Prettiness in YA

In my novel beauty depends on the beholders. My protagonist is a curvy tomboy. The most popular girl is thin, feminine and stereotypically conceited. Some of the guys like one, some like the other.

The boys differ as well from shorter and muscular to tall and intriguing. There are twins that look exactly the same but have completely different personalities. Most of the discussion about my characters is about things besides their looks.

Self-esteem is one of the themes and that affects how the protagonist sees herself.

Readers want interesting characters, flaws are more interesting than perfect. The most important thing, in my opinion, is the story.

Many teens (not to mention adults) are obsessed with appearance and attractiveness, so it makes sense for stories told from a contemporary teenager's pov to reflect this. Girls do giggle and gossip about cute guys, and they do talk about which of their friends are prettiest. Boys don't seem to spend as much time thinking about whether other guys are hot or not, but they sure do spend a lot of time snickering and gossiping about the appearance of girls they know, and they can be quite emphatic (not to mention cruel) when they disagree about whether or not a given girl is "hot."

However, many (possibly most) teenaged girls doubt their own attractiveness and are hyper critical about relatively minor (or nonexistent) physical flaws. I can't speak for all boys, though I know my brother worried about being short and wiry instead of tall and muscular, and hated his nose (and eventually got it fixed). He actually worried more than I did about whether his clothes were real designer brands instead of cheap imitations. As for the current generation, my16-year-old niece (daughter of this same brother) is worried about being "ugly' when her skin flares up and she gets a few pimples, and she was very concerned that her teeth weren't white enough until her parents allowed her to start bleaching them. She's also worried about being too tall and not developed enough etc. Note that she is very confident in other ways--does well in schools, good at sports, is a good leader, has many friends and a boyfriend, and is very politically aware and involved for someone her age. She is what I would have considered a "popular" girl when I was a teen (I was most definitely not a popular girl myself). Even popular kids worry about how they measure up.

I have trouble understanding how stories told from the pov of super-confident teens who never doubt their own attractiveness would be that realistic or that relatable to most teens. But then, I've grown thoroughly tired of novels where the FMC is so gorgeous everyone who sees her agrees she's the most beautiful woman they have ever seen. I like stories where the characters are a bit more ordinary but they find their own strengths. In romantic tales or arcs, I like ones where two people find one another attractive in spite of their flaws. The focus on gorgeousness always made me feel like I couldn't be significant, interesting, successful or lovable unless I was gorgeous too. Not everyone shares my taste, so maybe some teens like to put themselves in the place of near-perfect protagonists. Some people do like tales with larger-than-life protagonists.

However, I've certainly run across YA novels where the protagonist isn't super gorgeous or handsome (or doesn't consider themselves to be so). I've even run across ones where the appearance of the protagonist hardly comes up at all. It kind of depends on what the focus of the story is.

I've only got one character in my finished book that is described as particularly attractive. It helped paint a stereotype that then gets unravelled. I'm definitely put off by too much focus on good looks, but I'm no longer the audience that I write for, so I'll follow this post with interest Make up seems huge among teens atm, youtube beauty tutorials etc but luckily I write fantasy, the WIP historical, so to my relief I don't need to know how to tackle eyebrows on fleek

Whether I find it annoying or a nonissue is dependent on the circumstances. If every single character and their mother is described as objectively, insanely attractive, that's annoying. But if one character is observing their best friend or a love interest and describing relatively basic, neutral traits (green eyes, brown hair, etc rather than "rock hard abs" or other conventionally "wow so hot" traits) and thinks their friend/family/love interest is pretty, that strikes me as a nonissue. We all find beautiful things in the people we're close to, even if they might not be conventionally attractive. As long as descriptions go beyond "they're hot. So hot. I won't tell you anything else, just trust me" I don't care much.

I do, however, appreciate when characters are explicitly described as average looking. I don't mind, as I said, characters being described as pretty. But it is nice given the number of young kids reading YA when characters are relatably normal in appearance. I think that was a nice thing about the Harry Potter - the vast majority of the kids in that series were of average attractiveness.

I don't think attractiveness has that much bearing or whether or not your series is successful. I think writing characters however you personally see them - hot or average or neither - isn't going to distract from the quality of your story. If an author wants to ramble on about a bunch of hot people, sure, why not? Doesn't hurt me or really affect the mental picture I've created of that character. Physical descriptions are such a small part of the story.

Personally whenever I read on the book's back cover that "she meets the handsome (generic male name)" I am instantly no longer interested. Like really? You wrote the book for years and you can't think of a better adjective for the love interest besides "handsome?"

i'm using using first-person POV and my narrator never describes his own appearance. i want the reader to just drop into his head and ride around the story with him. other characters may comment something about his appearance, but to me he is an average-looking kid. he does describe the boy who is the romantic interest, but that's the narrator's own feeling about the attractiveness. i as the writer try to get out of the way, if that makes sense. (the book is an LGBT YA, by the way.)

I try not to describe my female MCs as super-duper gorgeous, or to have other characters describe them that way. If they describe themselves, it's a fairly neutral description; if the love interest describes them, attraction is obviously going to influence that picture, but I don't want to give the impression that everyone in the novel's world thinks my heroine is hot. In my mind's eye, they're pleasant-looking, usually in a quirky way, but not ready to star on a CW show anytime soon.

I imagined the LI in my debut as looking like a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt—so, attractive, but again, not CW-attractive. I was actually asked to make him slightly hotter-sounding, and I did, but he's still wiry, not ripped. I have also written conventionally hot LIs.

When I imagine supporting characters, it's easy to reach for images of pretty people because that's what I see in movies, on TV, online, etc. Average/quirky/flawed people take more imagination to visualize, I think, unless you base them on people you know IRL (which has its pitfalls). But I do try to think beyond the CW types, because I find imperfect looks more memorable and interesting. (This is why I generally prefer indie films to the CW. )

There's also the issue of describing physical traits that have historically been considered unattractive without perpetuating a stigma. I'm tall, and I once stopped reading a book after reading a seriously unflattering description of a pathetic gangly tall girl. There are plenty of ways to convey that a person is awkward or whatever without mocking them. But it can be difficult to strike the right balance.

Not really, look at HP, there's not really an attactive person in the entire book. It is far more important that they be interesting.

Now, there's two ways you could go, either go with the sort of "everyman" that people can project themselves onto, OR you could go with the exemplar, who is the heavily "idealized" version, which is why superheroes work so well.

Lots of interesting thoughts on here! I'm quite pleased that in my three published books, all the main characters are pretty average looking (or, in two cases, the characters are called pretty and good looking, but only in the eyes of other characters who are attracted to them anyway). In the current book, the LI is stated to look "alright" i.e. average, though he becomes better looking in the eyes of MC as she starts to fall for him (which is only natural). The MC herself is fairly pretty (the plot is much more convincing if she is good looking which is why I did it). Three of the male minor characters are explicitly stated to be gorgeous, though. Er, oops? One is a model though, in my defense...

Anyway, that aside: like Fuchsia, I also had an experience with being instructed by editors to make a lead character (in this case, a boy) much more attractive. Originally, he was overweight, but I was told that this didn't work for various reasons, and that the book would work much better if he was more "fanciable", not just so he and female MC could get together, but also so that the readers might fancy him a little, too. Actually, now I write this, I recall, too, that originally I really underplayed the romance angle between female MC and formerly overweight male MC; he had a crush on her, and the book was left with her saying she'd see what happened in the future (I didn't think she was ready for jumping into a relationship, and privately thought that once time had passed after the end of the book, she'd probably just want to be male MC's friend). Again, I was advised to change this, and have them kiss at the end.

So, perhaps it is seen that books do work best with attractive leads? The same logic could be applied to film and TV shows, where the cast are very often above ordinary attractiveness, which I find a bit tedious, actually.

I'm not published, so I can't speak to what sells and what doesn't. I'm a chronic under-describer. I put only a tiny bit of description of my main characters. It's difficult for me to picture characters when I read, so that's something I'm struggling with as I write. I like to think that readers can extrapolate on the characters' thoughts and actions and picture whomever they want. Or maybe I should just describe better.

While I understand not wanting every character to be movie-star gorgeous, what I hate more is when an author paints actually-pretty qualities in an average or unappealing light. It's like... shut up. They're pretty.

My stories do tend to have a fair few pretty protagonists, but I rarely actually focus much on their looks outside of moments used to give insight into a deeper aspect of their character. My stories tend to be focused more on reality breaking super powers, family drama, and protagonists discovering their view of reality and where they fit in it then romance, so they do not focus on looks as much as more romance-heavy stories might. As an example, I have one protagonist who is, at least at the start of her story, an exceptionally shallow and self-absorbed person who is fixated on her appearance and the fact she is extremely wealthy (her dad in fact is the richest man in the world in her era, so you can imagine the ego that comes with that.). She is a massive anime fan, and a lover of the "kawaii" aesthetic, so she brings up her own "cute" looks and clothing, but in a way that is meant to show her shallowness and fixation on the superficial rather than one thats meant to tell the reader she is cute and pretty.

By the same token, that protagonist is also described as having pink hair, and grafts that give her a pink cat tail and pink cat ears. However, this trait is not there for the sake of making her cuter but instead is directly related to several of her character aspects: her unhealthy obsession with the VR world, view that the fantasy it offers is more real than reality, once again her fixation on the superficial, and how she harshly judges both her real world self and the real world itself when compared to the artificial perfection of VR.....all of which play into the misanthropy, self-loathing, and belief that everybody is just as selfish, shallow and ego-driven as her which festers underneath the surface level of her personality. Due to a bunch of reasons I am too tired to list but which I can say have a lot to do with her ESPer powers, she spends most of her life in VR, where her avatar is an actual anime catgirl.

Her looks are not entirely natural, and while she did have naturally "cute" looks her apperence has been significantly altered by science, tech and the vast wealth of her family. She particularly obtained the kitty ears and tail because her real world body felt uncomfortable for her due to being more used to her VR form than her actual body (and therefore being used to having cat ears and a cat tail), and her constant comparison of her real world looks to her VR anime avatar, the former of which, while "cute," can never hope to match the idealized cartoon that is the latter.

So I am down for pretty characters if it works for the story. Some stories just require the MC to be pretty. Others may require the love interest to be pretty and the MC average, or vice-versa. Nothing wrong with attractive people if it fits the narrative and world. However, I will admit a BIG pet peeve of mine is EVERYBODY being pretty for the sake of it with no logical explanation in-universe.

In a fantasy world with naturally beautiful creatures like elves, fey etc...or a sci-fi setting with advanced enough plastic surgery to allow anybody with money to buy supermodel looks, its more tolerable to me. However, on contemporary earth it’s a bit suspension of disbelief breaking for EVERY character to look like supermodel, unless of course the story is about actual supermodels.

By the same token, I prefer my books not to spend too much time on how the MC’s eyes sparkle like twin sapphires, or how rock hard and chiseled the ruggedly handsome love intrests’s abs are. This may be my ADHD talking, but I prefer for visual descriptions in books to be brief, or to at least come with interesting insights into the thoughts and/or character of the person they belong to. So yeah, I guess I stand with a lot of you in that regard.

I really enjoy it when books describe characters of varying body types and features and have the pov character perceive their attractiveness in their own way. And obviously not just for that, but for their other attributes.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I don't think writing about good-looking characters really adds to their characterisation at all. It may wish fulfillment from the author, but think of it this way: we all have our likes and dislikes. Right?
Chances are that when the character is introduced, we already have an image of them inside our head. If later they're revealed as good-looking or not, does it drastically change that image we have?

I get where you're coming from. It's certainly unrealistic in YA when all the characters are flawlessly beautiful without a single pimple (oh come on, your book has fifty teenagers and not one of them has acne??) but I don't think it matters, as a whole. I'm hardly going to like or dislike a character based on what they look. (Of course, the same rule doesn't apply for everyone and certainly doesn't apply to movies. The amount of people who like Draco Malfoy because of Tom Felton is astounding.)