random thoughts on genderswitch

[pensnest]

So, I'm just wondering, how is it that so many people who write boy-turns-into-girl fics seem to think that a boy's jeans will just slide right off a girl's hips? Because, no!

I just read a (really cool) AJ-as-girl story, in which girl!AJ had to have a belt to hold up his jeans. AJ. Who practically *has* no hips. Now, if she'd been unable to pull them up over her newly-feminine hips, that would have made sense. No doubt a female version of AJ Maclean would be small and wiry and not endowed with lush curves like, say, a female Nick would be (cor!), but there are certain fundamentals, if you'll excuse my saying so, of feminine anatomy, and one is that the hips *exist*.

So, peeps. What's with the hipless wonders?

Comments

[milosflaca.livejournal.com]

mmm I see your point there, but as a girl that LOVES gender bender fics, it might have to do with the fact, that eventhough we switch the genders it's still hot to think that our boys will look still mannish as women.

It's hot (at least to me it is) to see boys dressed as girls. Don't ask me why it just works for me.

So maybe in an attempt of not loosing that man side of the characters we tend to say that the now girl is hipless or something like that.
Of course it gets worse with AJ, who is skinny as hell and after all there are women who have no hips. Those kind of women that you stare at them from the back and you swear they are men and when they turn around no! they are women.

I don't know if this makes sense or not...
But I do love gender benders. Those are my favorite kind of fics I must admit.

[pensnest]

It's just that it seems weird to me that so many of the writers - who are, I expect, female - seem to be unaware that girls have hips! Yes, sure, there are some girls with very skinny hips, but if they're in for an exploration of "what's different when you're a girl" going for the no-hips type seems an odd choice... Not every woman needs a bra, but we don't tend to get stories where the newly girlified boy has breasts that are barely there.

I think it makes sense to translate body type across gender in a recognisable way—so that, say, Chris ends up curved and cuddly, JC becomes slender and model-shaped, etc. I do see the appeal of having the characters still quite boyish, but for me, it works better if they're more definitely women.