The Problem of Too Much Rarity
First, I wrote a piece for Publishr about ebooks, print books, and experiential reading! Go read and then tell me I’m off my rocker.
Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway. Not a real redhead.
Today on Twitter I complained about the ubiquity of redheads in fiction. Look, I get it. Red hair is gorgeous. And pretty. I’m partial to gingers myself; I happen to have a large collection of them. As friends. As friends! …what?
However, the proportion of redheads to the rest of the world in fiction is significantly different from the proportion of redheads to the rest of the world in real life. Red hair makes up about 2% of the population. So why do they make up 65% of all heroines?
It got me thinking a bit as to the descriptions of characters I see in manuscripts and perceptions of gendered beauty. What is common in female protagonists does not hold true for male protagonists. A ginger haired man? Unusual.
Why is that? What is it about our ideas of perceived “rarity” that we think is so attractive?
Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully. Also not a real redhead.
A prevailing fantasy I see in fiction is the notion of “specialness”. It can be as obvious as being the Chosen One in quest epics (Harry Potter), or as subtle as being the only one to unlock a previously frozen heart (Bella). Let’s face it; we like our protagonists to be “special” in some way, even as we want them to be “relatable”.
What’s the easiest way to mark a character as special? Apparently, if she’s a girl, it’s to give her red hair. If he’s a boy, green eyes.
Okay. I already said my piece about the scarcity of red hair. But green eyes are pretty rare as well. Green eyes comprise anywhere from 2% to 5% of the population. While I’m partial to green eyes because my father and my Teddy Bear have them, that doesn’t mean the majority of people do.
I’m not fond of overly detailed physical descriptions, but I’m especially turned off these days. Eyes are always compared to some sort of gem or metal and hair is inevitably “shining”, “thick”, “glossy” (and Titian-hued). Oh writers, when it comes to physical descriptions of your characters, adverbs are not your friend. I would like very broad sketch of what the characters look like (ethnicity, hair color, eye color) and leave the rest up to my imagination. If you want, you can even tell me that the character is “pretty” or “good-looking”; I just don’t need you to tell me how.
You know what the problem with too much rarity? It’s that it becomes commonplace. And then cliché. Be mindful of this, writers! I’ve almost reached the point where a redheaded heroine becomes an automatic no. (Almost, but not quite.)
If you want to catch my attention, then write a blonde and hazel-eyed girl and a ruddy-complected boy with brown eyes. These are the true unicorns of Fictionland.
LOL: “the true unicorns of Fictionland.”
I agree and have also noticed a growing number of so-pale-they-are-translucent leading ladies. What’s wrong with having a tan? Or being (gasp!) not white? It would be great to see more diversity like that in YA in particular.
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Well, as a biracial Asian person, I certainly agree with the LESS WHITE PEOPLE, PLEASE. :)
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Red-headed men. I approve!
Also. JJ. The more you talk about “this is what I want to see!” the more I want to point up and down and scream about how that’s exactly what I’m writing. Stop reading my mind, woman!
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LOL you said “titian.” *cough* Sorry. ^_^
Hi, it’s shonagon_chan, the one who was babbling about a red-haired Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave.
I like this post! I have a ginger hero in my ms, whom everyone mistakes for some mysterious other person. I am quie partial to men with red hair, so that’s just my self-indulgence. :) But I am also not fond of being poked in the eyeballs with physical description. I like to make up my own looks, for the most part. Sometimes the author ruins it. And I hate gem-description for eyes.
The gals in my ms are blond, brown-haired and one is dark-skinned.
I absolutely agree with LESS WHITE PEOPLE too. I like a diverse cast (I am quad-racial) and I like the idea of “disenfranchised” ethnic characters and all that goes with that issue.
Umm, Gillian Anderson is smokingly hot. Sorry, had to add that.
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DANA SCULLY IS MY ROLE MODEL/HERO FOREVER!!!!!!! ♥
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OMG, you have no idea. She’s such a hero to me. I have pretended to be her, in bad situations. I know it may sound a little over the top, but re-watching Scully in X Files after I lost my Dad really sort of helped me out in this detached “If I can be like Scully, I can handle this” kind of way.
This is when fiction is very beautiful to me, I suppose.
Also, hot damn, she’s just made of gorgeous. Mulder who? ;)
(And I won’t even get into Alex Krycek, ’cause then I will never stop fanpoodling. :D )
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I once dressed up as Scully for a Father/Daughter Dance in high school (I went to an all-girls prep school). The theme was Famous Couples. My father was dressed as Mulder, which was easy for him since he’s tall, lanky, brown-haired, and green eyed. I, alas, had to buy a terrible red wig.
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That is so lovely. :)
In my Scully Phase, I cut off a foot my (American Indian black) hair and attempted to dye it red.
It went badly.
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Dude, your Publishr post was great. I think you made your points well, and they align with a lot of my own thoughts/suspicions about people’s reading habits.
“These are the true unicorns of Fictionland.”
LOVE IT. Hehehe. And I agree with what you’ve said here too. On the one hand, I can understand the appeal of redheads or green-eyed gorgeousness — my first crush was a redhead with the most amazing eyes, like the water in Cancun! — but as a reader/writer, I gravitate more towards making the ordinary extraordinary, and that often means brunettes. :P
(For the record, my dad has awesome gray eyes, and I’ve always been a little pissed that I didn’t inherit those.)
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I’m not sure when the red hair thing came into so much popularity but I teach high school and I can tell you lots of teenage girls dye their hair shades of jarring red with none of the beauty of a natural.
On the plus side of the ‘pale’ look maybe it will keep some people out of the tanning salons and increase the use of sunblock.
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I am all for pale! A vast deal of the population is pale! Pale is okay. It’s orange that’s not. :)
Pale heroines in fiction never bother me for some reason, but you hardly read about YA heroines with golden, tan skin.
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Huh, I guess I have never noticed this but you are absolutely right. Personally, my heroines are almost always brown haired with olive tan skin. It’s just what I find attractive I think.
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So true. I wonder how to break out of this trend without writing a boring book, though. A book about someone who thinks she’s special but finds out she isn’t sounds depressing. But I’m definitely tired of the abundance of redheads and jewel-colored eyes. Maybe I’ll write a book that actually does fit the ethnic data for my area.
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Actually, China Mieville wrote an awesome book about the Unchosen One. It’s called UN LUN DUN. :)
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haha, guilty, I guess. my MC has red hair, (and pale, freckly skin, whoops!), but I hope I didn’t make it such a big deal that it would be eyeroll-worthy. I have red(dish) hair, so maybe that’s why Anna does? or we could blame the whole trend on that spunky Anne Shirley?
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Interesting (this is salmakia off LJ by the way). I’m currently trying to plan a story and am at the very early stages, writing character biogs and descriptions etc. I have nominally made my main character red-headed and my reasoning for it was because there are so many negative stereotypes of ginger people in real life, I’m trying to do something to balance it out in my fiction. You make the point that it tends to be men who take the flak, but I have plenty of red-headed female friends who are similarly tired of being asked whether they have matching ginger pubes or whatever.
As for blonde with hazel eyes and our ruddy cheeked lad, I will admit I can’t automatically think of millions of examples, but they don’t feel that rare. I know we’re probably talking over 100 years ago now, but what about Dickon from The Secret Garden? Characters in fairytales like Jack the Giant Killer or Jack and the Beanstalk, I always imagined as brown-haired, though there’s a certain stereotyping going on in that too, with the riders that they’re always poor, working class and with a regional accent as well.
As for less white people, I’m working on it. Though I’m anxious to avoid having a LOOK, HERE AM I, A WHITE WRITER, INCLUDING CHARACTERS NOT OF MY ETHNICITY SO EVERYONE CAN, LIKE, TOTALLY RELATE feel about it… because that’s almost as bad as not having any in the first place. My current strategy is to set it in AU Victorianish times but with as many ethnic groups as the UK currently has living in places like London, but they’ve filtered through to every level of the class system, which is depressingly still present. But it’s normal to find people of every colour at every level so they *should* be able to be in the story without excessive shoehorning. That’s the plan anyway.
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So true. I wonder how to break out of this trend without writing a boring book, though. A book about someone who thinks she’s special but finds out she isn’t sounds depressing. But I’m definitely tired of the abundance of redheads and jewel-colored eyes. Maybe I’ll write a book that actually does fit the ethnic data for my area.
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Omg I love this post so much. I rant frequently about ‘special’ characters. In particular I hate violet eyes. Hate them. No one has ever had violet eyes, and no one needs to. Ick.
In fact, I have a post coming out tomorrow at letthewordsflow.wordpress.com where I talk about this contrarianism and what I do to make sure my characters are different by being really life-like (I insist on brown hair/brown eyes on pretty much all my MCs).
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Also, oddly enough, I do happen to be a blonde-and-hazel-eyed girl :-)
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