Hair

A recent review of Julie Leto’s book, Phantom Pleasures (in passing, I viewed the hero’s old fashioned, flowery talk as a feature, not a bug), included a comment thread that digressed into the topic of characters’ hair.

They discussed the preponderance of red hair in romance novel heroines (this has also been a topic in YA), as well as the lack of blond heroes (this is often attributed to the fact that blond heroes don’t sell covers).

I started looking at the characters in my own novels, natch. In the unsold romances, I had brown/brown, red/blonde (yes, a redheaded heroine, but her hair is truly awful, a short, frizzy orange mop), blonde/blonde (my model for this hero was Sean Bean), brown/brown. Only the last heroine, a brunette, had hair that the hero ever spent time thinking about. Hers was really gorgeous, though. Long and thick and rich in color.

The two main characters of my contracted novels have, respectively, average hair and really great hair, but I don’t spend much time talking about either. Their hair is not particularly interesting to me, to the people they interact with, or to the story at large.

Amy has nondescript brown hair. Unlike the covers on the books, it’s not incredibly long. In the first book, it’s a longish, layered bob that she can barely get into a ponytail. It’s grown out somewhat in the second book, and over the summer, she experimented with red streaks. (College is when I discovered hair dye, so I figured Amy could, too.) The only description you get in book three is that she can still get it in a ponytail. Amy likes ponytails. (I hated them, personally. They hurt.)

Jenny, Clarissa, and Odile get much more in depth hair descriptions. I think Amy has a bit of hair envy going on when it comes to Clarissa’s gorgeous, long blond tresses (possibly extensions), and with Jenny, her endless hair is… well, you people who have read the books know what it is.

I had really long hair when I was in college, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered to cut it. It was probably as long, if not longer than the hair of the cover-model-Amy, and really, really thick. I cut it all off the year after I graduated. That’s a story in and of itself.

Astrid, the heroine of the unicorn book, looks like this.

Her hair is actually lighter than that, though, more like a white-blond, cornsilk kind of color. She showed up that way, and she showed up being named Astrid, too. One of the few characters who sprung, fully-formed like that. My little Athena.

So Astrid’s got this gorgeous, to-die-for hair, if you stop and think about it, which she never does, and as a result, the narrative never does. It’s not particularly practical in her line of work, so she tends to keep it tucked away in braids as well. I know for a fact that it’s not what her love interest finds attractive about her.

I wonder if people will meet her, see that she’s got waist-length, white blond hair, and decide that I’ve tipped over into Rapunzel land. Or Ayla land. Or Eowyn land.

Hmmmm, interesting. Perhaps I’ll just say it’s an homage to all three.