secrets to author gender, now revealed!

[kaigou]

If the character described is female, and she's given measurements of 38-30-36, a height of 5'4", and a weight of 100lbs, the author must be male, or a particularly lame-brained female who hasn't weighed 100lbs since she was in grade school. Anyone with C-cup boobs on a 38" ribcage knows that alone is going to be putting a fair 10lbs more on the scale's measurement.

130lbs does not automatically equal 'fat woman'.

For that matter, 170lbs does not automatically equal 'fat woman'.

I rowed with a woman who was 5'10". She weighed 190lbs, and she wore a size eight. (She also told me she didn't make it onto the Olympic women's team because she was too short. Uhhhhh. Wrap your head around that one.) Did she weigh a little less than twice my weight, at the time? Yes. Did she look like it? No, in fact, I looked heavy in comparison.

If a character is described as "in great shape" or "obviously works out a lot" or "has a really, really active [soldier, assassin, martial artist, blah blah] lifestyle" or "all muscle and barely any fat," then there's no way in hell that she could weigh 100lbs at 5'4" and have muscle: she's at 30% body fat. Not obese, sure, but there's not much room left for muscle what-with fat taking up all the space. Add that "active life" muscle, and it'll push her weight to 130lb, possibly 140lb -- and she may still easily be wearing a size two. You just can't pick her up and be fooled for a second that she's all lightness and air. Assuming her left hook doesn't put you down for the count, which she'll manage with a lot less effort than the chick with 30% body fat, that's for sure.

If the character described is male, and he's supposedly around 5'9" or 5'10" but is estimated to weigh about 130lbs, the author must be female, or the male twin of the particularly lame-brained female author. Either make sure to note the 5'10" character also looks freakishly skeletal with a modicum of muscle or has just-enough cush but no muscle at all -- or pick a more realistic weight. Try more like 150lbs, possibly 160lbs*.

If the guy has any decent amount of muscle, revise again to about 170lbs. If the guy works out enough that he's got sculpted muscles, let alone a six-pack, then 180lbs, or maybe even 190lbs, would not make him fat. It would not even make him remotely fat. At 5'10 and 180lbs and "well-muscled", he probably wears jeans that are 32" waist with 30" inseam, maybe 32" inseam -- and he'd look very good in it.

A lot better than the scrawny version at 130lbs, that's for sure.

I can grit my teeth and get through the inhumanly low weights often listed for characters, but when the character is supposed to be strong, is supposed to have muscle under that layer of skin, and not fat, then I'd really appreciate it if authors could stop perpetrating the bullshit out there, and remember two important details:

Fat takes up more than four times as much space as lean muscle mass.

Generally speaking, one cubic pound of fat = six cubic pounds of muscle.

In other words, if your 5'10" male character wears 32" jeans, and his idea of intense physical labor is to lift the mouse and move it over on the mousepad, then about 140lbs is probably fine. ADA rule-of-thumb: for men, 15-18% body fat, women, 20-25% body fat. For athletes: men, 5-12% body fat, women, 10-20%. A character who's 5'10" and 130lbs wearing 32" jeans is going to have 18% body fat. There will be very little 'sculpted' about the character. His muscles -- what little he has -- may even be somewhat jiggly, despite the rather skeletal impression.

If the same character were to work out regularly, have a strongly athletic body (enough to get a six-pack, and believe me, it's work getting that kind of muscle development), and with the exact same height and waist measurements but with a weight of 180, he'd have about 10% body fat. That's a little less than half the body fat of the first character, and when we talk about bouncing coins off body parts, I'm sure as hell going to believe it's true of the second. I'm more likely, of the former character, to believe it's his body doing the bouncing instead of the coin.

ETA: Find a man around you who is not in a weight-reliant sport (wrestling, crew, any sport which requires weigh-ins) and ask him how much he weighs. HE PROBABLY DOESN'T KNOW. He'll probably say, "uh, I think I was, uh, like maybe 190 the last time I saw the doctor, but that was like two years ago..." If you push, he might say, "I wear ___ size jeans," and this may be about as good as his guess is gonna get. Men may feel societal pressures when it comes to shape but it's not as tied to actual measurable weight as the pressures for women.

[*About 130lb male characters: the worst offenders are female authors. I suspect this may have something to do with our current national average for height/weight: 5'3", and 160 lbs. Yes, you read that right. If I wanted to tack "featherweight" over a character's head, along with an insinuation of the character's feminine or weak traits, then, sure, I'd give him a weight that most women would kill for. I'd also have to brace myself for all the current and former athletes laughing hysterically, but I guess maybe some authors just have high-quality ear plugs... but there's a definite element of ultra-feminization going on there, if you ask me.]

Or, better yet, all you authors who insist on giving "guess his/her weight at" measurements -- just stop! Just don't do it. You're perpetrating the stupidity myths in this culture about weight and strength, you're mangling reality in ways that just don't freaking work, and most importantly, you're annoying the fuck out of me.

Stop it. Just stick to "about so-tall," and physical description in terms of muscle, fat, curves, and planes. Leave the numbers game to those who have a clue, and let it slide for everyone else.

ETA: WE HAVE THE SOLUTION. -- a great resource. use it!

Comments

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

That was wonderful. Yes, no way in HELL does 130 lbs make a full grown woman "fat", unless she is 4 feet tall. :P

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

More importantly, one has to ask: 130lbs of what? Is that muscle, or fat? Because if it's fat, then it's possible the woman may be edging into the higher end of "decent fat percentage", but she's still not obese. If it's muscle, though... she may weigh 130lbs, but she probably wears a size one.

Height/weight

[(Anonymous)]

Why would you even mention weight? It tells you absolutely nothing. I'm 5'8" and 150 lbs. Sounds heavy but I am really not very big and wear a size 6 or even a 4. My guy is 6'5" and 260 lbs.--he is a former athlete and his height/weight is proportional.

You mention 150 or 260 lbs. and I think most people would think of it as huge when it really isn't.

[reileen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, numbers and I have never got along well. This applies equally to stuff about weight and height ratios as well as to calculus. I suspect part of it also has to do with the fact that I never really worried about my height or my weight, so numbers for those tended to be mostly meaningless for me. At the very least, they didn't hold the same significance for me the way they seemed to do for other people.

In writing, I definitely just stick to "he was about so-and-so tall with a such-and-such physique" way of describing people. I personally find it a lot more fun that way, though I can understand how people would want real-world specifics. (I pray to the Gods that I don't end up with a character who is actually supposed to know the ins and outs of this sort of thing. Then again, if that happens, I can just refer back to this post, lulz.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I have always viewed weight -- in and of itself -- as a faulty thing. I also did a year as a lightweight, at 5'6", while running two to three miles a day, burning easily 2000+ calories on the water, and don't forget the calisthenics for warm-up and cool-down. I also weighed 119lbs, and my fat percentage was around 18%. (That's just not safe for someone who's only 17, and whose body is going through enough hell thanks to puberty.)

But as a result of that, I got sick and tired of the whole obsess-about-weight thing. Every day, wondering whether I could take in enough calories to keep myself from collapsing and yet not be so many I'd weigh more than 119.5 on Saturday morning... oh, it was exhausting. After that, I just refused.

All I care about now is that I fit into X size when it comes to jeans, skirts, and shirts, and that I do my best to stay within that range. Then the weight takes care of itself -- and besides, as long as no one's intent on picking me up and tossing me around like a sack of half-rotten yams (or worse, requiring I weigh in every week in front of my peers before I can compete), then I bloody well don't care what I weigh. I just don't want to have to go shopping for a new set of clothes if I can help it.

Hah, that's my priority: avoiding shopping. ;-)

On a more serious note, I do prefer authors who stick to "this is what the person looks like." I mean, honestly, how often do any of us look at a potential lover or new friend and say, "she looks about 5'4" and, oh, I dunno, about 130 pounds..." Oh, please. We're far more likely to notice curves and ripples both good and bad, length of leg, length of neck, thickness of ankle or wrist, shoulder width, the cut and plane of muscles in the arms. Y'know, when we're not busy ogling the ass.

[haya5h1.livejournal.com]

or reads too much manga.
From the official Bleach biodata:
Rukia: 144cm(4'8)/44 kg(97lb) - she could be excused I suppose, seeing as she's in a gigai which may or may not be made of Earth materials.
Orihime: 157cm (5'1)/45kg (99lb). And she's a D-cup.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hah, Rukia's and Orihime's weight/height averages are actually fine. 5'1" and 100lbs, approximately, is also the height/weight of most of the coxswains I had -- it's a fair amount for someone who's a little on the top-heavy side but slim otherwise. Rukia's height/weight is fairly normal.

(There's also the consideration that until the age of 18, the body fat, height, and weight ratios can get skewed during different growing spurts... like boobs getting bigger while the rest of the body struggles to catch up.)

Don't get me started on Gundam measurements, though. They're not just bad for the girls, they're equally bad for the guys. OMFG are they whacked.

[kracken.livejournal.com]

I did weigh my breasts one time. They weighed eight pounds. I always subtract it when I'm weighing myself. ^_^

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Heh! Didya know the average head weighs between 7 and 11 pounds?

I figure that explains a lot of the dimensions for female characters in animanga.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Yes. Just...yes.

I'm 5'4". Mediumish build. At my fittest, I was running several miles in the morning, riding 4-6 horses, and working 10-12+ hour days on my feet (teaching lessons, herding kids, the aforementioned riding, barn chores, etc.). I weighed...125, I think. I probably could have shaved off a few pounds if I'd eaten less ice cream (but I like ice cream), but there's no way I could have ever weighed 100 pounds. If you tell me that your character can weigh that and still do hard physical labor or demanding athletic stuff, I am going to laugh in your face.

(But I do wish people had more everyday exposure to this stuff. There's so much bullshit floating around about weight and body type, and so little to counteract it. I realized, when I started going to the gym, that I haven't seen another woman naked since...I quit running in college, I guess. And I confess, I always kind of want to stare. That's what normal people look like? Really? And I feel like, if my perception--as someone who doesn't actually care that much about that stuff--is that skewed, how bad must it be for people who take all of this personally?)

Who the hell lists their characters' measurements, anyway? Why?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I go by the general body-fat measurements per waist and height, but even that is only a very loose idea. I had team-mates who were 5'4" and burning massive amounts of calories daily who had to struggle to stay around 118 or so, and other teammates at the same height who were 110. Sometimes genetics determines these things more than any amount of our willpower, but it's still a simple reality that one person can weigh considerably more than another person and still have smaller measurements and wear a smaller clothing size.

Thing is, unless there's a point in a novel where the character's stats are required -- like, I dunno, a doctor discussing health, or for a physical exam, or doing the math on "how much oxygen is in the escape pod versus lung capacity of every escapee" then, maybe you'd need to know weight. Otherwise, shape is far more important.

[miyabiarashi.livejournal.com]

Every time I look at weights given for characters, it makes me want to headdesk. Badly. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the G00 characters can look how they are and still weigh so little. Example: Setsuna--how can he be like, only 47 kilos? How? I'm shorter, and maybe have a similar build, but I'm probably more around 55 (roughly 122 lbs). Setsuna's drawn looking wiry, but not skeletal, so realistically he probably ought to be 59 or so (whatever 130 is), or at least in the 50s.

I don't know if I've lost weight, and clothing sizes seem to be a poor way of telling that; over a 7-8 year period I've gone down two sizes, and even so, I've either only lost a few pounds or managed to get back up. >.>

I know I was thinking of listing heights for my comic characters, but there's no way I could assign proper weights to them. Where would one go about doing that?

Tangentially, I read on the 8Asians blog a while back that Japanese men were trying to get skinnier to look attractive, and the weights they wanted were like, 125...and although they're pretty small compared to Western guys, 125 lbs is pretty darn skinny.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I just about lost it when I saw that Graham is supposed to be, uh, something like 130lbs and 5'8"... RIGHT. Do these people just not realize the amount of muscle it takes to handle the physical stresses of flying, and g-forces, and whatnot?

If you've gone down a size or two in clothing but you've not lost weight on the scale, it means your fat percentage has dropped and your lean muscle mass has probably increased. That's what's meant by "fat takes up more room than muscle". Okay, that, or you're buying more expensive clothing that's marketed to have a lower size range as a means to make you 'feel' like you're skinnier. (Snerk.)

Frankly, if you want to do stats for characters, find friends or classmates or whatever who look like (in height and build) what your character looks like... and then ask for their measurements -- not weight. That will help you get a realistic idea of "how big around" a 'real' person is compared to height.

F'r instance, when Ahnold was filming the first Terminator movie, his chest measurement was 42"... My mind still boggles over just how big that really is. Cripes.

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

Nicely put... I also can't imagine why - unless their powers of both description and imagination are sadly lacking - anyone would feel the need to set out someone's statistics like that.

For the record I am 5' 8", 174 lbs, and take a UK size 12 (which is either a US10 or 8 depending on how you look at it). This is because I am a real human being...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hooray for the real human beings!

I tend to think more in terms of measurement than weight, for two reasons -- one, is because I more often wear men's jeans (now that 90% of the jeans-industry has moved away from just using inseam/waist measurement as size, damn them), so I know I'm 32/34 waist, 34 inseam. What does that mean in terms of 'formal' clothing size? I dunno. I always end up grabbing one of each of four sizes and trying them all on... sigh.

I also think in terms of measurement because I was taught to sew at a young age. Patterns do have a standard for sizes, set a long time ago, and I don't make stuff based on "okay, I'm size N, so here we go," but on chest, waist, inseam, hip, lower hip, arm, etc measurements. The store-bought jacket may say "size 12" but if I were to make that jacket myself, the truth is the chest is size 12, the waist is 16, the hips are 14, the arms are 18, the legs are 10 but lengthened to be 34" inseam instead of the default 30"...

I've only met one person in my entire life whose measurements fit the standardized pattern tables exactly. Everyone else has variation to some degree, and the more you sew, the more that's how you quantify: "Two sizes up for chest, two sizes up for hips, down a size for neckhole..."

[sakushablue.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Taller than me, rounder than me (measurement wise) and weighs less? Maybe she's full of hot air.*wink* I never liked when an author writes measurements and such because it feels like their trying to hard. Unless your writing about a police line up, its really not needed. But for heavens sake, at least know a little about physiology.

I really do enjoy your rants about things that are just so 'plane as day' obvious.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hot air, exactly!

Per my comment to Kracken, I think if you add about 9lbs for the brain then you're getting closer to reality. Add another 10lbs for the boobs that are real and not just pumped-up balloons, and then you're talking definite reality. We've just added 20lbs and now things make sense.

Hey, I can't help being a ranty person. I'm just glad it's entertaining for any innocent bystanders.

[pxcampbell.livejournal.com]

I'm so laughing here right now.

My female protagonist is 5'3" and weighs 100 lbs. Size 6 shoes. B-C cups (not large enough for the male protagonist, but he's willing to overlook her deficiencies in that regard).

I wrote her that way because she has a choice of the kind of human body she wants to use for her mission. She figures that that body will assure that she blends in (but she actually ends up standing out a bit more than she figured).

You're right -- avoid the numbers if you don't know what you're talking about. Or do some research on the Internet. I don't mention the male protag's weight but I can tell you what it is. I "cast" the lead already and I'm just going with that particular actor's height plus weight.

In this age of the Internet, it's just laziness not to those things correct. And it's stupidity to write the specifics if you're too lazy to look this sh** up.

[dangrgirl.livejournal.com]

So that's about a dress size 2. Is that what you had in mind?

[kabokai.livejournal.com]

ok, so say I have an Asian-American female character who's in high school. She's about 5 feet 4 inches, and she's been doing martial arts pretty seriously for about...six years. She's a black belt and can hold her own against the guys. She's vegetarian but definitely likes her sweets (ice cream, cookies, etc.) How much should she realistically weigh?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The real question is: does it matter? I'd recommend finding someone with the physique similar to what you envision for the character, and ask them politely for her measurements, if the detail would ever be a plot-point (like the difficulty she might have in finding X type of clothes or whatever).

Also, keep in mind that there's a big difference between the muscular build of a martial artist or skater versus someone who does a sport where muscle matters more than flexibility. I had plenty of skater friends when a jock, and they'd laugh at the notion of running or lifting weights to be able to do what they did -- but they could also, most of them, get their ankles behind their necks. (Yowzer.)

I couldn't get my ankle up past my hip if my life depended on it, but at the same time if you put me on an erg (a machine that measures strength of one's pull) next to a skater, my scores were easily five times the skater's. I had a great deal of muscle mass, and not a lot of body fat, compared to the less muscle-bound skaters/martial-artist types... who were incredibly flexible in what muscle they did have.

So you might even assess that the person could weigh less (by virtue of being not quote so intense on the compacted muscle element) and yet wear a size or two larger than her weight-lifting counterparts.

My guess? Err, anywhere from 115 to 130... but I'd say, instead, find someone who fits your 'mental' image and use those measurements. And then forget about 'em unless it's really crucial to the story. ;-)

[maldoror-gw.livejournal.com]

I've never read a book that mentions the character's weight. I thought only bad fanfiction Mary Sues do that. Is this common place in a lit genre I've missed out on?

Beyond the 'real people' factor, it seems incredibly clunky to inform the reader of what a character weighs/measures, except if the scene is taking place in a doctor's office. The most one would expect detail-wise is 'I towered over him, but at six four I tower over most people' or 'I'd run too fast, I was out of breath; those six months at a desk were telling, as well as those ten extra pounds the scales nagged me about on occasion.' Or unless the character is self-concsious about his/her weight for some reason, and thus knows about it (as you point out, most guys wouldn't have that info).

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The only times it's seemed natural to me are when a character has been ill for awhile, and has lost significant weight (and is therefore conscious of it), or when the character is in a job or sport where weight matters -- astronaut, cyclist, wrestling, maybe test pilot or something. Or when it's part of a mug shot ("weighs approximately two-ten") or maybe when the character is a spy and trying to pass himself off as someone else ("that can't be him, sir, we all know the Saint is a bulky kind of guy!") or something.

The rest of the time I expect women to underestimate their weight, or completely overestimate it (but more often this comes out as, "I'm X dress size," and not "I weigh this much")... and I expect male characters -- and a few female characters, of course -- to either be clueless or just not give a damn.

Shape is really what matters. Not like I could say "you and I weigh the same" and therefore assume you'd be able to borrow my clothes after yours got scalded and ruined during that daring escape from the bombed-out toaster factory.

[elanivalae.livejournal.com]

OMFG, yes. This drives me nuts. Boobs weigh something, for god's sake, and if a female character has large ones, she is going to be heavier. They aren't balloons! I used to have fits in high school trying to get down to my "ideal" weight (supposedly in the 100lb. range; my mother used to scream at me for being "fat" because I was over 100 pounds when I was 5'2", weighed about 115, and was a D cup. Granted, I was a size 7-9 because of my body shape, but I was a dancer at the time, too, so it's not like most of that wasn't muscle.) When I put much fat at all on my body during college, I ended up as a 36G, and anyone who doesn't think those are heavy enough to affect my weight significantly is insane.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Let's see. Being totally non-scientific (but logical in my head, at least), at 7/9 your waist was probably 27" or thereabouts? The height and waist measurements are equally important with height, and when I plug all that in, I end up with someone who has a body-ratio that's halfway between the "ideal" and the even slimmer "swimmer's body". On top of that your muscle/fat ratio was a very healthy 22%, and going by the body-mass index actually put you at a fraction underweight.

People just have no idea of healthy. I think our eyeballs are whacked after too many years of seeing gaunt movie stars who are 5'9" and thinking that's reality... when in fact, the real reality is that the average american woman is 5'3" and 160. (I guess this means I should be shopping in the "tall" section, but there aren't such sections in the average department store, damn them all.)

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

Oy. I'm a guy at almost exactly 130 pounds and I've got lots of both fat and muscle, you know....

...but I'm just 5'3 and a full-blooded small-bodied Asian at that so I'm squarely within the "ideal" bracket. Thinking of somebody six or seven inches taller having the same weight gives me the creeps.

Well, OK. I actually have a friend who's about an inch taller than me but weighs only the slightest bit over 100lb. and, as you would naturally predict, he looks pretty skeletal. I don't even want to bump into him too hard lest I break his spine or something. Maybe I'll try taking a picture of him someday to show how scary he looks....

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I've seen pictures of you, and you're built just like my ex, except that he was 5'9" and (unsurprisingly) about 170. I remember him saying something about being 130 when he was a freshman in high school -- about 14yrs or so -- and that he looked absolutely gaunt. He was a scrawny kid! ... then he joined the football team and all the pictures of the rest of his high school years, he had no neck.

I recommend having a neck. It just looks strange when you don't.

Great read.

[mind-taker.livejournal.com]

This is one of those "small" things that can kill my interest in a character, and possibly the story.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

If I'm ambivalent about a story for any other reason, you're right; this kind of inadequate/unrealistic detail is enough to do me in and quit right there.

If I'm liking the story otherwise, I feel like head-desking at the sledgehammery-element. Like watching an otherwise graceful dance performance and then a landing is two-footed. I want to shake the author/dancer, saying, "you were doing so well, don't screw up now!"

[tscheese.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! This is a great piece. I was reading a forgettable horror/action pulp novel--I forget the title or the author, but it was a male author--who characterized a young woman as wanting to wear loose shirts because of the "ten extra pounds" she carried on her "tall frame." Her dimensions? 126 LBS. 5'6". HOW IS THAT A LARGE WOMAN!?

I'm 5'10". I walk about four miles a day. I do light resistance exercise and I'm constantly carrying heavy handbags and groceries all over NYC. I look and feel best at about 180-190. It's at that weight that I wear a size medium blouse in misses' sizes. Most of my dresses are size 10 or size 12.

I'm currently in the middle of The Pelican Brief by Grisham. (What can I say? I work in legal/compliance for my firm, and I love it when plucky lawyers defeat the badguys. I'm a dork that way.) The protagonist, Darby Shaw, is described as being 5'8" and 113 pounds. Isn't that nearly underweight? Oh, also, she singlehandedly defeats some sort of huge crime ring at the age of 24 while running for her life. Yeah, that makes me feel great about myself.

So yeah. Human flesh weighs a lot. Even "skinny" characters probably weigh more than many authors think they do. Thanks for posting this.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

126 pounds on a woman 5'6" is damn near SCRAWNY.

Honestly, some authors should be forced to sit in a room while observing a slide show of REAL PEOPLE with heights and weights. Hell, just the fact that Marilyn Monroe would be a size 12-14 in today's measurements might open a few eyeballs.

5'8" and 113 isn't just scrawny. It's freaking anorexic!

[hoppytoad79.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely stick to height and build and leave weight to someone else to guesstimate. Much easier that way, and the weight doesn't matter for the reasons you give. The only reason I'd mention weight in my writing is if I wanted to give an example of a woman at a healthy weight that's Fat by society's standards, like a 5'2" at 140lbs.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The only reason I'd mention weight in my writing is if I wanted to give an example of a woman at a healthy weight that's Fat by society's standards, like a 5'2" at 140lbs.

I can see specifying weight if it's pertinent, or that talking about it tells me something about the character(s). Like:

A: I need to lose ten pounds before I go to my HS reunion.
B: You look fine to me.
A: I'm 140 pounds! I should be 110!
B: You're also an idiot. Don't you realize that going to the gym five days a week means you're all muscle and no fat? And you wear a size six, anyway, so shut up.

Or something. I dunno. The risk of mentioning weight is -- if you're not giving a totally unrealistic height/weight ratio -- is sounding like you've suddenly diverted the reader into "public service announcement land" with Realistic Information.

Best, I think, is to stick to description ("slender", "muscular", "long-legged", "curvy", etc) and leave the rest to the reader to figure out.

[mshepley.livejournal.com]

I never bother with weights, mostly because I have no clue. My descriptions are more like: Average build, small breasts, stocky, broad shoulders, shorter than X, lean, etc. Because honestly? I do comics, and they all weight as much as paper+ink.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yeah, can I paraphrase & steal that? "Why give weights for fictional characters -- what's a pixel weigh, anyway?" ;-)

[aprilp-katje.livejournal.com]

Anyone with C-cup boobs on a 38" ribcage knows that alone is going to be putting a fair 10lbs more on the scale's measurement.

Though someone with a 38" *ribcage* wouldn't have a 38" chest measurement. You need to take the ribcage measurement, add 5 or 6 (whichever gets the even #), and then subtract that number from the bust measure.

Of course, male authors never seem to know that and think that "38C" is the same as a 38" bust!

All that said, I don't see the point of giving a character's height, weight, and measurements. Closest I come is height and clothing size. :)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Though someone with a 38" *ribcage* wouldn't have a 38" chest measurement. You need to take the ribcage measurement, add 5 or 6 (whichever gets the even #), and then subtract that number from the bust measure.

True, true, I was writing a bit too fast or glibly, I guess. You're right; bust measurement != rib cage. Which reminds me that there's some kind of convoluted measurement process for figuring out the real cup/strap proportions for women, that modern bra-sizing isn't actually a direct equivalent to one's ribcage measurement. (Something like measuring the ribcage, then the 'strap length' and then doing some kind of math against that, and, uh, something else...) Hell, that's almost as byzantine as any other type of tailoring.

All that said, I don't see the point of giving a character's height, weight, and measurements.

Just so long as you avoid 'lithe' or 'lithesome' -- I've already proclaimed a world-wide moratorium on those descriptive terms at least for another decade. Too many authors have already maxed out the generational quota, and now the descriptions just don't mean jack anymore. Sigh!

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

You'd think these authors could consult a medical height/weight chart and know that those measurements were unrealistic. (Not that current height/weight chart recommendations are entirely realistic, IMO, but at least it would be a guideline, and they could extrapolate the additional muscle weight from there.) But the sort of author that quotes such ridiculous body stats probably isn't big on thinking or research.

Don't forget bone structure -- even at my skinniest / most athletic in college (5'7 and 125 lbs -- gaunt, actually, for me), I never wore pants smaller than a size 10 b/c that's what I needed to fit my hipbones. I still wear about a 10/12, depending on the maker, and I'm about 30 lbs heavier; the pants just fit my waist better instead of needing to be taken in there. Ditto jackets; my shoulders and ribcage require about a size 12/14. It steams me to no end when people regard that as fat.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

But the sort of author that quotes such ridiculous body stats probably isn't big on thinking or research.

More like, the author is just plain lazy, IMO. While I don't mind an author who leaves some for me to figure out, in some ways I want the author to tell me what s/he expects me to see, because sometimes this also tells me how the character sees him/herself. I mean, a Japanese man -- at 5'9" -- may see himself as unbearably tall (given the average height in Japan for a grown man is about 5'7") -- and yet his American friends may all consider him borderline-petit, since they're all 6' or taller!

There's also the element of body shape, too: you may wear size 12 b/c of your hips, but you have a small waist proportional to your chest/hips. I'm the reverse, and yet we could 'wear the same size' for hip-measurement, but your pants are baggy in the waist while the same pair on me would have the top button undone! ;-)

[anialove.livejournal.com]

I've been following your rants gleefully for awhile, but this inspired me to stop lurking (at least for one post).

You nailed one of my largest pet peeves. Although last time this bothered me was when a friend showed me Bridget Jones's Diary: realistic that a woman would worry about her weight, unrealistic in the portrayal. The numbers were too low, and besides, she looked fantastic.

But yes, it never fails to bother me when a 5'6'', 130 lb character is described as heavy. Those are my measurements and all my friends describe me as skinny. (No boobs adding weight to that measurement either - I'm A-cup.) And I do agree that shapes and impressions would be far better to use.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I was about 135 when I met CP, and at 5'6", it was a hard weight to maintain -- although, for health/genetic reasons, it's really where I should aim for, or at least try to stay under 140. If we ignore family history and health risks, however, that's a weight that CP has said often he didn't like; to him, I was "too damn skinny" and "all angles and no curves" (even though I was a smallish B-cup, the weight did make my hipbones too prominent).

I can only see 130lbs being 'heavy' on someone 5'6" if -- big if! -- the bone structure is, hrm, very small, and the character has next to no muscle, like practically nada. In that case, the amount of fat would be much higher to produce the weight, and okay, maybe (depending on proportions) one might say the person at least appears heavy thanks to fat requiring four to six times the amount of space to create the same weight as muscle. Still, I might characterize the person as -- at most -- very curvy, but hardly obese by even the craziest of stretches.

I never read Bridget Jones' Diary. I had little interest in it -- don't like much chicklit, anyway, because the main premise of most chicklit-stories grates on my nerves ("which of these two or three really horrible choices is my least-worst pick, because I can't possibly not have a man at all, omg, no!") -- and I had even less when I heard about the movie. The actress is what, like 5'7", and she "had to gain all this weight to play the role" -- she went up to something like 130lbs, and all I saw was snarking about how "fat she'd gotten".

Meanwhile, I'm thinking: wow, she wasn't much before, but now she's so sexy... and all around me is this incredible pressure on the poor woman to drop that weight now that the movie's stopped filming, omg, such a cow!

It was really sad, IMO.

[sans-pertinence.livejournal.com]

Female. 5'10". 137lbs. Size eight or nine, depending. I dare anyone to call me fat. C'mon. Go ahead.

Men. Are. Stupid.

And so, unfortunately, are women.

I give up.

[cerridwene.livejournal.com]

Was linked to this post from a friend and I just have to comment and say thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I cringe every time someone describes their characters as a well built guy over 5'10" with a weight under 140. Makes me wonder if their character has a black hole where they hide the muscles in that case. Anyway I'm just rambling right now.

Once again, Thank you!