As if I couldn’t love Karen Marie Moning more, she went ahead and posted pics of her leading men (http://www.karenmoning.com/characters.html). I LOVE this idea, but it got me thinking about how my mind’s eye sees UF\PNR leading men. I quickly realized that the more I read from this genre, the more I ignore physical descriptions and make up my own. Why is that you ask? Cause there is an epidemic of outdated hotness plaguing the genre!! So I thought I would lay some ground rules for what us modern chicks see as NOT hot these days.
- Hair longer than mine is not hot!! Why, oh why can we not leave Fabio and his minions in the eighties?? I mean seriously, a man with hair down to his butt is just not sexy; I don’t care if he looks like the cast of 300 from the neck down…the hair just ruins it for me. And how can I take my beloved super prick leading men seriously if their hair gets stuck in their mouths as they mock my intelligence?! Oh, don’t even get me started on long CURLY hair. ICK. Now, I realize that everyone develops different mental images of characters as they read, but if you are like me, you pull on images you already have stored somewhere and go from there. That being said, can we not stop and take a look around us?? Dudes with really long hair typically ride Harleys and have pot bellies (well, here in the south they do anyway). You wouldn’t see a ZZ Top video on VH1 classic and think “you know he looks like that sexy lion shifter from that book I read.” This is what I see when authors describe super long haired shifters, weres or most other supernatural creatures:
Hotness FAIL. But I like to think of myself as an open-minded gal, so I will make an exception…Elves. Thanks to those quirky Kiwis for giving me plenty of mental images of sexy long haired elves. This I can work with:
This I cannot:
- Why all the red? Sorry to all my gingery friends, but let’s be honest with ourselves, how many hot red-heads do you know? Let’s think about some famous red-heads…Lindsey Lohan…Shaun White…David Caruso…Pippi Longstocking. Okay, okay, I’ll give you Nicole Kidman circa Days of Thunder…but on the whole red hair with freckles is average at best. Strawberry blonde, doable. Black\brown with red highlights…better. Blonde, black or brown…yes please! Exception: Highlanders. I can forgive a lot of things if muscles and plaid gift wrap kilts are involved.
- The Lurch factor. Since when did 6’8 and above become hot? Has no one watched the NBA lately? Super tall people look…well…strange. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Dark Hunter series, but the multiple references to Acheron being nealry as tall as Yao Ming was a turn off. Plus he had that damn long hair!!! At least it wasn’t red. Sigh…
What I am currently working with:
Blondish Leading Men
Brunette Leading Men
Leading Men with Black Hair
Thoughts?
Kindlelicious Reads 