The Sword and Laser discussion

Have you encountered omniscient breasts in your reading? (limited pov of a female character with omniscient pov of her appearance)

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012...

This seems to be pretty common among fantasy ( if you were uncharitable you could argue that 90 percent of the target market is heterosexual teenage boys so if you want to make money then write for your audience!)

Love GRRM but I think he is guilty as charged in fact he writes not just with a male gaze but with a '60 year old lecher's gaze'

Also is interesting that books that have a very different 'gaze' tend to make people uncomfortable like Richard Morgan books The Steel Remains he tries to write with different 'gazes' for the different POVs including male and female homosexual ones

Excellent article by Kate

Well the point of the article is that you can have all the male gaze you want, but that male gaze should require an appropriate character doing the gazing. :)

Just imagine omniscient breasts with mouths. "Oi, you got a problem with me? No? Then why do you keep staring? What, you never seen a boob before?"

I love Kate Elliot.

Alterjess wrote: "I love Kate Elliot."

Her novels?

I probably reread the Jaran novels ten times when I was in high school. And this article is fantastic.

This is definitely something I've encountered. I think it's one of those almost invisible cultural norms and I really appreciated seeing it highlighted.

As I've gotten older I find I notice both omniscient and I guess I'll call them "self-aware" breasts more in both new books and older ones where I didn't notice them before. Once you finally notice it, you start seeing it in a lot of places. Drives me crazy now. If I haven't stubbed my toe, I don't think about my toes, if I don't have an itch on them I can't reach, I don't think about my shoulder blades - and unless they're being actively ogled or hit by something I don't walk around hyper-aware of my breasts either. Neither should a female character I'm following the POV of unless she's obsessively narcissistic.

The book that jumped out at me in this way was 1Q84. It's an interesting case because Aomame is set up from the beginning as someone who is more or less obsessed with her own physicality, so it's not out of character for her to be commenting on the shape and state of her breasts every other page, but it got me thinking how many female characters are set up this way. (i.e. explicitly mindful of their appearance so that the author has an excuse for them to describe to the reader how their breasts/lips/legs look and feel)

If GRRM is to be believed, every woman walks around thinking in descriptive detail about her breasts.