Wow, love the great big slut-shaming rant she starts with. Yeah, men being inappropriate is just totally women’s fault. We should never ever wear anything we like if it might possibly be the least bit sexy because men just can’t help themselves. See, guys, she understands! She’s one of the COOL girls! Love her, dammit!
I enjoy how she openly said there’s not boundaries between her writing and life. I mean the way she followed it up shows she doesn’t mean it like THAT, but…yeah.
I get putting her self-image issues into Anita, I really do. I feel so much sympathy for her there. But with Anita, it truly is obnoxious, firstly because Anita herself so clearly doesn’t believe it with how she’s always comparing other women negatively to herself (even the ones supposed to be “prettier” than her ala the tall thin blondes are still actually always bashed as fake, boyish, etc.), secondly because she doesn’t change. In real life, yes, this sort of thing can last a lifetime, as evident by LKH herself, but when it comes to characters in a book, evolution is necessary, and it comes off as patently ridiculous for Anita to still be at the same place when she is hailed as the hottest woman on earth by almost every character she encounters. Which brings me to my third point---it feels very hollow, even insulting in a way, to read this coming from someone who isn’t simply “not ugly” but seems to in fact by objectively the most attractive women in her universe. Anita is never NOT someone’s cup of tea, and she has no actual physical flaws besides her super-kewl scars that she makes a show off to someone once a book. I get that the message is probably meant to be “even really beautiful women can be made to believe they’re ugly” but it’s kind of grating for me as a perfectly normal woman to read this knockout goddess repeatedly lamenting her awful deformity of being PETITE and CURVY and BRUNETTE book after book, especially since this is such a common thing among heroines in general (though that last bit isn’t LKH’s fault) I think a better message would be for Anita realizing some people don’t find her attractive, sure, and that’s FINE, it doesn’t mean she’s objectively hideous, and beauty isn’t that big a deal anyway, and some people DO find her attractive too…as it is, it seems the tragedy is supposed to be “oh no this beautiful woman thinks she’s UGLY!” as if her self-hate would be just fine if she actually were conventionally unattractive or anything less than the impossible ideal figure she actually is. It really, really comes off as “beauty is the most important thing, so she should realize she’s beautiful” rather than a more positive message like “There is no universal beauty, and it’s not like it’s that important anyway so I’ll try to grow beyond hinging my self-esteem on it” I don’t demand that all heroines come to this conclusion and work through all their issues to a perfect state of emotional wellness---that’s just not human---but I think Anita is highly symptomatic of an author that never even got close to this, and that’s why she’s got to be the most universally beautiful woman in her world and every man must believe so. Which brings me back to what I said before about me feeling sorry for LKH.
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I enjoy how she openly said there’s not boundaries between her writing and life. I mean the way she followed it up shows she doesn’t mean it like THAT, but…yeah.
I get putting her self-image issues into Anita, I really do. I feel so much sympathy for her there. But with Anita, it truly is obnoxious, firstly because Anita herself so clearly doesn’t believe it with how she’s always comparing other women negatively to herself (even the ones supposed to be “prettier” than her ala the tall thin blondes are still actually always bashed as fake, boyish, etc.), secondly because she doesn’t change. In real life, yes, this sort of thing can last a lifetime, as evident by LKH herself, but when it comes to characters in a book, evolution is necessary, and it comes off as patently ridiculous for Anita to still be at the same place when she is hailed as the hottest woman on earth by almost every character she encounters. Which brings me to my third point---it feels very hollow, even insulting in a way, to read this coming from someone who isn’t simply “not ugly” but seems to in fact by objectively the most attractive women in her universe. Anita is never NOT someone’s cup of tea, and she has no actual physical flaws besides her super-kewl scars that she makes a show off to someone once a book. I get that the message is probably meant to be “even really beautiful women can be made to believe they’re ugly” but it’s kind of grating for me as a perfectly normal woman to read this knockout goddess repeatedly lamenting her awful deformity of being PETITE and CURVY and BRUNETTE book after book, especially since this is such a common thing among heroines in general (though that last bit isn’t LKH’s fault) I think a better message would be for Anita realizing some people don’t find her attractive, sure, and that’s FINE, it doesn’t mean she’s objectively hideous, and beauty isn’t that big a deal anyway, and some people DO find her attractive too…as it is, it seems the tragedy is supposed to be “oh no this beautiful woman thinks she’s UGLY!” as if her self-hate would be just fine if she actually were conventionally unattractive or anything less than the impossible ideal figure she actually is. It really, really comes off as “beauty is the most important thing, so she should realize she’s beautiful” rather than a more positive message like “There is no universal beauty, and it’s not like it’s that important anyway so I’ll try to grow beyond hinging my self-esteem on it” I don’t demand that all heroines come to this conclusion and work through all their issues to a perfect state of emotional wellness---that’s just not human---but I think Anita is highly symptomatic of an author that never even got close to this, and that’s why she’s got to be the most universally beautiful woman in her world and every man must believe so. Which brings me back to what I said before about me feeling sorry for LKH.