Lookism

Marian Perera · Sep 9, 2019

While a historical romance I read recently made me curious about this topic, I'm posting here because I'd like input from a larger audience and I think it could apply to other genres as well.

So. In the novel I read, the heroine has a large, pronounced facial blemish. She's very self-conscious about this because when she was a child, her parents treated her as subhuman for having this blemish. As a result of her marriage to the hero, she becomes more comfortable about her appearance, and the final scene has him telling her that he doesn't notice the blemish because he's too absorbed in noticing her instead (I can't remember the exact words, but it was something to this effect).

One negative review said that this was another form of lookism, because the hero was basically saying, "I don't notice this disfiguring thing about your face any more."

I can see how his response could be taken this way, but I was wondering how else the author could have made him react. "Yes, I still notice the blemish on your face"? "Yes, I still notice the blemish on your face but I don't find the blemish unattractive any more"? And on top of all that, I'm now writing a historical romance where one of the characters has third-degree burn scars, so I'm trying to find the best way to deal with them.

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

Ari Meermans · Sep 9, 2019

Matter of fact, that's what I prefer as a reader. Yes, he still sees the blemish; how could he not while retaining his sight? Over time, as we get to know someone, such things matter less and less though we still see them. You know what? I don't think I can explain this very well. You might want to check out the 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon for Mimi Matthew's The Matrimonial Advertisement. Within those few pages, she addresses the very thing you're writing and you might get some ideas wrt the approach to your own MS. (I thought she handled it very well as part of the characterization of both characters. ymmv)

hth

indianroads · Sep 9, 2019

After a while I think we all see less of the exterior and more of the interior of our partners. It isn't that the blemish isn't there, instead he sees it as only part of her - he loves the whole so it doesn't matter anymore.

Woollybear · Sep 9, 2019

Some people won't like what I'm about to say. Apologies in advance.

1. There are song lyrics I like that describe facial wrinkles as the map of our lives.

2. Old people are not ugly--they are ~ sunsets of life.

3. I'm certain there are fantasy stories where scars are seen/described as testaments to strength,, survival. The scar becomes the proof of the warrior spirit.

^^ Point is, all of it can be seen as beautiful or something 'good' if you want.

Not seeing a blemish is one possibility, having it become emblematic of something beautiful or meaningful is something else, still seeing as an imperfection is also possible--but I'm with Indian Roads, I usually stop seeing the blemishes. That feels real to me.

Pastelnudes · Sep 9, 2019

This is a subject close to my heart. I love writing about people who are 'different' in some way.

To be honest, I can understand why reviewers weren't keen on that male character's words. It's a bit like having him say, "I don't mind that you're ugly.'

I often have the person who has the unusual feature do the work. Literally, give them all the lines.

"It's best if you take a good look," she told me, slowly turning her head.

That kind of thing.

The subject having been frankly and cheerfully addressed, yes, the 'looking' character absolutely does not see or mention the difference again. If they do it would be in a neutral, factual way.

PostHuman · Sep 9, 2019

Marian Perera said:
I can see how his response could be taken this way, but I was wondering how else the author could have made him react. "Yes, I still notice the blemish on your face"? "Yes, I still notice the blemish on your face but I don't find the blemish unattractive any more"? And on top of all that, I'm now writing a historical romance where one of the characters has third-degree burn scars, so I'm trying to find the best way to deal with them.

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

I suggest to try to be as honest as possible in describing how you imagine your character would react to the other character's appearance. Most people in the modern world frequently discriminate in some way according to their personal concept of beauty or attractiveness. In a historical setting I imagine this will usually be even more blatant. If your mc falls head over heels for the scarred character, in my personal experience it's not quite that you love someone in spite of their blemishes and warts etc, but you can end up falling in love with the warts

Lone Wolf · Sep 10, 2019

I gather the negative reviewer feels the story is perpetuating the idea that looks are important (even though disfigurements or ugliness can be "overlooked" when you are in love), but that's the reality of life. I prefer novels to be more realistic and believable than PC anyway. And a very difficult area to be PC I think.
As an unattractive women, if my man thinks I'm attractive, then I can take that as a sign he loves me. If he just says he doesn't care about looks, or how I look it doesn't quite amount to the same thing. In the former, loves transforms me in his eyes. In the latter, he loves me in spite of my looks.

For your scarred character, I would expect that people who know her(or him?) or see her often would be used to the scars and not react to them but it would seem unrealistic to me for people meeting her to not react (even if it's mostly internal and well hidden) - unless in a place where such things are commonplace

Lakey · Sep 10, 2019

PostHuman said:
If your mc falls head over heels for the scarred character, in my personal experience it's not quite that you love someone in spite of their blemishes and warts etc, but you can end up falling in love with the warts

I second everything PostHuman said, but especially this. For better or worse a blemish is part of who a person is. If it’s a scar then it’s a mark of something painful or traumatic that person experienced. If it’s a congenital thing then that person has lived with the stigma and the judgments and the shunning. Either way, it’s significant enough to shape a person. And when you love that person, you love the person they are, the person their life experience has made them — including the blemish.

For the hero in the book you mention to say “I don’t even see the blemish” — I can see why some might read that as problematic, even if it’s well-intentioned. It’s like saying “I don’t see race,” which is problematic in that it fails to acknowledge the very real and very disparate impact that race has on people’s lives and experiences. “I don’t even notice your scar” could be read as saying “I don’t acknowledge the pain and trauma you have suffered both from the event that created this scar and from living with the mark of it ever since.”

Now, your character can have any kind of reaction that is right for your story, whether it’s problematic or not — a character having a problematic reaction is not necessarily the same as an author having one. But if the goal is to create a loveable romance hero, then you probably want to have him grow into a holistic reaction, where he comes to view the blemish as an integral part of the person he loves. (Note: That last sentence is a guess; I am not a romance reader, and you obviously understand the genre in ways that I do not.)

:e2coffee:

Marian Perera · Sep 10, 2019

Ari Meermans said:
You might want to check out the 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon for Mimi Matthew's The Matrimonial Advertisement. Within those few pages, she addresses the very thing you're writing and you might get some ideas wrt the approach to your own MS. (I thought she handled it very well as part of the characterization of both characters. ymmv)

Thanks for the rec! I read the excerpt and placed a hold on the book at the library - it sounds pretty good, although it got a B- on All About Romance because of a laggy second half.

Pastelnudes · Sep 10, 2019

Interesting to see a variety of opinions on this subject :popcorn:

For me, as others have already touched on, it's about showing the 'character' of your character. One of the many subtle touches which hopefully build a likeable portrait.

'Being PC' is a separate issue imo.

And I'm not sure the climax of a romance novel is the place for 'realism' (unless the interactions are, for instance, becoming too sentimental).

You just don't want your MC / love interest to be an asshole :e2moon:

People with facial disfigurement etc probably experience crass comments and reactions all the time :Headbang:

Small missteps like having a character use an unkind word or call someone a name or just be insensitive would really turn me off.

I know that isn't what the character in your example does. But, by going to the other extreme, we can show the reader that this protagonist absolutely never would!

Ellis Clover · Sep 11, 2019

PostHuman said:
If your mc falls head over heels for the scarred character, in my personal experience it's not quite that you love someone in spite of their blemishes and warts etc, but you can end up falling in love with the warts

Yes. And ideally, not even see them as warts.

No, really. I'm sure I'm not the only straight woman on earth who likes short dudes, bald dudes, wonky teeth. (Goddamn, do I love me some wonky teeth.) I myself have acne scarring, cellulite, and a big, fat arse. If a partner ever told me they 'didn't notice' these very obvious parts of me, implying that love has allowed them to 'look past' my appearance, I would feel extremely hurt because the implication is that these things are objectively gross and hideous. They're not, though. Cultural conditioning and conventional standards of beauty say they are, sure, but are those the sorts of messages I'd be comfortable reinforcing with my fiction? Hell, no.

ap123 · Sep 11, 2019

Ellis Clover said:
Yes. And ideally, not even see them as warts.

No, really. I'm sure I'm not the only straight woman on earth who likes short dudes, bald dudes, wonky teeth. (Goddamn, do I love me some wonky teeth.) I myself have acne scarring, cellulite, and a big, fat arse. If a partner ever told me they 'didn't notice' these very obvious parts of me, implying that love has allowed them to 'look past' my appearance, I would feel extremely hurt because the implication is that these things are objectively gross and hideous. They're not, though. Cultural conditioning and conventional standards of beauty say they are, sure, but are those the sorts of messages I'd be comfortable reinforcing with my fiction? Hell, no.

lol, married to a short bald guy with maybe not wonky, but crowded teeth. I've got your trifecta! :ROFL:

I'm not quite sure how to say it. It isn't that I don't see these features, or that I do see them, or even that I find them specifically attractive/not attractive, it's that Husband includes these features, they're parts of him, the person I chose and continue to choose to spend my life with.

indianroads · Sep 11, 2019

I've been with my partner for over 40 years. Guess what? We've aged. Do I see it? Yes. Do I care? No.

STING · Sep 13, 2019

Marian Perera said:
I'm now writing a historical romance where one of the characters has third-degree burn scars, so I'm trying to find the best way to deal with them. What are everyone's thoughts on this?

You might want to look at Ian Fleming’s Dr No which has the main female character with a nose that was ‘badly broken, smashed crooked like a boxer’s’.

P68
Bond (when he first sees her) ‘stiffened with revolt at what had happened to this supremely beautiful girl’.

P70
Already, as he had found so often when people had deformities, he had almost forgotten her broken nose.

P90
Bond smiled at the authority in her voice . . . She would be a beautiful, ravishing, Ugly Duckling. Why had she never had the broken nose mended? It was an easy operation. Then she would be the most beautiful girl in Jamaica.

P94
Bond said seriously, ‘You’re one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen.’

‘With this nose? Don’t be silly.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Bond tried to find words that she would believe. ‘Of course anyone can see your nose is broken. But since this morning I’ve hardly noticed it. When you look at a person you look into their eyes or at their mouth. That’s where the expressions are. A broken nose isn’t any more significant than a crooked ear. Noses and ears are bits of face-furniture. Some are prettier than others, but they’re not nearly as important as the rest. They are part of the background of the face . . .’

Then James Bond talks of having the nose ‘put right by a simple operation’.

P187 (third from last page)
Bond says to her: ‘Honey, you’re a wonderful girl. You’re one of the most wonderful girls I’ve ever known. I hope the world’s not going to change you too much. D’you really want to have that operation? I love your face—just as it is. It’s part of you. Part of all this.’
---

And what happened in the movie version of Dr No? Nothing happened except that the girl (played by Ursula Andress) has a nose as pretty as the rest of her body.

Broken noses of lead female characters are good for books and not for movies?

Marian Perera · Sep 14, 2019

Patty said:
I'm certain there are fantasy stories where scars are seen/described as testaments to strength,, survival. The scar becomes the proof of the warrior spirit.

That's one difference between a blemish you're born with and a scar you gain from your actions. The blemish is something the heroine in the novel didn't have any choice about, so her love interest can't exactly praise it as a mark of character. Maybe, under these circumstances, not seeing it is the most realistic course of action?

But a scar, as you've said, can be a badge of honor if it's gained from doing something admirable. Both could be considered disfiguring, but if they have very different causes, it's likely the people marked by them would feel differently about them as well.

Marian Perera · Sep 14, 2019

Pastelnudes said:
I love writing about people who are 'different' in some way.

Same here. Especially because there's so much physical perfection in romance, a scar or some other unusual feature is a great way to hook me.

To be honest, I can understand why reviewers weren't keen on that male character's words. It's a bit like having him say, "I don't mind that you're ugly.'

Yes, that's definitely one way in which his comment could be read.

I just didn't see many alternatives for him. He couldn't ignore the blemish; because it affected the heroine's life so completely, denying her the affection of her parents and turning her into a recluse, he had to have some commentary on it. And yet if he'd said he found it attractive, that wouldn't have rung true.

I often have the person who has the unusual feature do the work. Literally, give them all the lines.

"It's best if you take a good look," she told me, slowly turning her head.

I'm kind of jealous of this line. It gives me an instant, vivid impression of personality.

The scarred character in my manuscript reacts in a similar way, because although he was disfigured as a child, he was brought up by a loving parent who encouraged him to be self-confident and not to care what he looked like (I was going for a Beauty and the Beast-inspired romance where the beast character is a complete 180 from the usual brooding, antisocial recluse). But a response like the one you wrote presupposes that the scarred or blemished character is frank and cheerful about his or her appearance.

Marian Perera · Sep 14, 2019

Lakey said:
I second everything PostHuman said, but especially this. For better or worse a blemish is part of who a person is. If it’s a scar then it’s a mark of something painful or traumatic that person experienced. If it’s a congenital thing then that person has lived with the stigma and the judgments and the shunning. Either way, it’s significant enough to shape a person. And when you love that person, you love the person they are, the person their life experience has made them — including the blemish.

For the hero in the book you mention to say “I don’t even see the blemish” — I can see why some might read that as problematic, even if it’s well-intentioned. It’s like saying “I don’t see race,” which is problematic in that it fails to acknowledge the very real and very disparate impact that race has on people’s lives and experiences. “I don’t even notice your scar” could be read as saying “I don’t acknowledge the pain and trauma you have suffered both from the event that created this scar and from living with the mark of it ever since.”

Now, your character can have any kind of reaction that is right for your story, whether it’s problematic or not — a character having a problematic reaction is not necessarily the same as an author having one. But if the goal is to create a loveable romance hero, then you probably want to have him grow into a holistic reaction, where he comes to view the blemish as an integral part of the person he loves. (Note: That last sentence is a guess; I am not a romance reader, and you obviously understand the genre in ways that I do not.)

That's a good point. It's possible the story didn't go in this direction because the heroine was treated so badly on account of the blemish as a child - basically, her parents never noticed her as a person because all they could see was this disfiguring mark. As a result, once she's an adult and falls in love, the hero does the opposite. He doesn't notice the disfiguring mark because all he sees is her.

That said, on a personal level I prefer the holistic reaction you mentioned, but for this to work the story would have to show the heroine coming to terms with the fact that a very visible, not-objectively-attractive blemish is an integral part of who she is. In the novel I read, though, I didn't get the impression the heroine believed this. So if she wanted to forget about the blemish and live her life as though it didn't exist, and the hero supported this by not noticing the blemish... that probably worked well enough for them.

Perhaps the best reaction is the one that matches what the disfigured character wants. To be treated as though the disfiguration isn't there at all? Or to have the disfiguration acknowledged and accepted as part of who they are?

Marian Perera · Sep 14, 2019

Pastelnudes said:
And I'm not sure the climax of a romance novel is the place for 'realism' (unless the interactions are, for instance, becoming too sentimental).

Agreed. For me, it would spoil the escapist element of romance if, at the end, the hero said he liked the heroine's cauliflower ears or pot belly. It's not that these features are objectively ugly, but unless the novel as a whole is going for this level of realism (and puts me enough in the hero's perspective that I see why he grows to like these features), I'd prefer a focus on what I personally find more attractive.

It reminds me of the interactions between Jaime and Brienne in GRRM's A Storm of Swords, where, at first, he's critical of everything he sees about her, but at the end, he compliments her on the color of her dress and says that it goes well with her "astonishing" eyes. I don't think that, at the end, he's drawn to those physical features of hers which their society deems unattractive. I think he sees what's more important.

L.C. Blackwell · Sep 15, 2019

Marian Perera said:
Perhaps the best reaction is the one that matches what the disfigured character wants.

I would say, this. What's going to make that person the happiest to hear, and leave them feeling the most secure and loved?

In my current WIP, the hero has a learning disability that was part of the equation in his being severely abused as a child, and a secondary cause in the catastrophic failure of his first marriage. It's an unshakable fact in his head that he is stupid, and miserably inadequate.

So in his case, "You're brilliant," is not going to help, because he can't believe it's true, or that anyone would sincerely say it.

So my heroine uses the words he most needs to hear. In fact, he is brilliant, but she doesn't waste time trying to prove that to him. Instead, she says things like, "I'm proud of you. I love you. I want you," and backs it up with every look and action.

I took roughly the same approach in a sketch for a novel where a knight marries a woman bewitched into an ogress: she's so hideous that she scares little children. And he makes absolutely no effort to pretend that she's beautiful, or that he thinks so. Essentially, he says, "Yes, I see you, and I love you because you're more courageous than any other woman I know." He doesn't pretend the disfigurement has ceased to exist; but to him, it's not the important thing about her, and he lets her know that.

Woollybear · Sep 15, 2019

Mikhail Gorbachev had a blemish. If he had been able to remove that blemish seamlessly, and if he had done so, I'd've been a little disappointed in him.

I don't color my grey hair. (I know, probably TMI). Anyway, when I see other women who also don't color their hair, I can't help but smile. Once I recall whispering to such a woman I'd just met, that I appreciated that she didn't dye her hair. She looked me in the eye and whispered, 'Solidarity, sister.' The pressure to color one's hair might be local to the area (southern California, La La Land) but there is certainly a feeling that one should be forever young. (Plastic surgery... all of everything here.) Occasionally, someone will say to me in the middle of the grocery store "Oh you've gone grey!" but they say it in an approving way. One woman asked if I had had my hair professionally greyed. That was interesting.

It's a strange dynamic, cultural norms and so on. I think if Mikhail Gorbachev had had his blemish removed, I would have been disappointed in him (But, to be fair, I would have then done some soul-searching and realized it's his life.). I didn't find his blemish beautiful, but I found it emblematic of him. It would have seemed like a weakness to me, initially anyway, if he had tried to get rid of it.

Thomas Vail · Sep 16, 2019

Marian Perera said:
What are everyone's thoughts on this?

I don't remember where I read this anymore, but the summation was, "I don't notice it anymore. It's just one small aspect of the part and parcel that is you, and that entirety is what matters."

Which seems to be pretty much what the original passage was saying. Writing it off as 'lookism' seems to be just deliberately searching for causes of offence.

Lookism

Marian Perera

starting over

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

Woollybear

Pastelnudes

PostHuman

Lone Wolf

Lakey

professional dilettante

Marian Perera

starting over

Pastelnudes

Ellis Clover

watching The Office again

ap123

Twitching

indianroads

Wherever I go, there I am.

STING

Still figuring it out

Marian Perera

starting over

Marian Perera

starting over

Marian Perera

starting over

Marian Perera

starting over

L.C. Blackwell

Keeper of Fort Blanket

Woollybear

Thomas Vail

What?