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Does Size Matter?

Recently I was reading a book—a romance of course—which was fairly well written and had a good plot hook. I was looking forward to sinking into the pages (or onto the screen) and thoroughly enjoying myself. Then something happened that pulled me out of the story, something that irritated me so much I felt like emailing the author. From then on all I could think about was that thing and I couldn’t fully enjoy the novel.

What I’m talking about is describing physical attributes. As romance novelists it’s something we’re required to do. People need to know if their heroine has dark hair, blue eyes, long legs, or that their hero has a scar on his right hip. But how specific should we be?

Back to this book I was reading. The heroine had body issues when it came to her chest. She describes her breasts as ‘fleshy’, ‘big’ and even ‘enormous’. She complains of the many times men have leered openly down her top. I’m starting to think this poor girl has a serious Dolly Parton issue happening. Being of not exactly small proportions myself I sympathized. I saw myself in this girl, which is what any author wants.

Then she mentioned her size. Our heroine’s breasts were a size D. Excuse me? Thinking there must be some cross country size misinterpretation (I’m Australian), I had to google US bra sizes just to be sure. A D is the same down under as it is over there—and to my mind folks, a D is not enormous. A quick search of average bra sizes provided varying information, but some articles state it’s 34B and others go as high as 36D. So this would put our heroine’s breast size at average or one or two sizes above. Which makes the descriptors ‘enormous’ and ‘fleshy’ a bit inaccurate, to my way of thinking. And without wearing my measurements on my sleeve, I was an early developer and with weight fluctuations and two pregnancies behind me, I haven’t seen a D cup bra in quite some time. I’d love to be as SMALL as a D. I know, I know. Don’t pelt fruit at me, it’s not as much fun as it looks. I couldn’t help but take exception to the author’s use of so many negative size descriptors for breasts that were smaller than mine and not a lot bigger than average.

I recently penned a heroine who was a smidge under 5’10” and I described her as ‘tall for a female’. In light of my recent reading experience I wonder if that’s going to put all the 6’ tall females off side. 5’10” seems tall to a short stuff like me but what do I know? Dress size might be another potential minefield. I can’t recall many romance novels where the heroine’s dress size was mentioned specifically, but what woman doesn’t know hers? Love it or hate it, we all KNOW it. The size issue is very often avoided in romanceland—to reduce the chance of a reader having a reaction like the one I had?

What do you think? Should authors just not mention size at all and let the readers paint their own picture, or would you prefer to know? Are there any physical descriptions that have boggled your mind? Totally upset that I’ve ranted on about boobs for five paragraphs? Let me know.

Sami
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