I am sure everyone of you has their pet peeves, which are used frequently in books – or not, but those few times are still too often.

I sure do. Sometimes I think it’s plain bad writing, sometimes it’s just a feeling of ‘why?’. Whatever the reason may be, my emotions range from being annoyed to bored to angry to enduring. It has a lot to do with my liking of the book, the author and the idea that is presented.

I’ll use Things that need to stop – or at least decrease in appearance for talking about those pet peeves. Maybe you share my dislike, maybe you can show me the positive aspects and I can endure them better.

So much for introduction, let’s start with today’s topic!

Beauty in books.

It doesn’t matter which genre I’m reading, it’s like in every book I read all the characters are attractive. Or at least the main ones. It is no body positivity that is represented but today’s constricting beauty standards. It is worse with female characters, I think.

I have read books in which EVERY woman was described as attractive and each woman looked more or less like the one before. Hair colours may vary but not much. Seriously? Okay, now I know which type the author has. Why do we have to know that the waitress, who is just bringing coffee, is very good looking while the male friend we are meeting in the cafe, is maybe not described at all? If he is, most of the time he gets ‘personality’. Like he isn’t looking like the main character (if he is male) and he isn’t looking like the waiter. To sum it up, his appearance is his own and he is not judged because of it. There are way more important things about him.

This mostly happens if the main character is male. If we are reading about a heroine all the boys/men are attractive and manly (read: muscled, strong jaw, strong, taller than her, you name it). A lot of books tell us that the bad guy is oh-so-hot. Why is this important?! A lot of the time it is so important that she stops in a fight and looks at him and is like “he is sooooo good looking *dreamy sigh*”. Hello? If I am in distress I don’t have the brain capacity to judge other people’s attractiveness? Or the want/need to do that? I won’t drool over biceps?! I’m busy saving my ass…

What do you think about beauty in books?