Besides "How Much Do You Weigh?", What Is....?

...the second rudest thing you can ask a woman?

"How old are you?"

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(I know I promised this post over a week ago, but that silly Real Life thing kept me sorta busy. Better late than never, right?)

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Everyone remember Nicole Peeler's post, This Time I'm REALLY Talking About Sex? No? Then click on the link, read it, absorb it (and don't forget the comment section). It was a fun and informative conversation that spawned a brief sidebar. Some of those comments got me thinking (and I do tend to ramble, so apologies right off).

Since, by definition, the majority of protagonists in YA are teenagers, I'm going to limit my post to adult fiction (no, not that adult fiction!) in the realms of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance.

silveradept: I'm still wondering whether the generally-older age of characters in UF lends itself toward the attitude that sex is okay.
Kat Richardson: I'm not sure about the older characters though. I have noticed more characters in their thirties, but there are still a lot who are in their twenties (and if you're talking YA, they are all in their upper teens and early twenties, by default.)

The more I stare at my bookshelves, the harder-pressed I am to find a single title featuring a heroine (or hero) older than mid-thirties. And when I say that, I mean physical age, not necessarily their supernatural age (such as the two-hundred year-old vampire). The majority are in their twenties and early thirties.

Three very good reasons for that comes immediately to mind.

First, most of our heroines need to be in peak physical form in order to do their ass-kicking. Not saying a woman over forty can't kick a lot of ass (hello, Sigourney Weaver!), but it's much less common. And it's also (unfortunately) easier for us to believe in a twenty-two year-old beating a vampire to a pulp, than it is to believe in a forty-six year-old (although I don't know about anyone else, but I'd have loved to see Joyce Summers kicking some ass alongside Buffy). Physical performance, though, is an important factor in a character's age.

Second, generally if a character is under the age of eighteen, people will wonder if it's YA. Even if the subject matter and tone are not YA, the age of the protagonist can pigeon-hole a book into the wrong genre. It's amazing how many people assume their manuscript-in-progress has to be YA just because their protag is seventeen, even though they know nothing else about the requirements of the genre (because let's face it, if age was all that made a book YA, there are a lot of books out there in the wrong section of the bookstore *g*).

Third, sex. Yes, yes, I know there is sex in YA! And I also know there are different levels of graphic sex in YA. But for those of us familiar with Jeaniene Frost's One Foot in the Grave, is there a Chapter Thirty-Two in YA? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking). But beyond the question of how graphic and how often the sex, there is the question of the second party. I get a little squicked at the idea of a sixteen year-old having sex with a two-hundred year-old vampire (no matter how old he was when he was turned, and yes, on Buffy, too, soul mates or not). I care a lot less if she's twenty-two, or thirty, or forty. Age and experience, even only a few years, makes such a relationship seem more believable, and it makes a lasting relationship seem more possible (how many high school sweethearts really stay together after graduation, and how much of that has to do with one or both parties maturing?).

Readers: Do you tend to consciously notice the age of UF/PNR heroines? Do you think it affects how you perceive the character?

Writers: How much thought do you put into the age of your heroine/hero? Do you find they are typically older/younger than you are? About the same age?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I do notice the age of characters. It does make a difference, too. I prefer an MC in his/her mid-twenties. At that age they are old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway. They are also at their physical peak.
Anonymous said…
I tend to make my protagonists younger than me, because I'm more familiar with the sensations of an age I've already been through than one I have yet to arrive at, though the rest of the characters are aged according to the needs of the story.

To you, a teenage protagonist may seem too young to attract the interest of a two-hundred-plus vampire, but you may feel that way because of the biases of the culture you grew up in, rather than because it's truly unrealistic. Teens throughout history have managed to hold their own in arranged and voluntary marriages to older men, and the number of times an older man has deliberately sought out an under-18 girl because he was attracted to her are uncountable.

I have no doubt a two-hundred-plusser might find him/herself drawn to the young flesh of a ripe-but-unplucked girl. It is not his desires that are questionable; it is his motives. ;-)

On a side note, there may not be a Chapter Thirty-Two in YA, but there can be love interests who it is implied have had those Chapter Thirty-Two experiences "off-screen" or between chapter breaks...
Deb said…
I don't really notice the age of a protagonist unless it's older or younger than I expected. Since it's not usually first sentence material, sometimes I've formed a mental picture that includes their age.

As far as my own writing, my characters tend to be younger than me, mostly because sometimes I feel like mentally I'm younger than my real age. The age of my characters has been slowly getting older. I used to be much more comfortable writing young teenagers. Then for a while I was all about the 18-21 set. Now, I tend to think around the 25 age range. There are exceptions to those rules, but mostly that's where my comfort zone ends up.
Nicole Peeler said…
I want mine 30, and hot, and rarin' to go, and tough, and single, and butt kicking. In other words, JUST LIKE ME. Or something along those lines. ;-)
tom and maidenfine - Thanks for your comments! It's nice to see varying viewpoints on the topic.

talshannon - I have no doubt "Chapter Thirty-Two" experiences are implied or off-screen in YA fiction. I was more curious if YA UF ever gets quite as explicit on-screen as adult UF. Not being a wide reader in YA, it's why I asked. ;)

Nicole - LOL!

And to answer my own questions, I notice ages less in books I've read, than in the ones I write. Looking over my trunk novels, all of my heroines except one have been in their twenties (the exception was thirty-two).

My current heroine, Evy, is so much fun to write. She was twenty-two when she died, still emotionally young, even after an extremely violent life. The body she resurrects into is twenty-seven. The ages I chose were very important to her development.

For other characters, age is often established based on their backstory and what they've already gone through before the story starts.
Anonymous said…
Off the top of my head, the only person I can think of who will consistently have their Hot Woman What Kicks Ass characters be in their forties is Elmore Leonard.

Christopher Moore also has a few protagonists in their forties, or at least damn near forty, in his books.
Anonymous said…
I can overlook age to a certain extent. I will admit that I feel like a total perv when I read YA sex scenes involving teens. It makes me feel like a woman in a trench coat hiding in the bushes and spying.

Ideally, I'd prefer my characters be in a 25-35 age range because, at 30 years old myself, it is a period that I can relate to.
alanajoli said…
One of the first UF I picked up was Julie Kenner's Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom, which features a woman in her 40s, I believe, who returns to her calling as a demon slayer. The Broken Heart, Texas series by Leaguer Michele B has an older protag, also (granted, she's just been turned into a vamp, so there's that--and I'm actually not *positive* on her age, but I assume late thirties at youngest, given the age of her children). So there are definitely some older heroines out there--and I like them in the mix. :)
Anonymous said…
Not that it hasn't spawned an interesting discussion, but when I said "generally-older" in the previous post, I meant "not teenagers", landing in the 20-30 age range.

Joyce kicking ass would have been good, though.

As someone who works around books and the mostly-artificial distinctions of J, YA, and so forth, I notice that if the main character is under eighteen, it does tend to get filed down in the age range they think it will appeal to. For which my Calvin and Hobbes-reading self says, "Stupid, stupid rat creatures.", proving that I can malaprop at least as well as Opus.

Oh! Back on topic. For me, so long as the age range is well-portrayed, it doesn't matter that much. A fit forty-to-fifty (which was what I thought Angelina Jolie was aiming for in the Tomb Raider movies, never mind what Ms. Croft's actual age is) would be okay, so long as it were believable about the body issues that come with that.

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