Heavy D and the Hero
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/heavy-d-and-the-hero/
I started this post on 25 October, and put it aside because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. In mid-October, I put Heavy D’s “Now That We’ve Found Love” on my running mix and was thinking about the song and how much I liked it (and Heavy D) while I was out one day. Heavy D died unexpectedly on 8 November at age 44, and the news headline made me remember this post and that I’d never finished it. While I’m still not sure that I made every point I wanted to make (my train of thought while out running moves long the lines of Huh. Heavy D. Romance heroes. Why not heavy D heroes? …. Squirrel! Treebranch… manhole cover. Hi doggy! …. Romance heroes. Huh? ) I am still thinking about this topic, and wanted to ask your opinion.
While listening to Heavy D tell me about how he’s found love, I got to wondering whether we’ll ever see heroes who don’t fit a physical ideal - a super hard muscular one. There are built heroes and slender heroes, but even the slender heroes, once they take their shirts off, are described in such a way that almost always mentions muscles. I’ve read runner heroes and swimmer heroes and the absolutely physically astonishing Navy SEAL heroes, whose muscles have muscles of their own. The image of romance heroes is pretty darn sculpted much of the time.
Many hero descriptions include specific mentions of broad chests, narrow hips, defined arms or abs, or all of the above. In some romances, it seems like the heroine was undressing the Incredible Hulk, what with some of the descriptions that made the hero seem larger than life.