full-figured heroines – Nomad Authors Blog

I don’t think I’ve consciously given a thought as to why I normally create my heroines as slim or slender. I don’t think I purposely avoid the full-figured heroine, but maybe in some way I do. It’s definitely something I will consider in the future. The fact is, full-figured women are as beautiful as slim women.

Just a few short years ago, full-figures were considered sexy. Hourglass figures are also considered full-figured—think Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Russell, Britney Young, or one of my favorite celebrities, Nigella Lawson. Curvy is great. Curvy is good. Know why? Because beauty comes from within, not at the makeup table or on the scale. It comes from loving yourself and being happy with who you are.

The one sort of disadvantage I can think of for full-figured women is that clothes aren’t easy to buy. Find something that fits the bust and it might not fit the waist. Clothes for women are too often designed for the mythical woman—perfectly proportioned, little hips, and where anything above size 10 is considered plus size. Full-figured woman have hips. They have boobs. They have a little heft to them. When I write my full-figured heroine—and I have her in mind already—I’m going write about clothes shopping, too.

What about you? Does it bother you to write (or read) about a woman who isn’t a size 6?

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Dee
Burning Bridges by Anne Krist
One Woman Only
Only a Good Man Will Do
Naval Maneuvers

Are my characters full figured or always slim? That is a good question because I try to avoid stereotypical characters such as a woman with an eye watering figure – because I don’t have an eye watering figure – or a Superman with rippling muscles. I want my characters to be like you and me, real and believable, warts and all. I realise now that my characters’ figures reflect their lives and trials and tribulations.

In my first book, Perilous Love, Gabrielle thought of herself as thin, shapeless and uninteresting. That shapeless figure would be her saviour when she and husband Adrian, whom she despised, were badly betrayed as world war one exploded over Europe. Adrian, the quintessential upper-class Englishman is very conscious of his masculine physique until injury renders him helpless. The only way they narrowly escaped capture was to disguise themselves as male peasants on the terrifying journey to safety.

In Lies of Gold, Julian has the hard, toned body of a soldier, trained in unarmed combat. Without those years of hard living, he could not have stopped the ruthless traitor peddling young people for gold. Katherine, the woman Julian loved and lost, is more worried about her children’s safety than her figure, until Julian comes back into her life.

War changes a man. For Harry Connelly in The Proposition, it’s down to a bullet on the Western Front or arrest and prison at home. Severely injured, he falls beside the body of a dead soldier with the same build, same colouring—his one chance of a new life. What the hell—he swaps identity discs. Now Andrew Conroy, repatriated home with a limp and a small pension, he’s more worried about being caught than his physique. When he meets Lacey Haines, he sees a beautiful woman. Lacey has been a nurse on the European front and she needed strength and stamina more than she needed a reed-thin figure. Does it matter to Andrew? Not likely.

In The Woman Behind the Mirror, Sarah Forsythe’s lovely face and hourglass figure are her assets, and she’s very aware of that when eloping to the American colonies. When everything she trusts deserts her, Sarah must sell those assets to survive – and in that mirror, every day, she sees a loathsome harlot in a gambling club. It’s not until Neil McAllister, who by the way has a damn good body, investigates her for possible bank fraud, that she has the courage to see herself as she once was.

It never ceases to amaze me that every book has a different story to tell with characters that draw us in and, in a lot of cases, characters we can relate to. That’s the beauty of it.

What do you think?

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Jan

The Woman Behind the Mirror
The Proposition
Lies of Gold—Silver Historical for 2019: Coffee Pot Book Club