I’m with you, Roz!

An author on Goodreads once asked me to read/review his sci-fi book (I have no idea why I agreed to it, since this is never a good idea and I actually have written in my GR bio to please not ask this), and it was terrible in this regard.

Actually, it was terrible on many, many levels (science was bad, plot didn’t make sense) but there was exactly one female character in the entire book, and all she did was panic and scream. She never just talked rationally or in a normal tone, never said anything that wasn’t some variant of “oh no, male characters, how can you and your manly brains help us?” in any scene she was part of. Nothing like that.

And she was an astronaut. So whatever brains and training got her on this mission were left on the launch deck, I suppose, because she was a helpless woman who never knew what to do, even with her own basic spaceship responsibilities.

She was also the only character whose physical description was constantly mentioned, whereas big items like what was happening in the story were described so poorly that I couldn’t even picture what was going on. It was so completely insulting that I had to force myself to finish the book just to leave a thorough review.

And on the “yes, this happens too often” front, I followed a thread on Twitter the other day where a reader (possibly an editor) was asking followers exactly how unrealistic it was for a 5'9" woman to weigh 120 and still have any kind of muscle mass to physically defeat a robot. The answers ranged from realistic weight estimates given by female athletes/trainers to comments like, “Skinny people have no idea what regular people weigh.” And yes, the author was a male.

I’m not a male-basher, but I really get irritated that this kind of garbage still happens, and I’m certain this type of thing is why so many young women have body image issues.

Gosh. Sorry for the rant. Um . . . I guess I liked your comment.