Poor Jany

Jany is the main character in my ongoing writing project (I'm afraid to call it my novel; it is more of a developing novel fetus that will, hopefully, not miscarry), The Adventures Of Phatgurl. The story starts with a phat-er, fat-girl who is feeling very down on her luck and insecure and unlovable creating a personal ad. The ad basically says, "I'm desperate. Pick me!" in less harsh words. As a result, she has a lot of really crappy dates, but they doni't come across as crappy to her right away because she is so impressed that she has any dates at all. But she learns as she goes.

At some point, she decides to rewrite her ad and make it sound a little more positive. This leads to increassingly viable dates that are intermingled, of course, with crappy ones, because she is meeting these guys on a personals website, after all. Some of them are just looking for sex, which she does not exaclty shy away from, because it makes her feel somewhat normal, and some of them are just plain nuts, but there are a few that are actually just generally nice guys (oh, and one girl) who are interested in dating. However, her lack of self esteem will not let her believe any of them.

Finally, she decides to stop answering ads and start contacting the guys she's already been out with to see them again; she hasn't seen any of them more than once and realizes that she might need to bite the bullet and ask them out if she wants to really get to know anyone. The basic idea is that in the course of the story, the bad guys help her as much as the good ones in discovering her own sense of self as she grows as a woman. It starts with a quiet, shy, insecure girl and ends with a "woman of the world;" the story turns into a sort of fat girl version of Sex and the City.

And by God, does Jany get beat up.

Not in the story itself; I haven't allowed any of the other characters to physically harm her. But in my writers group, she gets beat up.

My story doesn't get beat up, just my character. Mostly over sex. She is not supposed to have sex with guys she doesn't know. That's a reasonable warning, I guess. But the thing is, it's what my character does. It's what drives her. And part of me, the insecure part that's a lot like Jany, believes that the real reason some members of my writers' group have such a problem with her sex life is that she is fat. In popular culture, after all, fat women are not supposed to be desirable sexual beings.

But I think that's probably just my own prejudice speaking. I think that maybe the problem really is just generational, and probably involves some gender bias as well.

The women (the men in my writers' group don't seem to have a problem with Jany's sexuality) are of different generations than mine. The issue has come up several times. They think the fact that Jany finds herself in sexual situations is deplorable, because they often arise (so to speak) on first dates. I don't find it so deplorable.

In some of the situations, Jany carefully extracts herself and in others, she does not. Sometimes when she allows herself to be "taken advantage of," it is because she is unsure of herself. She wants attention, wants to feel normal. She just doesn't know what to do or say to get herself out of the situation, or she's too shy to try, so she just lets things happen as they will. In those cases, she is perhaps taken advantage of. I'm not convinced of that; I think she knows she is being taken advantage of and allows it to happen, so it really is her own choice.

In other cases, though, it is blatantly her choice. She sometimes chooses to sleep with a man because she is attracted to him, or because she wants to feel powerful, or because she wants to feel close to him. It's just the way the world works.

I tried to explain that I am not writing the next Dickensian novel, or Lolita, or Pride and Prejudice. In other words, I am not trying to write grand literature. I am writing a pop culture chick lit novel where my character starts out being a shy, mousy fat girl and turns into a beautifully confident woman who makes her own decisions about life. She gains confidence in herself as a human being as she gains confidence in herself sexually. The sex part is important because that is how she finds herself. That is how a lot of women find themselves. Right or wrong, bad or good, sexuality is a symbol of womanhood (or manhood, but I'm focusing on women here), and until Jany is the sexual equal of other women she considers more sexually desirable than herself, she can not feel like a real woman. That's my story. Partly because I am telling the story of several women that I know or know of, including myself, all wrapped up into one character, and partly because sex sells. A chick novel without sex would be--well, it wouldn't be a bestseller, let's just say that.

I don't know how to defend myself. I'm not sure if I'm defending myself as an author, myself as a fat woman, myself as a member of my generation, or myself as something else completely that I just can't see yet. And all this without even believing that I need to defend myself, really. Deep down, I know that my character has to defend herself, because I first "met" her (made her up) two years ago or more and since then she has come to life and started writing her own story. I'm just not sure what part of that defense belongs in the story, because the story needs to be authentic but it also needs to jive with what my readers are looking for. It needs to be real.

Back to the drawing board.