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Advanced-Ad6676 t1_j2a4j71 wrote

I’ve been listening to a lot of Stephen King short stories and am shocked how every female character’s breasts are described when they are introduced. Not shocked at how they are described, but shocked that they’re described at all. Who cares? The justification I’ve read is, “a lot of his stories are from the pov of the male character and men notice women’s breasts.” We also mentally debate whether or not it’s a good time to take a shit, but that never makes it into books.

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npeggsy t1_j2a8eh6 wrote

I am a big time fan of Stephen King, but I agree with everything you've said here. I think the only thing that's worth raising is there really aren't that many fans trying to justify it (at least not on his subreddit), a lot of people who love his books have issues with this too.

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Skeegle04 t1_j2acs0e wrote

I was made aware of this years ago by one of my classmates (long red hair, supple petite breasts, round, pushing through a cardigan) who was reading Bag of Bones. Really kind of weird, though I still read King

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laowildin t1_j2abou6 wrote

So weird to me how whenever this tendency is brought up men flock to the comments to say, "But it makes sense for the character because this really is all young men think or care about!"

So yall just outing yourselves like that?!

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joeld t1_j2ai574 wrote

To the extent that it is true and they are outing themselves, maybe they could consider that exactly this kind of lizard-brain writing re women characters is part of the reason they’ve been pavloved into being obsessed like that

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fuckit_sowhat t1_j2aheym wrote

Also when they say it’s “the character, not the author” who feels/thinks this way. Okay, sure, but who wrote the character that way? The author!

So it’s not the author who is sexist towards women, but rather the character. That the author made and could have created with any characteristics they wanted. And they chose sexism.

At the end of the day though, I don’t care if the author is sexist or not, I have no interest in reading about un-challenged, blatant, casual sexism in my books that should be fun. I deal with enough of it in real life.

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zzrryll t1_j2akc7j wrote

> who wrote the character that way? The author!

Well. Plus, as a male human, I definitely think some odd thoughts here and there that I don’t see conveyed in a novel.

To your point, the author doesn’t choose to have the protagonist randomly think “Jesus. My taint smells like death today” when said protagonist hasn’t showered in a few days and they’re wearing fabrics that don’t breathe well.

In that case the author is choosing to omit random brain noise that doesn’t add to the story. I’d argue that any chatter about a woman’s bust size could also be omitted as non-pertinent brain noise.

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balwick t1_j2av03f wrote

"The author" also wrote every antagonist in those books, and the murders, genocides, and other atrocities inflicted by those characters are not held against the author.

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astonaidan t1_j2arvnn wrote

Not really outing themselves though, its literally all young men think about. It would be like me as an older man writing about seeing a nice mint tea

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munificent t1_j2arqqz wrote

> We also mentally debate whether or not it’s a good time to take a shit, but that never makes it into books.

Stephen King will definitely have a character thinking about needing to take a shit. I'm pretty sure I recall multiple characters pissing themselves. Hell, one character in Under the Dome spends most of the POV chapters dealing with their migraines (when they aren't, you know, murdering people and commiting necrophilia).

The whole vibe of Stephen King is that he peels back the decorous surface and shows all the gross, creepy, murderous, dirty, selfish, avaricious aspects of human nature that we try to pretend don't exist. If you want an escape from any of the whole rainbow of base instincts that humans struggle with, then King is not your jam.

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Upton_Sinclair_Lewis t1_j2a7amn wrote

"Fan service" ?

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Griffen_07 t1_j2al0ae wrote

Got it in one. Blood, sex, and graphic violence sells. The exact mix varies by genre but at this point it’s the chief difference between YA and adult.

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Crackertron t1_j2ac0h1 wrote

Can you give some examples? The only one that comes to mind is the Mist where the neighbor is creeping on the main character's wife.

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grimache83 t1_j2afw2u wrote

I'm just starting The Institution & he described an underage teen girl something along the lines of "budding breasts". Also a lot of the flashbacks in IT w/ the girl character, I mean hell, there's a scene in that book that's basically all the boys running a train on her, I felt very creeped out reading that. I'm a huge King fan, but yeah, it's a thing with him.

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Sei926 t1_j2aj5cv wrote

I stopped reading Mr. Mercedes for that reason

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Crackertron t1_j2ahee4 wrote

So 2 novels, one of which is from the 80s. Anything from Night Shift or Everything's Eventual?

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JasonAble t1_j2ar6kx wrote

Sure. I'm a fan of King btw, it's fine to admit he has a slightly weird fixation on boobs and fat people and still enjoy his work/think he's a decent person. I excluded several instances that seemed more natural or necessary than these, although I have only read Night Shift out of the two specific works you requested.

Night Shift:

"My sister was a girl with pigtails, still without breasts." (pre-teen girl)

"There is a rolling IV tray with two bottles hung from it, like a Salvador Dali dream of tits."

Everything's Eventual:

"(Roland believed this one might be a woman, with the dangling vestiges of breasts beanth the vest it wore)"

"The one in the red vest was female. Her bare breasts swinging beneath the dirty red vest were the last things he saw..."

"Or maybe she's blowing GM cowboys in Austin or Wendover - bending forward until her breasts press flat on her thighs beneath a calendar showing tulips in Holland; gripping set after set of flabby buttocks in her hands and thinking about what to watch on TV that night, when her shift is done."

"I was aware of her breasts pushing against me, and the wet, warm clamminess over them."

"I could feel Diane's breasts brush against my back as she gasped for breath."

"She wore the medal until breasts grew around it like ordinary miracles."

"(the head housekeeper, she of the formidable gunshell tits and set, red-painted mouth)"

"I would meet a cute chick with nifty little tits"

"She sounded like the kind of woman who needs a smack every second week or so to keep her tits up."

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grimache83 t1_j2ai8u8 wrote

I don't think I've read those. I know the Dark Tower series has some weird sexual stuff, The Stand too. Browse this thread I found for plenty more. I'm not arguing to not read King, but you can't ignore the fact that a lot of his books have things like this.

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TuckerThaTruckr t1_j2b2m7q wrote

The only excuse for that is a lot of his old stories were written specifically to be published in pulpy story magazines, many of which were marketed to men. Kind of an “it was the style at the time” excuse and King does have some weird passages but he gets a pass in my book. He seems like good people. It’s hard to hold older art to 2022 pc standards

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TheSiegmeyerCatalyst t1_j2b6j32 wrote

Hyperion is this way, too.

There are a grand total of 2 women in the story who have any meaningful part to play at all who are not sexualized. Dan Simmons has an uncomfortable fixation on describing breasts and nipples. Not even battle scenes or underage girls are safe.

Book reads like a competent adult author did a professional rendition of a high school boy's draft of a scifi plot.

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DokZayas t1_j2anwzs wrote

There is never a debate when I have to shit.

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supergnawer t1_j2dd28z wrote

I mean, I'm a guy, and I do notice breasts. I will not normally talk about it, but I do that. So for me it's just a detail that adds to the character. Also Stephen King mentions a whole lot of gross details like that, that's the point of his writing. For me personally, it's something along the lines of saying openly what everyone's thinking. Like, I know this subject is gross, but it affects my life, and I like that someone was able to discuss a similar experience.

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