Everly Anders's Blog

I came up with the all-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of our generation. It hit me like a slap across the face, one night when I was laying in bed. It was beautiful, it really was. Every sentence flowed into the next like running water in a brook. The imagery was so beautiful; it would have made F. Scott Fitzgerald cry. It was the kind of idea that makes you spring out of bed at two in the morning, pour yourself a drink and hammer away at the typewriter till the sun comes up. There was only one problem; I didn’t get out of bed. I was warm and comfy and my husband’s arm was slung across me like a fallen tree. Seriously, have you ever tried to remove a sleeping man’s arm from off your person? It is nearly impossible. So I just laid there and told myself the same lie I always do, “I will remember the whole thing in the morning.”

When I woke up the next morning and tried to describe the idea to my husband, it went a little something like this, “it was about a brother and a sister and she was sad, but not because it was raining, it just was raining, and the brother went down to the bakery and the baker’s daughter was there and she was smoking and I think she had a crush on him but I am not really sure.” Don’t even lie and try to pretend you have not had the same thing happen to you when you try to remember your brilliant ideas from the night before. So what do we do?

We use pencil and paper. No, no, it’s not an iPhone app. I mean real pencil and paper. That’s what Stephanie Myers did when she had a dream about a teenage girl who fell in love with a vampire, and I would say that worked out for her pretty well, don’t you think? You can go to almost any stationary or office supply store and find those cute little palm size notebooks that even have a handy little pen attached. You need to buy a few of these: one for the car, one for the nightstand and one for your purse (or your girlfriend’s purse). That way, wherever you think of great ideas, you have an easily accessible place to write it down.

Next, you just need the motivation to actually do it. Elbow your sleeping husband if you have to, run to the bathroom during the movie or ask your friend to stop talking for a second. I promise you it will be well worth it in the end.  No one ever got mad at themselves for writing something down that they later didn’t use. But not a day goes by that I don’t wish I had written down my Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the brother and sister and sad rain and a daughter, or whatever it was.

I am not sure of the exact recipe to make an author. I am guessing it’s probably 3 parts creativity, 2 parts introvert, 1 part wardrobe consisting mostly of black, and ten parts procrastination. Let simmer over medium heat for a lifetime. If you have been following me for a while, then you probably have been on my Facebook, and seen I am a compulsive collector of writing quotes. Although I have hundreds of fantastic thoughts from people like Tom Stoppard, Mark Twain, and Steven King, the quote that is taped to my computer is actually an anonymous quote. It reads, “Being a good writer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet.” Every time I think, “I should check my email or my twitter, or my Facebook to finally see what my long-lost friend from high school is doing” I stop myself and read that quote. Then I flip it the bird and check Pintrest one more time before going back to my writing.

I don’t tell you this to inform you of how crazy I am, I tell you this because as I said above, all writers are above all else procrastinators. Joseph Epstein, who wrote a New York Times article, said 81% of people want to write a book some day. As we know most of them never even sit down to type out the first line. Why? Procrastination. It’s what separates “writers” from what I like to call “journalers.”  You know those people who pay forty dollars for a fancy journal and write in it once a month with a glass of lemonade on a hammock. There is nothing wrong with “journalers”, except that so many “journalers” want to be writers and don’t know why they can’t make the transition. Procrastination.

I am a huge fan of Amanda Hocking. Say what you will about her writing but she sat down every day after working a full-time job and wrote until she fell asleep. And unless you’re Jodi Picoult, her writing has made her about 2 million dollars more than you or I. She had a dream and she made it happen. Her self-published books have done so well, she was picked up by St. Martin’s Press and her books are being cleaned up and re-released in paperback. Her Trylle trilogy has been optioned for movies with the screenwriter of District 9 attached.

When people read her NPR interview, they mostly want her to answer obvious questions like “Where did she find her agent?” and “How did her book get noticed and optioned for a movie?” They’re all missing the big picture. Her success started way before any of that happened. She may not go into all the ins and outs of the industry, but she does give you the secret to her success at the very end of the article, though I am sure most people miss it while they hunt for some sort of fairy godmother with a magic wand who made all her dreams come true. The part people miss is where she says she has some advice to share, advice she got from a video by Blink 182 star Mark Hoppus (remember him? me neither). “It’s not enough to have a passion- you have to have a work ethic,” Hocking said. “That’s been the most life-changing advice that I got, because I had a passion for writing-and I know a lot of other people do, too-but it’s not enough to just want something. You have to be able to work for it, too, and put in the hours and time.”

I know what you’re thinking: “Well, that’s no fun. Where is the psychic dream she had that she would be famous? Or the dead relative that came to her in her living room and gave her a mystery to solve and then write about?” Sorry, it’s a lot simpler than that. You just have to sit do and write. Damn. Try not to get down on yourself too much … I am avoiding editing my novel in order to write an article about not procrastinating. How ridiculous is that?

Hopefully by now you have taken a long hard look in the mirror and said, “a work ethic, yeah I have that. Now I just need a plan.” Maybe I can be of some assistance here. Famous author Stephen King goes over his writing plan in his book On Writing. He says that he reads for four hours a day and writes for four hours a day. Yikes, that sounds like a lot! But that also might be why he, according to his website, has written 50 novels and you haven’t. “But I have a full time job,” you say. That is not a reason to procrastinate; that is a reason to find a work schedule you can keep yourself to. Maybe you skip the gym and get up an hour early to write. Maybe you write for two hours before bed. I know a few people who dedicate all of Sunday to writing. Whatever your schedule is, it needs to work for you. I don’t care if you write for fifteen minutes a day while standing on your head in a tutu. Just write! The only way to get over all your procrastination is to have a schedule where you force yourself to sit down and do it. I like to give myself a word count I have to finish before I am done for the day, inside of setting an amount of time I need to spend in front of the computer. If I give myself an amount of time, I might just sit there for an hour contemplating what I am going to eat for lunch.

Speaking of procrastination, I better leave you now and get back to my novel. I hope this article inspired you to kick yourself in the butt a little. I really need you to get serious about your writing. That way I can read your novel one day, not just hear about the novel you would have written if you had made the time.

I am not sure of the exact recipe to make an author. I am guessing it’s probably 3 parts creativity, 2 parts introvert, 1 part wardrobe consisting mostly of black, and ten parts procrastination. Let simmer over medium heat for a lifetime. If you have been following me for a while, then you probably have been on my Facebook, and seen I am a compulsive collector of writing quotes. Although I have hundreds of fantastic thoughts from people like Tom Stoppard, Mark Twain, and Steven King, the quote that is taped to my computer is actually an anonymous quote. It reads, “Being a good writer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet.” Every time I think, “I should check my email or my twitter, or my Facebook to finally see what my long-lost friend from high school is doing” I stop myself and read that quote. Then I flip it the bird and check Pintrest one more time before going back to my writing.

I don’t tell you this to inform you of how crazy I am, I tell you this because as I said above, all writers are above all else procrastinators. Joseph Epstein, who wrote a New York Times article, said 81% of people want to write a book some day. As we know most of them never even sit down to type out the first line. Why? Procrastination. It’s what separates “writers” from what I like to call “journalers.”  You know those people who pay forty dollars for a fancy journal and write in it once a month with a glass of lemonade on a hammock. There is nothing wrong with “journalers”, except that so many “journalers” want to be writers and don’t know why they can’t make the transition. Procrastination.

I am a huge fan of Amanda Hocking. Say what you will about her writing but she sat down every day after working a full-time job and wrote until she fell asleep. And unless you’re Jodi Picoult, her writing has made her about 2 million dollars more than you or I. She had a dream and she made it happen. Her self-published books have done so well, she was picked up by St. Martin’s Press and her books are being cleaned up and re-released in paperback. Her Trylle trilogy has been optioned for movies with the screenwriter of District 9 attached.

When people read her NPR interview, they mostly want her to answer obvious questions like “Where did she find her agent?” and “How did her book get noticed and optioned for a movie?” They’re all missing the big picture. Her success started way before any of that happened. She may not go into all the ins and outs of the industry, but she does give you the secret to her success at the very end of the article, though I am sure most people miss it while they hunt for some sort of fairy godmother with a magic wand who made all her dreams come true. The part people miss is where she says she has some advice to share, advice she got from a video by Blink 182 star Mark Hoppus (remember him? me neither). “It’s not enough to have a passion- you have to have a work ethic,” Hocking said. “That’s been the most life-changing advice that I got, because I had a passion for writing-and I know a lot of other people do, too-but it’s not enough to just want something. You have to be able to work for it, too, and put in the hours and time.”

I know what you’re thinking: “Well, that’s no fun. Where is the psychic dream she had that she would be famous? Or the dead relative that came to her in her living room and gave her a mystery to solve and then write about?” Sorry, it’s a lot simpler than that. You just have to sit do and write. Damn. Try not to get down on yourself too much … I am avoiding editing my novel in order to write an article about not procrastinating. How ridiculous is that?

Hopefully by now you have taken a long hard look in the mirror and said, “a work ethic, yeah I have that. Now I just need a plan.” Maybe I can be of some assistance here. Famous author Stephen King goes over his writing plan in his book On Writing. He says that he reads for four hours a day and writes for four hours a day. Yikes, that sounds like a lot! But that also might be why he, according to his website, has written 50 novels and you haven’t. “But I have a full time job,” you say. That is not a reason to procrastinate; that is a reason to find a work schedule you can keep yourself to. Maybe you skip the gym and get up an hour early to write. Maybe you write for two hours before bed. I know a few people who dedicate all of Sunday to writing. Whatever your schedule is, it needs to work for you. I don’t care if you write for fifteen minutes a day while standing on your head in a tutu. Just write! The only way to get over all your procrastination is to have a schedule where you force yourself to sit down and do it. I like to give myself a word count I have to finish before I am done for the day, inside of setting an amount of time I need to spend in front of the computer. If I give myself an amount of time, I might just sit there for an hour contemplating what I am going to eat for lunch.

Speaking of procrastination, I better leave you now and get back to my novel. I hope this article inspired you to kick yourself in the butt a little. I really need you to get serious about your writing. That way I can read your novel one day, not just hear about the novel you would have written if you had made the time.

I have been hearing people throw the word dystopia around like it’s the new black or something. It seems like everyone is talking about it. When I first heard about this genre, I thought it just meant the opposite of a utopian society where everything is idyllic and peaceful. Think Aldous Huxley’s Island and the good old Thomas More standby Utopia. Further research led me to this much more accurate definition of dystopia: The idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over citizens.

I know what you’re thinking: I just learned all about steampunk, werewolves, vampires, and love triangles … why do I need to know about the next new genre of the moment? You’re right; there are a lot of genres and sub-genres out there to learn. It can be incredibly confusing and if you are someone who has written chick-lit or historical fiction for the last twenty-five years, I could see your hesitation to jump on the bandwagon of something new.

I don’t bring this to your attention to tell you that although I love your murder mysteries set in rural Arkansas, you need to start writing end of the world teenage sci-fi love triangle. Not at all. The importance of knowing what is “in,” so to speak, is two-fold. One: what if you have a great post-apocalyptic teenage romance sitting on your shelf, that no publisher wanted to touch five years ago when you tried to send it out? Now would be the time to dust it off and buy some stamps because every dystopian publisher wants to hear about it. When something is proven “hot,” publishers can’t publish them fast enough. They know that although yours might not have the fan following of The Hunger Games, audiences who love that series are dying for more just like it. (Publishers are only to eager to fill the demand until the market is over-saturated, of course, but that’s a whole other blog post.)

Two: as a writer, it is important to have your hand on the pulse of what your readers want. Like I said, now is the time to send off your vampire love triangles. On the other hand, if you have a female empowerment book about a woman who travels the world to find herself, you may have missed the boat. I am not saying you can’t write whatever you want, I am just saying it is a good idea to know ahead of time why publishers might not be buying your manuscript at the moment. You might have the greatest book ever written but if it is not what is selling, it will be harder to sell.

One great way to find out what is trending is to go to your local bookstore and see what books are being featured in which categories, where you will likely be shocked to see that YA books have pretty much taken over your local Barnes and Nobel. Another great way to see what people want to read is to join Goodreads.com and go on their recommendation page. There are scores of people telling you what books they love and that they are looking to read next. Those are all your potential fans, so go out there and get them.

Between my blog and my Facebook page, I am asked almost every day about whether or not I use an outline for my stories. The simple answer is, “Rarely and always.” Ok, maybe I should explain.

When I first heard that JK Rowling outlined all her books and even wrote the last chapter to the last book before she started the second book, I was in awe. I could never be organized enough to write an outline. Plus, at that time in my life I had only written short stories and thought: If I can’t keep my ideas straight in a short story, I need a CAT scan. (Truth be told, I can’t even go to the grocery store without an outline, so maybe I could use one for a short story, too).

When I finally decided I wanted writing to be my career, I thought I could be the type of writer who just opened up a journal on a sunny day and see where my thoughts would take me. I romanticized the idea of just getting lost in the story. Like most professional writers, I learned the hard way that writing like that will often take you as far as a self indulgent beginning and a rather muddled middle.

After writing down countless ideas that seemed great in the beginning and committed suicide halfway through, I realized I needed a plan. As much as I see all my ideas as little stars, I discovered that they are not all ready for the center stage. My ideas come to me like a movie, I use to run to get a pencil and paper when I saw the opening scene, then furiously write for hours before I realized there was no ending. Now, I treat my ideas like auditions. Come into my office, show me a three-minute clip, let me make sure you have all your ducks in a row, and then I’ll get excited. Often times the story is really great but I have to send it away, saying, “You’re just not ready, yet. Come back when you have a decent middle.”

I used my first and last outline when I decided to write a trilogy. It made perfect sense to use one for such a long process, and it worked smashingly. Was it a beautifully color coordinated outline that I laminated and hung on my wall over my computer? No, it was a haphazard scribble on the back of a collage ruled notebook, but it did the trick.

That brings me to my next point about outlines. Most people, I find, are intimidated by having to use the rigid outlines or mind mapping they learned in high school. If outlines scare you, then you’re less likely to use them. Remember no one is ever going to see this but you, so it does not need to be pretty—it just needs to work for you. If you’re the kind of person who loves a good, clean mind map, by all means type it up and design it with pretty colors and fonts. If you’re a down and dirty kind of scribbler like me, that’s great, too. Just make it work for you.

So now you see my answer more clearly. I rarely use an outline, in that I have used it only once or twice in order to do a trilogy and the series I am currently thinking about. At the same time, I always use an outline in my head. I see auditioning stories in my head as a mental outline. As an author your time is valuable so when you start a project, you need to make sure all the pieces are there before you devote a month or a year to the project. So go out there and start your outline, whether it is a mind map, an audition in your head, or some sort of Mayan rock stacking ritual. Whatever works for you.

Hi, I'm Betsy Miller. I really appreciate this opportunity from Elle to guest post on her blog. I write both nonfiction and fiction. In this blog post, my focus is on nonfiction. I'm going to talk a bit about the kind of nonfiction I write, what that has involved from my end, and why I enjoy it.

My nonfiction books The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot and The Parents' Guide to Hip Dysplasia are both written for families with children who have orthopedic health problems. That's pretty specific, right?  Why write about clubfoot? Why write about hip dysplasia?

Well, I'm not an orthopedic doctor or a nurse. I wrote my books because I wanted to fill an unmet need, and I had found from working on smaller projects that I liked to write about children's health topics. So how did I get started on this path?

I became interested in hip dysplasia because I was treated for that as a baby. I was surprised to discover there weren't any books on this topic written for families—just medical journal articles and sections in medical textbooks. Writing The Parents' Guide to Hip Dysplasia was difficult, but also very gratifying, and it led me to discover that I really like writing this kind of book. I chose to write about clubfoot because as with my first book, there were not any books in print that were written for parents. Writing The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot went faster because I was more experienced, but it still took nearly two years.

Before I started writing nonfiction books, I was a technical writer for about ten years. I still do technical writing in addition to authoring, but that's its own topic for another day. My first foray into nonfiction came when a friend asked me to edit a nonfiction book she was co-writing about postpartum depression (PPD). She was a therapist, so she knew all about the topic, but this was her first book, it was going to be self-published, and she had some structural issues that were giving her trouble.

I was really nervous about editing the book, and explained that this topic was outside of my experience, but when I started working on it, I was able to help her identify and solve some problems with the way the book was organized. I also suggested ideas about what she could add, like personal stories from patients—with their written permission of course—to help readers connect more with the book. Though I've never had PPD, I could imagine how a reader might feel and I came up with some common questions and fears that the book might address. So in this case, in addition to what I did know about organizing books, the fact that I didn't know about PPD, helped me identify with readers who also didn't know about PPD. Envisioning the reader's perspective is tremendously helpful when creating this kind of resource book. This experience took me outside of my comfort zone, but I gained confidence that my writing skills could apply to areas I hadn't considered before.

If you're interested in writing nonfiction, please post a comment or question. I'll be happy to share what I know and to try to point you to resources where you can get more information.

Whatever you do, don't read the back of this book while operating heavy machinery. You might fall asleep and hurt yourself. But there is a god, and this book is fabulous from the word go. As I said, I think the back of this book does a terrible disservice to the reader. It sounds awful. A better short synopsis would be: a guy marries a woman and moves her out to a farm to live with his family and all hell breaks loose. I am not usually one for books that seem to be about average people living their lives. I mean, give me a break. I am a sci-fi writer for crying out loud. I tend to keep waiting for the robots to show up, but this book was different. It was extraordinary in its simplicity. It reminded me that the world doesn't have to actually end for the characters to feel like it is and act accordingly. Each chapter is told through the eyes of a different character. I know a lot of books are doing this right now, but none have been more successful than Hillary Jordan. She does a fantastic job of making you feel one way about a character because of who is narrating at the moment, then you look at it through another character's eyes and you see things completely different. Isn't that how real life is?

This is one of my all time favorite books so I hope you enjoy it. As always, if you read it, I would love to know what you think.

In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not—charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

This photo bothers me and I will tell you why. Sex sells, I get that. For better or worse, that is the society we live in. Sex is used to sell everything from make-up and perfume to soda and barbecues. I’m ok with it, I accept it, but there has to be a line. In this picture actress Jennifer Lawrence is posing provocatively with a bow. Now, if she was posing with say a rubber ducky or a baseball bat I would not have a problem with it. I would assume they are selling the actress as a sex symbol, which is fine for a twenty-one year old. That is what she has signed up for. That’s what we expect. In this picture she is carrying a very distinctive bow, which is something that is attributed to her sixteen-year-old character Katniss from the upcoming young adult movie The Hunger Games. Therefore they are not sexualizing Jennifer Lawrence, the twenty-one year old consenting adult; they are sexualizing a sixteen-year-old fictitious character that millions of girls look up to. That is not ok for many reasons.

We have laws in this country about sexualizing minors. You may not show anyone under the age of eighteen naked or in a sexually compromising situation. Unfortunately, the media keeps finding ways to push those boundaries in order to sell their product. I am sick of it. I don’t believe most girls who are going to see this movie know that the actress is twenty-one, but they do know that the character being portrayed is sixteen. Therefore they equate the picture with a sixteen-year-old girl. That is not acceptable to me.

Who is the audience they are going for here? It appears to be men over the age of eighteen, which is a demographic extremely unlikely to go see this film. The moviegoers mostly likely to see The Hunger Games are young girls between the age of 12-17, along with their mothers. That is an audience that clearly does not need to see a character’s cleavage in order to want to rush out and buy tickets to the movie.

Lastly, I have a problem with how they are portraying a wonderful female role model. In the books and future movies, Katniss Everdeen is not the classic damsel in distress. She is a take-charge young woman who relies on her skills, intellect and brute strength to save herself as well as the people around her. That is a fantastic message to send young woman these days. Hell, it’s a great message to send all women. So you can see how offended I was when I saw that powerful female character reduced to a pair of perky breasts in a skintight jumpsuit.

At this rate, what’s next? The bottom of Hermione’s ass in her Hogwarts uniform? This needs to stop, but it will only change when consumers stand up and say they don’t want underage woman sexualized in order to sell magazines.

This photo bothers me and I will tell you why. Sex sells, I get that. For better or worse, that is the society we live in. Sex is used to sell everything from make-up and perfume to soda and barbecues. I'm ok with it, I accept it, but there has to be a line. In this picture actress Jennifer Lawrence is posing provocatively with a bow. Now, if she was posing with say a rubber ducky or a baseball bat I would not have a problem with it. I would assume they are selling the actress as a sex symbol, which is fine for a twenty-one year old. That is what she has signed up for. That's what we expect. In this picture she is carrying a very distinctive bow, which is something that is attributed to her sixteen-year-old character Katniss from the upcoming young adult movie The Hunger Games. Therefore they are not sexualizing Jennifer Lawrence, the twenty-one year old consenting adult; they are sexualizing a sixteen-year-old fictitious character that millions of girls look up to. That is not ok for many reasons.

We have laws in this country about sexualizing minors. You may not show anyone under the age of eighteen naked or in a sexually compromising situation. Unfortunately, the media keeps finding ways to push those boundaries in order to sell their product. I am sick of it. I don't believe most girls who are going to see this movie know that the actress is twenty-one, but they do know that the character being portrayed is sixteen. Therefore they equate the picture with a sixteen-year-old girl. That is not acceptable to me.

Who is the audience they are going for here? It appears to be men over the age of eighteen, which is a demographic extremely unlikely to go see this film. The moviegoers mostly likely to see The Hunger Games are young girls between the age of 12-17, along with their mothers. That is an audience that clearly does not need to see a character's cleavage in order to want to rush out and buy tickets to the movie.

Lastly, I have a problem with how they are portraying a wonderful female role model. In the books and future movies, Katniss Everdeen is not the classic damsel in distress. She is a take-charge young woman who relies on her skills, intellect and brute strength to save herself as well as the people around her. That is a fantastic message to send young woman these days. Hell, it's a great message to send all women. So you can see how offended I was when I saw that powerful female character reduced to a pair of perky breasts in a skintight jumpsuit.

At this rate, what's next? The bottom of Hermione's ass in her Hogwarts uniform? This needs to stop, but it will only change when consumers stand up and say they don't want underage woman sexualized in order to sell magazines.

This photo bothers me and I will tell you why. Sex sells, I get that. For better or worse, that is the society we live in. Sex is used to sell everything from make-up and perfume to soda and barbecues. I'm ok with it, I accept it, but there has to be a line. In this picture actress Jennifer Lawrence is posing provocatively with a bow. Now, if she was posing with say a rubber ducky or a baseball bat I would not have a problem with it. I would assume they are selling the actress as a sex symbol, which is fine for a twenty-one year old. That is what she has signed up for. That's what we expect. In this picture she is carrying a very distinctive bow, which is something that is attributed to her sixteen-year-old character Katniss from the upcoming young adult movie The Hunger Games. Therefore they are not sexualizing Jennifer Lawrence, the twenty-one year old consenting adult; they are sexualizing a sixteen-year-old fictitious character that millions of girls look up to. That is not ok for many reasons.

We have laws in this country about sexualizing minors. You may not show anyone under the age of eighteen naked or in a sexually compromising situation. Unfortunately, the media keeps finding ways to push those boundaries in order to sell their product. I am sick of it. I don't believe most girls who are going to see this movie know that the actress is twenty-one, but they do know that the character being portrayed is sixteen. Therefore they equate the picture with a sixteen-year-old girl. That is not acceptable to me.

Who is the audience they are going for here? It appears to be men over the age of eighteen, which is a demographic extremely unlikely to go see this film. The moviegoers mostly likely to see The Hunger Games are young girls between the age of 12-17, along with their mothers. That is an audience that clearly does not need to see a character's cleavage in order to want to rush out and buy tickets to the movie.

Lastly, I have a problem with how they are portraying a wonderful female role model. In the books and future movies, Katniss Everdeen is not the classic damsel in distress. She is a take-charge young woman who relies on her skills, intellect and brute strength to save herself as well as the people around her. That is a fantastic message to send young woman these days. Hell, it's a great message to send all women. So you can see how offended I was when I saw that powerful female character reduced to a pair of perky breasts in a skintight jumpsuit.

At this rate, what's next? The bottom of Hermione's ass in her Hogwarts uniform? This needs to stop, but it will only change when consumers stand up and say they don't want underage woman sexualized in order to sell magazines.