, I have no problem with them as long as weight is not the central feature of the story. And I don’t mind less than perfect heroes either. I look at some of these romances, particularly historicals, where the hero has rock-hard perfect abs and knowing what I now do about what it takes to get those kinds of abs (body fat of about 10% plus a very rigorous workout program) I’m sort of skeptical…
Pat- thank you for your list. I like it.
And I forgot to mention the one plus size woman who I envy most of all- Trisha Yearwood. Come on, she’s a hot blonde, can sing like nobody’s business and is married to Garth Brooks- who is also put on a little weight, gone gray and lost a lot of his hair. But who can also sing like heck and is one hell of a dad. But still knows how to fill out them tight, tight jeans.
http://www.fabulousmag.co.uk/diets/diet_body_survey_results_issue_025.php
I think the above link is appropriate to this discussion. I’d also like to point out, that when I said earlier I didn’t want to read about “fat chicks,” those girls pictured in that article—if those sizes are accurate—is NOT what I consider fat.
Also, I’m 5’9 and a size 4. I still have curves. I’d like to stop reading that my size is “not normal” or “unhealthy.”
That’s why I kept size out of my discussion regarding health. A size 4 can absolutely be healthy for one person but not for another. Some people’s bodies are not made to be a size 4 and forcing it to be a size 4 means unhealthy eating (or not eating) habits. If you are a size 4 and healthy then that’s great.
I was just commenting that when a person is thin, no one questions their health. I have a friend that is extremely thin (I have no idea what size she wears). She is what the world considers “ideal” but she is malnourished because she doesn’t eat. But very few people (except her friends) question if she is healthy or not because she is not overweight.
I don’t think a certain size means healthy or unhealthy. It’s about eating habits and what your body’s “natural” or healthy size is.
Thanks, ev.
Jana and Tracy, I totally agree with you both.
A good case in point is one of my cousins that I grew up with. Her mom and my dad were siblings.
She was 5’9” and weighed 98 pounds as a young woman. She was totally healthy, but wanted to gain weight.
I, on the other hand, was born with the fat gene that was prominent on my mom’s side of the family, and I was totally healthy.
When my cousin would come to visit, she would eat a big bowl of ice cream before she went to bed, trying to gain weight, and I went to bed so hungry that my growling stomach kept me awake.
I look back at the two of us and feel sad. If we could have just accepted our bodies as they were, we would have saved ourselves so much mental and physical turmoil.
Pat
I’ve just given up because the weight requirements are preposterous. I skim and ignore and suspend disbelief, same as I would with books telling me the earth is flat and people can pull firebolts out of their asses. I read a book a while back where a “big” “plush” “endowed” “well-padded” “Viking” of a woman was described as being 5’10’ and ONE HUNDRED THIRTY POUNDS.
(Not saying the ratio is impossible. Saying the extra adjectives are STUPID.)
I am five ten and my lowest adult weight was 140, and it made me sick, and made my doctor yell at me. Got that way by pulling amusing little (dumb) tricks like not eating for three days in a row. (Nor am I “big-boned”—medium at best.)
Right now, I’m 35-28-40—and a hippo, apparently, at 155 pounds and a BMI of 22.2 (and a size eight dress, size 4-6 top). What the frak ever.
*eats carrot cake*
*with cream cheese frosting*
Recently read an interracial romance by Daamon Speller, which was not all that fab, but at least seemed to have a logical grasp of the correlation between poundage and dress size. (And size was not the heroine’s problem.)
No, Tania, the heroine of Teresa Medeiros The Bride And The Beast does not lose any weight at the end. I just thought of another title: The Reluctant Cinderella by Christine Rimmer. The heroine is ‘large’ (actual weight not mentioned) and the hero’s skinny ex-wife can’t believe it when he starts dating her: “But – she’s FAT!” One thing a lot of romances have is a fat VILLAINESS. Jude Devereux’s Counterfeit Lady for instance. Every time she appears, there is reference to how she is eating her way through the planet, as though being overweight is, in itself, proof of evil. I found the book an insult to fat women everywhere. In fact, I consider it the second-worst ‘romance’ ever written. (The absolute worst is Witless My Love) Spamword Does89, as in “Does 89 pounds constitute a healthy weight?”
See above about black churches. 😉
Oooh! Ladies Number One Detective Agency, Mma Precious Ramotswe!! She is Botswanan and “traditionally shaped.”
Oh, I loved that one! It was bittersweet though.
As I recall, quite a few of the heroines of Katie MacAllister’s contemporary romances are or feel “overweight” but are pretty much okay with it. The two that come to mind immediately are “The Corset Diaries” and “Hard Day’s Knight”. I think “Men in Kilts” has a heroine who is nor stick-thin, either.
I am so underwhelmed with the BMI and weight charts, and wonder how many people have been traumatized by them over the years. These days, there’s no quibbling or question; I’m just flat out fat… although I had to howl at a medical report I received a few years ago after an accident. The doctor my insurance company hired to settle the claim described me as being “moderately over-nourished.†LOLOL Anyway, I always thought I was fat throughout my youth and college years (OMG – my kingdom to be as fat now as I thought I was in college), based on numbers alone, and was very self-conscious as a result. I’m 5’6†and incredibly big-boned. I have a size 10 ring finger, even when I’m not overweight. I was only maybe a size or so larger than my peers, but I always weighed at least 50 pounds more than they did from grade school on up. I came from a fat family. Therefore, I must be fat. It never dawned on me to question the numbers.
After college, I really did start to gain weight. The day I realized I weighed more than John Elway, I was crushed. (Oh, to weigh as much as John Elway now.) Time moved on. I got fatter. I was okay with it. Then I won a contest called The Party of a Lifetime with Patrick Swayze. The promoters were sending me and a friend to Beverly Hills for a weekend `to go to all these private tours and parties at Universal Studios. The first words out of my mouth (after the squeeee) were, “I’ve got to go on a diet.†I wanted to look good in the photos. My BBW mom, then a card-carrying member of NAAFA, wasn’t pleased. She thought I was ‘letting down the cause,’ so to speak. I’d never given much thought to how weight affected how I was treated. Until I lost 60 pounds. Then I understood what she meant. I looked damn good, if I do say so myself. Everyone else said it too. So much so that neighbors and people I’d worked with for years, but who couldn’t even be bothered to say hello to me in the hall, suddenly considered me worthy of their attention. I was the same person inside, so why did the outside matter so much? It pissed me off, frankly.
Ironically since then, I’ve gained it all back and then some, and my mom lost all of her weight. She’s the fanatic now. But I digress.
Back to the numbers. I went through one of those diet centers where you eat their food and weigh in daily with a counselor. I figured I’d behave better if I paid for it and had the accountability. It worked great for a while. Then I started getting OCD about that damn scale, and resentful. I knew my weight would never satisfy the counselor because I would never fit her BMI chart. I’d take off every piece of jewelry, empty my pockets, etc. No makeup. Not put on my undergarments until after the weigh-in. Wear only my lightest clothing, even in winter. Cut my hair. Take off the nail polish. I was insane.
My counselor, a little 4’5†majorette who prolly didn’t weigh 85 pounds soaking wet (not that I’m BITTER at all), kept insisting I had to lose more weight.
As I said, I really looked incredible. I wore a size 12 pant, and a 15/16 top to fit my bust and shoulders. It’s theoretically possible that I could have lost another 10 or 15 pounds, tho it probably would not have been healthy. We reached an impasse. She insisted I needed to lose another 60 pounds. I asked her, “Which leg should I cut off?†She didn’t have an answer for that, and I quit the program.
My body fat was around 20%. I weighed 185 pounds.
I can relate to the BBW issue from all sides. I’ve been (am!) fat, insecure and invisible. I’ve been comfortable in my own skin, regardless of weight. I’ve been in that militant ‘I’m okay, you’re the problem’ place, and I’ve also been in that sanctimonious place where ‘since I’ve lost the weight, everyone else should as well, and pity to those who haven’t figured it out yet.’ I can understand all of those POVs and can accept a character who holds them. As long as the author doesn’t throw in unrealistic numbers (fat = size 10), I’m okay.
For myself, I just want a good story that rings true. If the character is believable, with believable traits, confidence and/or insecurities that seem honest to the character, I’ll read it. However, I want the story to be about the relationship and the romance – not the weight. I don’t want the author shoving her own agenda of what is/is not acceptable down my throat. I read romances to be entertained, not enlightened (no pun intended). I guess that’s why I appreciated how the weight issues brought up in HE LOVES LUCY. She had her insecurities, but they rang true to me for that character. It also looked at weight from the other side, pointing out that too-skinny was equally unhealthy.
One of my all time favorite reads evah is sortof applicable. (Yeah, okay, it’s not, but it’s an outstanding book and y’all should read it anyway.) It’s not about weight but is about perceptions and appearance. An old category by Jennifer Greene called NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. She’s plain. He’s gorgeous. She’s confident in all things but her looks. He doesn’t think he can afford love because of the dangerous job he holds. Woven throughout a very tight, well-written story are two characters who both need to get past the expectations they assume others have of them and get to the heart of the matter: two very lonely people who have found their soul mates, if they’ll only get past their pride and find the courage to reach out.
Diane
I have to disagree with Rose, who said that Penelope from Romancing Mr. Bridgerton was “on the plump side”. She had been overweight before the events of that novel – I remember it being stated that she had been 14 stone – basically about 140 lbs. While I don’t believe her height had ever been explicitly stated, that’s not too terribly terrible, and I say this as someone about the same weight at about 5’2”.
Of course, that was in the past, and in previous novels. Penelope had lost twenty-eight pounds, making her 112lbs when Romancing Mr. Bridgerton took place. As soon as I made those calculations, any sympathy I had for her dissipated.
The early books are charming. Unfortunately, in the later books, especially Blue Shoes and Happiness, the author has taken to making stupid fat jokes.
Cam, your sums are horribly off. There are 14 pounds in a stone, making Penelope 196lb. To put that into perspective, Anne Widdecombe is the same height as Penelope and is notably roly-poly at a documented weight of 11 stone and two pounds (figure obtained by watching celebrity fat club, despite my loathing of those sorts of programmes).
So from a general point of view, Penelope may not be some people’s idea of ‘properly fat’, but she certainly isn’t what most people would think of as a slender/skinny heroine. Even after she’d lost weight at twelve stone she would have to be about 5’11’‘/6’0 to be considered a ‘healthy’ or normal (read as ‘thin’) woman by British medical standards I’ve been exposed to (as someone who proofreads for a nurse I am privy to a fair amount of that nonsense.)
Coming late to this party on account of being away from the interwebs of late, but fatness: it has been much on my mind. I currently possess clothing ranging in sizes from 16 to 26, and they all fit me. I don’t understand sizes at all.
After this whole long conversation, I feel shallow. I’m not attracted to fatness in either males or females. I’m fat, my family tends to be fat, most of my beloved friends are fat. But I don’t find fat people attractive, I don’t really believe anybody who says they do.
My family runs to tall (my shortest adult male relative is 5’10” and I think I’m the shortest woman at 5’6”), and we don’t have much male pattern baldness, either. I find short men freakish and unnatural, and bald men kind of weird and icky. It just seems wrong to me. (Can’t imagine why I’m single…) If some writer (Laura Kinsale, yes indeed I do loves Seize the Fire) pulls off a good story about such people, I’m there, but I don’t go looking for them. I especially don’t go looking for a story that revolves around these characteristics.
But this:
I read an interesting book called “The Obesity Myth” by Paul Campos. According to him, all those studies telling us that fatness is unhealthy actually show the opposite. The data consistently showed that having a higher BMI increases life expectency, and a lower BMI increases mortality. In study after study, the data said fatness wasn’t particularly unhealthy in and of itself, and the conclusions said fatness kills. It’s like even the people who research obesity are brainwashed that fat=bad, and they can’t bring themselves to even see evidence to the contrary.
(Unless we get into 1000 lb people, which is a whole nother discussion.)
To the extent of recommending the FDA approve weight-loss drugs with significant risks of heart damage and death, because that risk was considered acceptable compared to the imaginary risks of being fat.
The real bad is inactivity, according to Campos’ interpretation of the various studies.
Sorry for the vagueness, I read it a while ago. It boggled my mind.
What further boggled my mind: Our local firefighters come by my workplace once per year to test everybody’s blood pressure and such (it’s some health promotion program). I’m significantly overweight, and not terribly active. Yet, my blood pressure and cholesterol are in the normal-low range, and my firefighter’s computer told him I’m biologically younger than my chronological age. So there!
GS: I also liked Kenyon’s Night Play. It’s the most enjoyable of all of her Dark Hunter books. I liked the way the relationship played out, and the way the story was about them loving each other the way they were, rather than the endless slog against Teh Eebil. I don’t think Acheron even had to save anbody, in spite of his cameo.
There are not enough heroines with 34A breasts either!
Three kids and breastfeeding made mine even smaller. As the struggling-to-be-proud owner of a pair of curve-less boobies, I’d like to see more heroes drooling over mini-boobs. Come to think of it, there aren’t many scenes in romance novels in which the hero rubs his face with glee into the woman’s thin, roped-with-muscle arms or gets a boner looking at her bony ankles and wrists. I’ve got those too thanks to genetics. So who does admire these features? Other women?? A few men who had skinny mamas?
I’ve read quite a few good plus-sized romances (Lori Foster has an erotic one, also almost all the Madison Hayes calendar girls are big, except for one too-skinny one). I love reading the full-figured romance because even if the body isn’t like mine, nor is it an unlikely 36-26-34, size 4.
I do want to point out that the hero of these books does NOT need to say skinny is ugly/gross in order to say “I love your curves.” Ya know? I just want the hero to find the heroine beautiful, and the heroine to see herself in that light as well.
I’ve commented elsewhere about the [duh!] differences between male and female viewpoints. A huge number of men prefer larger women, finding them physically sexier. (I know; I know: sexuality comes from both in- and outside). Though I haven’t read romances outside the oevre of my favorite, Nora Roberts, I’d love to find books in which the, shall we say, statistically larger heroine’s size is treated as neutrally as, say, red hair vs. auburn hair, and—males do wish fulfillment too [double duh!]—said heroine drives men foolish with lust. Some years ago I published three mysteries in which the detective’s main squeeze was Junoesque and then some. More then once, larger readers singled this out in complimenting me.