In romance, there seems to be a preponderance of ebony-haired heroes. My guess is that their prevalence cuts across all of the sub-genres about equally. Vampire heroes especially are mostly dark-haired (at least on the covers), which I’m assuming is a symbolization of their supernatural and dangerous qualities.
All of the above got me to wondering about blond heroes in science fiction romance. I don’t recall very many of them. The only blond science fiction romance hero I can currently recall with extreme clarity is Turner Pascal from SUNRISE ALLEY by Catherine Asaro. Thanks to a tip by Enduring Romance’s Kimber An during our recent discussions on branding SFR, we know that Susan Grant’s STAR PRINCESS has a blond hero (Prince Ché Vedla). And when I ran the feature on Samhain Publishing’s forthcoming space opera anthology, we learned that Robert Appleton’s story will feature a blond hero.
Okay…that’s three. Which makes the ratio of dark-haired heroes to blonds in SFR about 20 to 1. So, are blond heroes not alluring enough?
Does the trend toward dark-haired heroes represent a more progressive attitude toward depicting heroes in general—i.e., hair color isn’t a significant indicator of inherent goodness/ethical behavior as it often was in old skool pulp SF? What about a blond-haired hero as a worldbuilding detail? Should it be used judiciously to avoid falling back on descriptive shorthand? Or is the prevalence of dark-haired heroes its own shorthand, that of the mysterious hero with a dark past who exists to enthrall the heroine with his sexual prowess?
What about in other mediums? Here are some of the male film and television science fiction romance blond/dirty blond heroes (or more specifically, romantic SF heroes) that stood out to me:
Flash Gordon (all-American Football hero)
Captain America/Steve Rogers (definitely all-American hero)
George Taylor (Charlton “Take your stinking paws off my dirty blond hair” Heston)
Mike Donovan from the original V (played by Marc Singer)
Steve Zodiac (FIREBALL XL5)
Luke Skywalker
STAR TREK’s Captain Kirk (In the 1973 animated series, he’s depicted as an outright blond).
What are your thoughts about blond heroes in science fiction romance? Want more of them, or is hair color inconsequential to you? Authors, do you tend to avoid using them because they’re not considered “dark” enough for the current market, or does it truly not matter?
Joyfully yours,
Heather
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Should Blond Heroes Have More Fun?
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26 comments:
Someone cranked the ol' adding machine and figured out that more books sold with dark-haired heroes on them. They didn't make the time to find out WHY. Instead, they just slapped more brown-haired dudes on more book covers and called it good.
That's my bitter opinion, 'cause you know I got a thing for blonds. Married one and now I gotta a whole herd of 'em scampering all over my house.
Besides Luke Skywalker, Annakin and Obi Wan Kenobi are blonds too.
Tom Paris of Star Trek Voyager was blond. And a pilot. I have a thing for pilots too. Married one. Now, I gotta whole herd of little co-pilots scampering all over my house.
Anyway...
Legoles is blond. Oh, wait, LOTR if Fantasy genre. Oh, so what? (((grin)))
Did I tell ya? In my current WIP, I made all three of the most prominent male characters in the story all BLOND. It is my writerly act of rebellion. In fact, every hero in all of the novels I've polished up for submission so far have been blond.
And pilots.
Hmmm...
Black hair has been part of the vampire stereotype at least since Count Dracula. It's not just romance; in fantasy, horror, high literature, and any other genre you find them in, they're dark haired with an occasional gray streak to show variety. {Smile}
Considering how long the "Tall, Dark, and Handsome" stereotype has been around, I'm not sure dark-haired heros are particularly progressive. I think movies have preferred to pair off a brunette hero with a blond heroine from the beginning. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
Logan's Run had the blond Micheal York.
I think you could stretch to say 5th Element was, if not SFR, then romantic SF. Bruce Willis is blond in that one.
Honestly, it's all Han Solo's fault. He broke the mold. If I were to pick my favorite look for the genre, it'd be his dark eyed, dark haired look. But it doesn't matter so much to me when it comes down to it. As long as he's a hero worth pulling for, he can have purple hair or none--ala Vin Diesel.
Oh, as for personal preference, I really don't care how a guy looks. Hair color, eye color, nationality, scars, etc. aren't important. {smile}
The truth is, when you have fragile health, it's wise to be practical. (Getting badly sick like I did this summer wasn't unusual. What was unusual was getting hit by a second illness in the same year, especially before I could recover emotinally and physically from the first. {small smile}) Anyway, when I cut all the fictional men who I'm not reasonably sure wouldn't cut and run the first time I got sick, there aren't that many guys left. If they're at least willing to come back when I'm feeling better - never mind hang around while I'm sick - they can stay as long as they like. {Lop-sided Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
I have had an extended thing for blondes for the past few WIPs. So far, I have five--count 'em--FIVE WIPs featuring blond heroes. Actually, I shouldn't call them heroes...they're kind of anti-heroes. Not all tortured and angsty.
I'm a sucker for the Dread Pirate Westley (duh, who wouldn't be? :D ), but I think I've actually had a thing for the blond anti-hero ever since Rutger Hauer brought it in Ladyhawke as Navarre opposite Michelle Pfeiffer (or maybe before then in Blade Runner).
Also, TVTropes says it best : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlondGuysAreEvil
Go, Xandra!
Heather, all the Vash royals have coppery blond hair and gold eyes, a royal trait! :) So, you can add Rom B'kah from The Star King to the blondie boyz list. :)
That's funny. I don't think about it much. My characters....just are.
Leo Eyler the hero in the sequel to "Marked For Pleasure" is a blond.
I think the preponderance of "dark haired" heroes might be more of a "what you see is what you get". In my Command series at Liquid Silver, my heroes had dark hair (Jake--black, Paul--brown, Donny--brown) because genetically, dark hair occurs more often.
A blond male is not as common as a brown haired or black haired male.
Variety is the way to go.
Well, I married a dark haired man, so my heroes tend to be dark, but in my upcoming release GIRL GONE NOVA, the hero is blonde.
I wonder what the ratio of blonde to dark is in movie stars?
Pauline Baird Jones
THE KEY, avail now
GIRL GONE NOVA, 4/2010
I can only think of Susan Grant's blond heroes. I read a blog post recently, unfortunately I can't remember where now, that had done a survey of romance novels and discovered that even when the hero was blond in the story, often the publisher put a dark-haired man on the cover. The most powerful man in my fantasy series has long blond hair, and his will be book five in the series. I hope when he is the hero I get a blond on the cover or I'll feel I'm cheating the readers.
Well, I guess I have three things to say.
#1 look for a platinum/white blonde hero in book three of the Realms Beyond series.
#2 I also try to mix it up just because you get the SF flack that they entire universe shouldn't be WASPish. That is some heavy flack to deal with, so I get nervous creating any blonde heroes/heroines. So I try to turn to my worldbuilding so if anyone accuses me of whitewashing the universe, I can back it up. Cultures with low light radiation exposure will be fair, ones with high light radiation exposure will be dark, and I'll throw in the occasional whacked out color like green/blue/unreal red just to keep things interesting. I agree that the majority of people on the planet have dark hair, so I have a hard time making the universe "lighter" than our own planet.
#3 Purely because it is interesting, lionesses prefer lions with dark manes over lions with light ones as mates. It's true. I saw it on Discovery. It turns out when a lion is thrashed in a fight, his mane grows in lighter during the next shedding, so a lion with a dark mane hasn't had his booty kicked in a long time and is in good health.
RE: Jess' item the second--
Even though there is a trope of evil guys being blond, this is why I made a particular villain in one of my stories blond. The good guy in that story would on Earth be considered Indian (picture Hrithik Roshan or Sendhil Ramamurthy). Like Jess pointed out, this appearance can be attributed to the planet's environment. It all comes back to the world-building for me.
Jess said: "Purely because it is interesting, lionesses prefer lions with dark manes over lions with light ones as mates. It's true. I saw it on Discovery. It turns out when a lion is thrashed in a fight, his mane grows in lighter during the next shedding, so a lion with a dark mane hasn't had his booty kicked in a long time and is in good health."
I read something about this and it stayed with me. Maybe, probably, there's some kind of evolutionary explanation for why many women find the dark ones so appealing. I know I do.
The last blondie I date was, strangely, an Irish Gypsy. It was a looooong time ago.
Joannah Lindsey had a blonde hero in Warrior's Woman, I think. And if I'm not mistaken, (would have to check to be sure, and can't at the moment) Robin Owens' Tine Holly is blonde.
As for me, I don't generally write blonde heroes for a very simple reason. I like men with dark hair better. That doesn't mean I'll never write a blonde hero, just that I lean toward brunettes.
We had a similar discussion at the Obsidian Bookshelf.
http://obsidianbookshelf.blogspot.com/2009/09/blonds-brunets-and-redheads.html
The salient point in my comment:
"Brunet is still the default. Most people have brown hair in some shade. There's an ordinaryness to it."
The problem with blond heros is the Aryan Ubermensch Hero Saves the World stereotype, which can get even more problematic, depending on how the villains are written.
I like blond men. A lot. I married one. But I still wrote 12 blonds to 23 brunets and 12 with jet black hair (Mediterranean, mostly, but African diaspora as well)
I agree that there is something about the tall, dark and handsome thing that has lodged in our literary psyches.
I have a blonde hero in my Urban Fantasy, but write bruntettes far more often. Want to see a real discrepancy? How many red-headed heroes have you seen? Aside from the Celtic/historical romance category that is.;-)
I've never been attracted to red-headed men, (well, not often) but I wrote my hero in an upcoming sf/romance that way, just to be fair.
I love the underdog.
Frances Pauli
http://francespauli.com
"Maybe it's because Fabio has retired," Marilynn said sarcastically.
My own personal taste is toward dark-haired men, but a number of my heroes have been blond.
I chose to make my hero Tristan in STAR-CROSSED blond for a genetic/plot reason. Dark hair is the dominant gene, and there weren't enough blonds on the ship which started the human colony of Arden so blonds have all but disappeared.
Tristan is blond and from Earth so his coloring makes him exotic to the women of Arden, and, therefore, very valuable.
While I prefer dark hair IRL, I think I've been pretty even-handed in color distribution in my writing--it depends on how the character looks in my mind's eye, not a specific thought of "I'm going to have a blond this time."
I can't say if I'm more inclined to read a book with a dark-haired hero or not, either. I'll get a picture of him from the author's description or cover (unless they've used the old cut 'em off at the chin pic), but it doesn't matter in the long run.
The hero of the Mudflat series is both blond and short and won the 2009 EPPIE for best fantasy in the book TARBABY TROUBLE. He's back this year as a finalist for the 2010 award in MUDFLAT TOY BOY. There is a tall dark guy in the series but he's a pain.
If you haven't been there, Mudflat is the corner of Seattle where old magic lives and author Phoebe Matthews hangs out. See ya!
Though I always prefered blonds in real life--my hubby is a blue-eyed blond--my heroes run about 50/50. My first two novels have dark-haired male MCs, but in my third WIP, the hero is from a splinter race of green-eyed blonds with fixed genetics. My fourth has a blond cop for the male MC.
Since the hair color is very much a part of who my heroes are, I thinnk I'd have a real issue with a cover that depicted the wrong hair color. I know book covers are only supposed to be a "marketing tool" but if the art doesn't match the story, it bugs readers (not to mention the author).
Pierce Brosnan. Tom Selleck. Harrison Ford. I'll show my age. Cary Grant.
I'm married to a blond and I can tell you after 30 years, blond men don't age well in terms of hair color. Dark hair stays dark or adds silver. Blond goes... gack. Neither silver nor whatever.
Also blond hair is Beach Boy, it's Peter Pan, it's no responsibilty. Me saying so? No. Our culture. Try a different culture but ours is what it is. Work with it or define it otherwise.
My Philip Guthrie (HOPE'S FOLLY--just nommied for an RT Reviewers' Choice Best Book Award) is prematurely silver. Sexy.
~Linnea
You're right, blond heroes have become an endangered species. They started out big in western Europe--fantasy heroes like Tristan and Siegfried--while most other cultures stuck to their own dark-haired types.
My hero in The Mythmakers has the classic Scandinavian look. Think of him as a gentleman Viking. I chose that because he's out of step with the weary state of humanity in the future. He represents hope. Freshness. Weird accents.
Blonde hair traditionally represents virtue and innocence in women, and even though that sounds like a western European thing, middle Eastern men were/still are obsessed with blonde hair and pale skin.
For male heroes, it's grown into a novelty thing. Daniel Craig caused a stir as "the blond Bond" when he was announced, but now he just IS Bond. No one cares. I think on the whole women just prefer dark-haired men--it's that hint of mystery, danger. I'm betting more women prefer Han Solo than Luke Skywalker. Not sure that would have been the case once upon a time, though.
Speaking from a bloke's perspective, blond hair on a man is ever so slightly more feminine than dark hair. Especially blond curls. *lol* Goldilocks.
Fascinating topic!
Is it my wishful thinking or does the hero of Linnea Sinclair's next novel, REBELS AND LOVERS, have a blond hero? I can't quite make it out on the cover, but I think he's a dark blond. There are so many delicious variations, you know.
When I was skimming the comments the first time, I thought Linnea said her nommed for an RT award, ie nom nom nom. Not that both nommed and nommied aren't accurate.
I am writing a blond hero right now but I write more dark haired heroes. When you're talking human stock, there's just more people with dark hair in general, plus more melanin. So proportionately the industry might be getting the dark HAIR right...
To me it really doesn't matter what color the hero's hair is. And in the historical romances I've written so far, my heroes hair colors run the spectrum from blond to dark brown.
In my work in progess SRF, I'm writing a light haired hero. The heroine has the dark locks. LOL.
Was watching HOW TO STEAL A MILLION the other night and realized Peter O'Toole is a blondie. Fun movie and he's adorable and has great chemistry with Audrey Hepburn.
Will it cause tremors in the force if I admit I never look that closely at cover couples?
First time I saw Twilight, I thought the vampires didn't look at all like the book. Went home and they did. Realized I'd "cast" them in my head how they seemed to me, reading about them. I even had the hair color wrong on one of them. LOL! I have no idea why I skimmed over or changed that while reading.
I also am not wild about book videos that have pictures or actors. They kind of get between me and the whole reading experience.
Sometimes they even put me off, because we don't all have chemistry with the same kinds of people.
As a writer, I understand the desire for the cover to be right, but as a reader...I never even noticed Fabio until a friend pointed him out to me. I was like, he's real? LOL! I had no clue they were using real people. LOL!
I like a nice cover, but I don't look at it as a guide for "casting" in my head when I'm reading.
Not saying this well, but I think I mean, as writers the best we can hope for is that readers will engage and forget everything but our story?
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