Disappointed by the Prince

by Annabeth Leong

At first I thought I was the only one unsatisfied by the ending of Beauty and the Beast. On paper, the story ought to work. Beauty learns to see through the Beast's monstrous veneer and falls in love with the man underneath. At the right moment, that man—a prince—emerges. I suppose it's meant to play as if the prince is the person she has learned to see, so that his appearance is confirmation and validation of the feelings she develops over the course of the story. There's a moral to that story, the idea that true beauty and goodness are inside, not on the surface.

Except that to me the prince always seemed like an imposter who showed up and usurped the place of the dear beast. I knew my heart was supposed to leap with romantic joy when the thin blond man joins Beauty at the end of the story. But I couldn't make myself feel that. I missed the monster, with his awkward sweetness, his turbulent moods, and, yes, his sexiness. Before I was old enough to put that into words, I sensed that Beauty had a lot more chemistry with the Beast than with that perfect-looking prince.

I know plenty of people hate to see the Beast replaced. In the foreword to Kristina Wright's Fairy Tale Lust, Angela Knight discusses this at length. "Personally," she writes, "I liked him better with fur, claws, and a bad attitude." Indeed, the opening story of that book, Delilah Devlin's "The Obedient Wife," is a riff on Beauty and the Beast and allows the beast to remain a beast.

You could talk about kinky sex and bad boys, but believe it or not, that's not where I'm going with this.

My favorite case of this realization (that the beast should stay) is in the body of work produced by fantasy author Robin McKinley. Her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, called Beauty, was an early work. I remember liking the book, and recognizing that it had been a heavy source of inspiration for the Disney movie (bookish Belle seems to have been cribbed from McKinley's story). This book follows the traditional script and changes beast to prince at the end.

However, in 1998, twenty years after writing Beauty, McKinley produced Rose Daughter, another retelling of Beauty and the Beast (and one that I consider to be better, deeper, and much more original). I've lost track of my copy and there doesn't seem to be an electronic edition, so I'm afraid I can't pull out exact quotes, but I recall a fascinating introduction in which McKinley discussed why she felt the need to revisit the story. Then, at the climactic moment, the Beauty character sees the Beast beginning to change into the prince and feels loss, because that's not who she's fallen in love with. The Beast's body reasserts itself, however, and she is glad of it. I remember being so pleased by that moment, that revision of the story.

I think it's because it's actually truer to the moral of Beauty and the Beast than the more common ending. "Rewarding" Beauty for falling in love with a monster by replacing him with a non-monster is actually a slap. It disrespects the nature of the sort of love she's experiencing. Learning to love a person as is, flaws and ugliness included, is a beautiful thing, and I think the true romantic vision of it is not just about acceptance, it's about embrace. Taking away the flaws and ugliness, once they are included in the love, diminishes the love.

Not only that, who's saying those things are flaws? To me, the Beast generally looks better as beast than as prince. Correcting his supposed flaws becomes doubly misguided.

The point is that the Beast of this story actually isn't a monster—not in the sense of evil. As people have written on this topic over the past couple weeks, I've realized that this is an important distinction. Garce and Lisabet, for example, both gave examples of true monsters—beings who by nature aren't capable of loving back. A story about loving a monster, as in loving a being of implacable evil or utterly alien disposition, is disturbing to say the least. Stories about loving a bad person and believing that person will become good make me cringe because to me they ring with the rationalizations of victims of domestic violence.

On the other hand, there is Beauty and the Beast, which I think is about loving someone who is considered by society to be a monster—a very different thing altogether. In my vision of this story, Beauty falls in love with someone who doesn't look "right" and has moments of monstrosity, but is deep down a fundamentally good person fully capable of returning love. This could simply be a comment on how everyone is human and all of us have unlovely parts. I think it's more, though, because of the important role that prejudice and societal judgment often play in the story.

Whenever a monster appears, the question is always whether this is a real monster (implacable evil) or something that seems to be a monster because of prejudice (the Beast, beneficial and nonvenomous snakes, and so on). I look at Beauty and the Beast and see a representation of people who don't live lifestyles approved by the mainstream, or who don't look attractive in a traditional way. I really don't want the message of this story to be to transform and conform (to turn into that bland and supposedly handsome prince). I want to see the Beast stay the Beast, because he's awesome that way.

Voted Worst Dressed, 1987

To all you lovely people back in high school who told me time and again that my lips were too big, my face was too long, my rear was too wide, and my wardrobe was so god-awful horrible that I deserved to be voted "Worst Dressed" my senior year, I present the following evidence:

Exhibit A: My favorite "ugly" dress.

Exhibit B: Me, wearing my favorite "ugly" dress.

Darlings, over twenty years later, we still look fine.

Case closed.

*****

Helen E. H. Madden is a connoisseur of funky t-shirts, stripy socks, and ugly dresses. She was indeed voted "Worst Dressed" in her senior year of high school by a bunch of Izod-wearing freaks who went around with sticks up their butts. When she's not busy looking fabulous... oh hell, when does this woman ever not look fabulous?!

Beauty is in the eye of the author

(I'm on vacation so this post was pre-written and scheduled in blogger to post. I will respond to any comments you may leave when I return on the 8th of Jan.)

Beauty.

Wow. What a topic to tackle in the new year. And since I am doing my post on Christmas night, and haven't seen anyone else's, and won't until I get back on the 8th, I hope I hit the target with it. LOL I also hope that I am coherent. The sleet/ice storm here kept me up way too late last night.

Do our characters have to be beautiful?

To this, I say, to some degree yes, they should be at the very least attractive to the person we partner them with, even if society would not deem them a beauty. Often in stories there is a reference to the female not being of classic beauty, but passing fair. Or the hero, with his broken nose, is just shy of handsome. That's at one end of things. At the other end is the characters that are attractive because of their actions, that grow on their partner.

They don't need to be drop dead gorgeous, and to me, when a character is described that way, it requires me to suspend disbelief because most people just aren't that way. But they should be attractive to each other, and we decide what makes them attractive to each other.

Is beauty more than looks?

Definitely. One of my fav scenes from a book (the book I am not much on overall however) is where a character is trying to decide which man across the room is married to another character, who is a beauty. The guy winds up being ugly, not fanciful ugly, but downright smacked with a dozen ugly sticks ugly. "Oh bless his little heart" ugly. Yet the backstory to the characters is that they knew each other in childhood, and a bond of trust formed that survived puberty and the mismatch of facial features and body. She (the wife in the story) found him attractive, not beautiful but attractive and sexy.

Especially when we are dealing with main characters, and we are writing erotica and erotic romances, they characters need to have some attractivness to them, for their partner at least.

Does our overall story need to be beautiful?

No. Life is messy and ugly.

Hell, sex is messy and at times a bit much. LOL

One of my fav quotes from a TV show is from House, MD. Dr. Cameron is talking about sex, and she says: "Sex *could* kill you. Do you know what the human body goes through when you have sex? Pupils dilate, arteries constrict, core temperature rises, heart races, blood pressure skyrockets, respiration becomes rapid and shallow, the brain fires bursts of electrical impulses from nowhere to nowhere, and secretions seep out of every gland, and the muscles tense and spasm like you're lifting three times your body weight. It's violent. It's ugly. And it's messy. And if God hadn't made it *unbelievably* fun, the human race would have died out eons ago."

Yep, I think that sums it up pretty well. : )

As for the overall story, yeah, life needs to happen. It can't all be puppy dogs and butterflies and rainbows. Some of the best stories I have ever read, life happened in a big way, and it was messy and awful, and at the of the day when the hero and heroine come together, their story was that much better for it all.

Some reality in stories is nice.

One of my stories that I absolutely love deals with a young woman who was raped coming to terms with her sensuality, with the help of the love of her man. (It's called Diggin' Up Bones in case you wondered LOL). In one scene she collapses in the shower, crying her eyes out, because she can't help but rememeber the feel ingof being held down and voilated. I wanted that there, I wanted the ugliness in the story, because it needed to be there. She couldn't just seduce her man, and come to terms with what happened by positive thinking. She was in a dark place and needed to let it out.

Finally, does an erotica/erotic romance author need to be beautiful?

LOL

I wanted to look at all sides of the equation, and writers are very much part of the equation. : )

So, um, ok, looking at Lisabet's photo I would say hell yeah. LOL Cause she's a sexy lady. Classic features and all, as well as the way she holds herself in the photo she shares with us. Looking at my own face, I know that I am attractive in my own way, but I am not beautiful in the classic sense. I know of other writers who would be described by society as plain, or in some cases, as unattractive. Yet when you talk to them, and look into their eyes when they discuss writing, you can see it.

There is something within us, something that accepts and marvels at and appreciates the beauty of the physical expression of love and lust. Something that find beauty in the human form, even if it is only one of the sexes we find beautiful. That something shines through when we talk about our writings, and it is a heady experience to be in the same room with someone when that flash of beauty occurs. It's love and passion and exstacy for what we do ... and it completely overshadows anything else.

We need that quality, that inner appreciation, because we express that in our writings. And that's what makes them beautiful to read.

I can always tell the difference between a story where the author has that quality, and where they are either phoning it in cause they lost it somehow, or just never had it to begin with.

Really, as a reader, that's all the beauty I care about in a story. The beauty of the writer's passion for their work. All else is secondary to me, as I can imagine a character anyway I want, and I could care less what the author looks like.

A Perfect Ten

I got over thinking I was the most beautiful creature in the world when I was nine.

Before then, I would swish around with a towel over my head, pretending I had long, flowing hair instead of what could only be described as a feathered bowl cut. Every mirror I passed was my best friend.

Then I hit puberty. 

Early.

Suddenly, I had my period, a booty like a blossoming J-Lo, and was forced to get a bra to reign in my nipples (first in my school, I think, for all of the above).

The period I could deal with, even though it was kinda yucky, and made it a bit weird to sit through "The Talk" in fifth grade when I'd already had "it" for a year.

Even the bra was kinda cool, since I was the first kid close to my age to need one. Ironically enough, that was the only time in my life that I had anything to brag about up there, seeing as I'm now classified as a "nearly A" cup.

The booty...was harsh. It's tough when other fifth graders in their pencil thin Jordache jeans taunt you for having a big ass. And that was fifth grade...middle school/junior high was brutal.

Baby had back back then. Really stood out amongst the prepubescent hordes, trust me.

I come by it honestly. The "Huber Ass" we call it, after the branch of the family whose genes contributed to my caboose. No amount of dieting, running, calisthenics, or "spot reducing" ever had any effect. And I'm not heavy for my height (yes, I'll share, 5'4" and in the 130's); I also have a very slim torso and waist, which almost makes it worse by really emphasizing by comparison.

I've grown up since I was nine, and maturity has brought acceptance. But for three decades, I hated myself for that one "glaring" physical trait. No amount of positive feedback could make me feel beautiful. I won't go into the media's and fashion industry's effect on body image in young girls and women, since I'm sure you know all the talking points.

At some point, I finally figured out beauty is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. But, cliche or not, inner beauty is what truly counts. After all, that's what I see when I look at the people I love. I don't judge them by society's standard, and at last I've realized that they (at least those whose opinion matters to me) aren't judging me that way either.

For the first time just this past year, someone said to me, "You're beautiful."

And I believed them.

"Thank you," I replied, instead of demurring.

And got a beautiful smile in return.

A Thing of Beauty

By Lisabet Sarai



A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

-- John Keats, Endymion


“Slide your hand across my stomach, baby!”

“Oh, fondle my breasts!”

“I'm hot all over when you touch me...”

The taunts pursued me down the halls of junior high school. There were quieter, more insidious whispers, too, suggestions that I join some boy or another in the back parking lot or under the bleachers. I tried to ignore my tormenters, but for weeks I suffered from a permanent blush. I was paying a heavy price for hormones and imagination.

It all began in study hall, when Bobby intercepted the letter I passed to my friend Nona. It was a draft of an epistle I planned to send to my “pen pal” Glen. I'd never met Glen. He was an older guy Nona knew from her summers at “the lake”, where she had carnal adventures that she hinted about but never really explained. She hooked me up with Glen long distance (this was long before email, of course) and somehow, with his encouragement, we started writing steamy fantasy letters back and forth.

How did I get into this? Honestly, I don't remember. I'm astonished now that I could have been so easily manipulated. But then there were all those hormones...and I wanted Nona to think that I was hip, sexually speaking. Writing to Glen, receiving his notes back, sharing them with Nona, it was all incredibly exciting. It was fun. At least it was until Bobby snatched the folded paper I held out under the desk for my friend to grab.

I realize now that Bobby was probably trying to get my attention, that he probably “liked” me. At the age of thirteen, I was shy, nerdy and really quite clueless about the opposite sex or sex in general, although I thought about boys all the time. Bobby was louder and a lot more confident than I, a smart kid but also a joker. He and I had something of an adversarial relationship in our classes, competing for grades, but I doubt that he really wanted to hurt me with his prank.

It did hurt, though. Overnight I went from being the school egghead to a girl with a “bad reputation”. It didn't matter when I protested that the letter was all imagination. Nobody wanted to believe me.

Normally I'm not the vengeful sort. Nevertheless, I was determined to pay Bobby back for the misery he had inflicted. For days I pondered an appropriate revenge. I wanted to embarrass him, show him that I was smarter than he was, and make him sorry for what he had done.

Finally I hit on what seemed like the ideal strategy. I enlisted the help of my friend Nick. He was one of the only guys who didn't tease me about my dirty little scenarios.

In those days, both boys and girls had to wear uniforms for gym class. Each of us had a locker in the changing rooms where we kept our things. Nick agreed to spy on Bobby to find out the combination for my tormentor's padlock.

Once Nick had obtained this information, I purchased a bottle of cheap perfume at the local Woolworth's. I inscribed the above lines from Keats on classy linen stationery using my most elegant calligraphy and signed the note. On gym day, just before that class, Nick sneaked into the locker room and dumped the whole bottle of scent onto Bobby's gym uniform. He left my message behind so that Bobby would understand who was responsible.

Alas, I didn't get to see the immediate consequences of my stratagem but Nick told me that Bobby's face turned bright red when he opened his locker. The gym teacher forced him to wear his reeking gym clothes for the entire period, much to the amusement of the other guys. A day or two later, Bobby actually came up and apologized for spreading the contents of my letter around. We became friends, though he still enjoyed teasing me. Meanwhile, Nick and I remained close, though our relationship was always platonic. I understand now what a risk he took for me.

I hadn't thought about this experience in a long time, but it popped into my head when I was thinking about this week's post. I had intended to write something quite different, but looking back on this episode from my teenage years I realized that it said a lot about me:

• I've always had a dirty mind. I've been writing sexy stories almost forever—-certainly before I had any sexual experience. And you know, it's still exciting.
• I've always used words to get my way.
• Even when I was shy and insecure, I never allowed myself to be a victim.
• Having a bad reputation, ultimately, might not be so bad after all.

I wonder whether Bobby, Nick and Nona recall these events. At the time, the experience was intense and somewhat painful. Now, burnished by memory, I find that it's a thing of beauty.

Voluptuous - I love the word

Posted by Jude Mason

According to Microsoft Bookshelf 2000:

1. Giving, characterized by, or suggesting ample, unrestrained pleasure to the senses: Voluptuous sculptural forms; a voluptuous ripe fruit; a full voluptuous figure (Sounds sexy as hell to me)

2. a. Devoted to or indulging in sensual pleasures. b. Directed toward or anticipating sensual pleasure: voluptuous thoughts. c. Arising from a contributing to the satisfaction of sensuous or sensual desires. Synonyms: Sensuous, pleasurable, pleasure loving, luxurious, thrill seeking carnal, fleshy, sybaritic

Phew, all righty. Voluptuous sounds pretty damn hot to me. It also means well fleshed, curvaceous and lush. All good things. Don't you agree?

Now, when I went online and did a search for voluptuous women, I was shocked by some of the pictures I found. Thin as a rail waifs who couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.

Another showed a beautiful Jen Hunter, curves in all the right places and then a scandalously frail Jen who looks as if a stiff breeze would knock her over and possibly break her bones.

As you can see, in the picture to the left, she's a vibrant, healthy woman with the well fleshed curves of an attractive young woman. The picture on the right, in my opinion, is terrifying. She's frail and looks as if she's been deathly ill. I'm sorry, but if that's what the young women of today call attractive and the pinnacle of what they want to look at, I'm glad I'm long past it.

When I think of a beautiful woman, and as a bisexual woman I think about it quite a bit, LOL, I picture someone with curves. A woman with a little padding and lush breasts, well rounded hips, and thighs that uh... someone can hang onto.

The amazing picture to the left simply caught my breath when I saw it. The woman isn't fat, but she's got ample curves. Lovely curves, in my opinion. To me, she's more along the lines of what a beautiful woman should look like. Yes?

It seems ever since the fashion industry gained such recognition and women had access to seeing what some designer thought of as beautiful (and I still think it was a man how disliked women) we've allowed them too much power over us. Models are waif thin. I swear if many of them became ill they'd have no resources to fight it off and many of them would perish. They don't have periods, their bodies don't have the resources to allow it. They damage their health, and their possible future as mothers. How sad is that?

Remember Marilyn Monroe? She was the epitome of what womanhood should look like in the years she was in Hollywood. Now, she'd be dieting constantly and ashamed of her body.

Blink!

From what I've heard, she was heading that way, in a hurry just before she died. Her looks had become so important to her, to her 'public' that if she gained or lost a pound, it was in the papers.

Can you imagine living your life like that? Such a tremendous waste of talent. ( I tell you, I would have given my eye teeth to have a figure like hers, at any time!)

Pick up a woman's magazine today. Pretty much any of them, and you'll find weight loss aids, diet pills, powders and meals to slim down by. You'll see stick thin models wearing size 2 clothes that few women will ever be able to wear. And to be completely honest, wouldn't want to fit into if they were thinking with their brains and not some misguided delusional mind.

You'll see men, who are also in this terrible travesty. Slim yes, but with chests bulging with muscles and abs that look more like a washboard than anything human. What a horrible time to raise children. Girls 9 years old dieting. Boys not much older worried they won't cut it in the circles that count at school. They don't have enough hair on their chest/genitals. Their voice is too high. They aren't well endowed enough. What on Earth are we doing to our children?

All righty, lets have a look at some incredibly sexy women. Yup, a tad well-padded, but yowssahs!

From the pages of Hips and Curves, a lovely site that offers some awesome clothing for the Voluptuous women among us. Check them out if you like your women a little more lush, a lot more sexy. The url is: http://www.hipsandcurves.com/

She's a witch... and she's amazing! Wouldn't you love to have her trick or treating at your door, or in your bedroom? Cast a spell on me, please.

The woman to the right, she's dreaming of the lover who left her earlier that morning. She's flushed and her chest heaves with her desire for him...or her.

She's amazing, she hot and her breasts are pressing against the cups of her lingerie. Her cleavage begs a tongue sliding along the delicate cleft. Her thighs are warm, abundant, and draw a hand toward them, to cup and caress.

And then there's little Miss Innocent below, who teases with a smile--draws you close with a wink and could ruin you with the
crook of her finger I'm sure.

She dangerous, she'll eat you alive, and you'd love every damn minute of it wouldn't you?

Wouldn't you love to come home to this bundle of smoldering heat? Even if you knew she'd eat you alive the moment you didn't live up to what she thought of as her rights to pleasure. You'd die trying. LOL

Answers: I wish I had some that I could guarantee would work for everyone. I myself was one of the lucky ones when it came to weight, I was too busy with other issues to think skinny or not skinny enough. I had curves and that can be its own problem. My remedy wasn't to lose the curves but to run from the situation.

My own daughter, she and I always managed to talk about important things when she was growing up. Keeping her head on straight was one of those goals I set for myself and together we managed to do it. Talking, I mean really talking was huge. It doesn't always work though and I know how incredibly lucky I was.

I guess reinforcing, from the age of 2, how important health is rather than beauty. That's gotta help.

I hope you enjoyed my little sojourn into what I think of as sexy women and the importance of not letting someone else dictate what beauty is.

Thin is only one body shape. God has made many others and they are all amazing.

I'd love to hear what you have to say, experiences you've had or your thoughts on the topic.

Hugs