I have a rubber stamp for paper crafting that says, “Whenever I check my weight, I always subtract 5 pounds. I don’t think boobs and brains this fabulous should count against me.”
Recently I read an online Writer’s Digest article, “The Importance of Plus-Size Inclusion in Romance Novels,” by author Mae Bennett, which brought this stamp to mind, as well as my Other Worldly novel series protagonist, Rowan Layne.
I referenced this stamp in the first novel, Alienable Rights, because Rowan Layne is both above average in age at 56—now aged 60 in the seventh upcoming novel, Aliens Watch—and is also what the fashion world and social stigma dictates as “plus size.”
Not surprisingly, Rowan has eclectic appetites, enjoying food, wine, and…men, both human and alien, on and with (pun intended) heavenly celestial bodies other than Earth. Though unfortunately in that first novel she is involved in a not-so-romantic relationship with an all-too human man who criticizes her weight and is downright demeaning about it.
And though my novels are not traditional romance by any measure, Rowan eventually becomes romantically entangled with a number of entities who, wonder of wonders, don’t judge her worth as a human hybrid with alien DNA based on her weight or clothing size. A few are even specifically attracted to her mature curves, including plus-sized boobs in addition to an above-average intelligence and plucky personality.
In Mae Bennett’s WD article, she talked about the importance of books with main characters who are plus size, like her. Explaining how she grew up watching characters on TV who looked like her but were never the main characters, never being seen as enough to gain their own story. Bennett has written about confident, plus-size characters because, “Someone isn’t less attractive because of a number on a scale or the size of their pants, and they shouldn’t be made to feel otherwise.” As Rowan Layne would say, boy howdy.
Bennett also said, “No one body looks the same, why should all main characters in romance books?…Showing body diversity increases the variety, the representation of ourselves.” It’s actually plus-size common sense. Does the publishing world think plus-size human readers in real life don’t fall in love and engage in romantic or sexual encounters? Just because a written work is fiction doesn’t mean all aspects of it have to be unrelated to reality.
My novels are speculative fantasy, but I’m not merely speculating about Rowan’s romantic life as a plus-size woman because as a plus-size writer like Mae Bennett, I’ve based Rowan’s interactions and romantic relationships on real-life experience—all the way up to my late fifties in age, and tipping the scale beyond what most deem acceptable or attractive. Because there really are men who don’t prefer bony women.
Bennett concluded, “Fat phobia is still incredibly pervasive in every inch of media we take in to this day, that I can play a small part in combatting that means the world to me. The way we discuss bodies needs to be changed.”
I, in my Other Worldly novels featuring feisty and fleshy Rowan Layne, am doing my plus-size part to put a positive spin on pleasingly plump big girls. As Rowan notes in the upcoming Aliens Watch, she’s all about a rubber stamp that says, “Big girl panties? Hell, I put on my combat boots and go commando!”
Get ready for Rowan, channeling her fictional alter ego Luna Moth Woman, to don dayglow alien-green boots and kick some misogynist, skinny-assed butt in Aliens Watch.