Today’s ask is a suggestion from BeckyK. She suggested we ask about body positivity— Do you enjoy books with plus size heroes/heroines? Which books/authors get it right? Which don’t? (This is a topic that elicits strong emotions from some–I ask that you respond to this post with compassion as well as honesty.) And I’d note that the very concept of body positivity has evolved–now many encourage instead body neutrality which stresses acceptance of one’s body without positive or negative feelings.
AAR has 68 romances tagged as plus sized heroine. (We don’t have a tag for plus sized hero–perhaps we should.) Of those, 18 are DIKS. The first, Taken by Lori Foster, was published in 1998. Most have been published in the past five years–eight in 2022, seven in 2021, twenty in 2020, six in 2019, and five in 2018. One, One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London, garnered an A+. The majority appear to be contemporary romances. (I am limited in my analysis by our tags–if we haven’t tagged it as plus sized, I’m unable to include it here. If you know of any we’ve missed, please let us know in the comments.)
Most romances, however, do not have fat heroines. (It is interesting to me that there are fewer people on the covers of romance novels, cartoon or otherwise. I wonder if this makes body positivity easier for authors to include in their stories.) Thin is still in and, with the advent of the sought after weight loss drug, Ozempic, plastic surgery, and many more ways to try to get slim, it continues to be the state many seek. Many romances that have curvy heroines define curvy as having boobs and a butt–more Nicki Minaj than Lizzo.
How do you feel about romances with plus sized heroines? Do they call to you? If so or it not, why? What authors do you think do body positivity well? Poorly? And if you love them, what is your favorite?
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We do have a tag for plus-size hero! It’s “heavyset hero!” (I struggled to think of this name because “plus size” isn’t really a term for men. I can redo it if this title doesn’t work).
There are only 4 books now, but I’m happy to add and update!
I think we should have plus-sized for men too just to make it easy.
That will have to be you because I don’t have the power to edit the tags once they exist. But if you change that, I’ll use it going forward.
Jackie’s Lau’s recent release The Stand-Up Groomsman has a cover with a not-model-thin hero which is exactly the hero in her book – an average sized guy. I liked that. Every male in every story doesn’t have to have rock hard six pack abs and I appreciate those I come across that don’t.
I’ve been laid low with Covid this past week and, idly channel surfing one day out of boredom, alighted on a programme called My 600 lb Life. At first I was pretty revolted by it because the programme focuses on a particular gastric surgeon and his patients and I didn’t like him much and the poor patients have awful-to-see medical issues with their skin, etc. However, what did truly delight me was that this particular patient had a husband one could describe as almost downright skinny. Yet the amazing love he had – and demonstrated – for her was inspiring and eventually she did lose enough weight to be eligible for gastric band/stomach reduction surgery. It’s not really a programme I will watch again but this one episode showed that love can overcome anything, anything at all. Love saved her life.
Pretty sure Lori Foster has done more than a couple of books featuring very curvy if not plus sized heroines. I can think of at least two of hers off the top of my head that aren’t the one mentioned here. I don’t have the books handy so can’t name them. A quick search on Goodreads did not help because she has so many titles to go through and plus-sized is not one of the tags that comes up.
Which I think is part of the problem with listing these books. As many have mentioned here, there is a definite distinction between being healthy with a lot of curves and being downright unhealthy. For example, Lori Foster just does not go in for stick thin heroines to begin with but like many authors she also doesn’t make the heroine’s size an issue unless it’s actually part of the story being told. The clues might be there in the descriptions but unless you notice them the story isn’t going to be tagged that way.
There is also a side or tangent issue to this that I never (or almost never) see discussed when this comes up – the author making a big deal over how big the hero is then describing the heroine as extremely petit. Maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine but that can take me right out of a romance.
Found them by Foster – Too Much Temptation (2002) and Jude’s Law (2006)
Olivia Dade immediately springs to mind, and there’s the voluptous heroine in Rose Lerner’s Sweet Disorder which actually has a plus-sized model on the cover. I notice more m/f romances coming through featuring plus-sized heroines, which isn’t a bad thing, although I think it’s important to remember that “plus sized” isn’t the same as “morbidly overweight”. I like the body neutrality idea – women are so conditioned to find fault with themselves and it’s quite right that there should be encouragement to be happy with the way you are. BUT – and I’m speaking as someone who has been overweight and very overweight for most of my life, and I’m now paying the price. My back and knees are creaky from carrying so much extra weight around, and I have Type 2 diabetes which is solely related to my weight. So while I definitely think the move away from every heroine being skinny is a good thing, I have concerns with “it doesnt’ matter what size you are” when it’s promoting something which is unhealthy.
Also – “plus sized” means something a bit different on my side of the Atlantic, because our clothes sizes are a bit different. I think our size 16 – which I believe is (or was) the average – is a US size 20? In the US, “plus sized” seems to mean what we in the UK regard as “average”.
Not that I’m saying the pressures on women to be thin aren’t the same here.
This question of “what is plus-size?” is one I run into trying to decide what to tag. Some books have the heroine’s weight or size specified; some don’t. Some specify a size that is plus-size in certain contexts, cultures, or industries, but not in others. For instance, I’ll Be The One by Lyla Lee – size 16 is not plus for an American girl, but it’s plus in entertainment, and it’s even MORE plus in Korean entertainment. I eventually decided to tag most books where the heroine FEELS larger, either than other people or than society’s expectations. Still have to make exceptions to THAT, though – like the model heroine of Three Little Words by Jenny Holiday, who has an eating disorder and is, as she ages, becoming bigger than a small model but not near a curve model.
I think the body neutrality article addressed this at least in part. It states it’s not a matter of being happy or unhappy with your body, but being completely neutral about it. The issue is seeing the size of your body not as a moral or ethical success or failure. We’re not inherently better for being thin or worse for being larger. And it goes on to talk about being healthy instead of focusing, or even considering, weight. I realize weight will come into the picture for some health concerns, but even then it’s more about a healthy diet than the weight loss. When a doctor says, “Go lose weight” he is letting the patient down unless there is extensive information on how to get healthy through one’s diet. My daughter was considered overweight, but then lost over 60 lbs rapidly when she first got sick. Years later and she’s regained the weight (very common with rapid weight loss due to your body changing its metabolism for the “new” diet”), but is still having some major health issues that were caused by the rapid weight loss, including digestive problems, thinning hair and even skin issues.
We need to take the focus off “losing weight” because that is being driven by fatphobia and moral judgements. The focus needs to be on eating a healthy, sustainable (that’s key) diet whether one loses weight or not.
Yes this. My mind was opened working with a Health at Every Size dietician. A lot of health promoting behaviours (increased focus on plants and whole foods in you dietary pattern) and movement give significant health benefits without having to lose weight. The trouble is that weight loss is a surrogate for those health promoting behaviours in a lot of research. I’m in my mid forties and have been overweight my whole life. I’m not a diabetic. My cholesterol is normal and my blood pressure is normal and is better than a lot of my “normal” sized friends. I dislike when people automatically assume overweight/fat = unhealthy which a lot of the comments here have assumed. I don’t know Jack about anybody else’s health unless they tell me and no one should assume based on size.
Personally I would like to see more heroines (and heroes) in general who are okay with their body, and perform health promoting behaviours instead of often the badge of honour of how the heroine never cooks and never exercises.
Yep, for me it’s Olivia Dade all the way.
IIRC, several recent romances by Olivia Dade have plus-size heroines. I can’t say for sure about the handling of issues because I’m not sure I would notice poor handling.
Dabney, thank you for sharing the article on body neutrality. I had not heard of this concept, and I absolutely love it. I wish I’d been raised with this concept. My mom had a lot of body image and food issues which she passed down to her children, and it’s been a lifelong struggle to view myself in a neutral way, even when I am slim and looking as good as I can. The fact is, I will never look celebrity good, and a little voice in my head always points out my shortcomings.
As a result, I don’t enjoy reading romances where food is frequently used by the H/h to manage their emotions, no matter their weight. I dislike scenes where the plus size protagonist pushes junk food on the fit protagonist, to get them to loosen up and enjoy life more. Or when the fit protagonist tries to get their love interest to be healthier (unless the love interest is truly unhealthy, and then it needs to be be very respectfully done.) I don’t enjoy books where the H/h has a lot of self-loathing and worries about their weight/appearance a lot and needs tons of reassurance.
While I love the idea of plus-size heroines, I tend to stay away from books featuring them because the ones I’ve read have too much body image and food-related content for me. On the other hand, I do enjoy romances where both people are attractive and there is not a lot of mention of food issues. Is that messed up? I guess for me, that is just fantasy and not reality, so it’s not triggering.
I am going to add that one thing I liked in The Wings of Glory series by Sarah Sundin is that both the male and female lead in the first book are described as fairly unattractive. Neither had issues with weight, but she had a long face and features that weren’t perfectly symmetrical, and he had a flat nose and ears that stuck out. However, the h/h had things they found attractive about each other (she had pretty green eyes, which he loved, and he had dark, curly hair she adored; they loved each other’s smiles). The author did a nice job of showing how they weren’t going to be on any most beautiful couples list while simultaneously convincing us of how wonderful they find each other. My rather long-winded way of saying that I don’t need a pair of absolutely perfect people starring in my romance. Just a pair of people who are perfect for each other.
Being in love with someone makes them more attractive to the person who loves them. So, it always works for me in a romance when the leads begin by seeing each other as not so much and then, as they get to know them, they become lovely to one another.
Caroline brought this up on the Agorra in Aug. 22 and my opinion hasn’t really changed much since then. I don’t think I’ve read many books that do this really well, except maybe Denise Williams’ The Fastest Way to Fall. Even that one had some issues. It’s a tough subject to handle well, IMO. I think the idea of body neutrality is probably the ideal.
I recently read that approximately 68% of women in the US wear a size 14 or higher, and that this still isn’t a good indicator because many clothing manufacturers have simply labeled the “old” size 14 as size 12. Then there is the problem that manufacturers don’t use a uniform size chart. I just washed jeans for my daughter who wasn’t feeling well, and was surprised to find she has two size 0 pairs (same company), one size 4, and one size 12. All of them fit her. She’s 5’6″ and weighs about 130lbs.
I like the idea of body neutrality, because that is being body positive. Instead of always making the size of the character the point of the story, it would be nice to regularly include people of varying shapes and sized (and skin color and ethnicity) just as many of our irl friend groups would include.
I admit most mm books I’ve read are still stuck on the well toned male body, but a few have had “soft” main characters. None I’ve read so far have had what I would call a plus sized hero. I’d be fine with that, though.