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I think that George R. R. Martin's female characters are generally well described but sometimes he "slips" on some details.

Like Sansa's first period... I mean, really? It was like a pool of blood... usually it doesn't become a proper period until, like, 6 months. He's probably thinking about problems that much older women have. That was unrealistic.

Also Cersei/Taena scene wasmore like a man's porn vision of 2 women having sex, than what I think women would actually do in intimacy.

The fact that Daenerys is thinking about her breast movements could not be that far off from reality, if you think that she might be used to different kinds of clothes (dresses with corsets, for example), so she is not used to the freedom of movements that the Dothraky vest allows and could be self conscious about that.

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The fact that Daenerys is thinking about her breast movements could not be that far off from reality, if you think that she might be used to different kinds of clothes (dresses with corsets, for example), so she is not used to the freedom of movements that the Dothraky vest allows and could be self conscious about that.

It's when she's in Qarth:

If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid.

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I think that George R. R. Martin's female characters are generally well described but sometimes he "slips" on some details.

Like Sansa's first period... I mean, really? It was like a pool of blood... usually it doesn't become a proper period until, like, 6 months. He's probably thinking about problems that much older women have. That was unrealistic.

Also Cersei/Taena scene wasmore like a man's porn vision of 2 women having sex, than what I think women would actually do in intimacy.

The fact that Daenerys is thinking about her breast movements could not be that far off from reality, if you think that she might be used to different kinds of clothes (dresses with corsets, for example), so she is not used to the freedom of movements that the Dothraky vest allows and could be self conscious about that.

I actually did not find the Cersei/Taena sex scene superfluous or wrong with her being drunk and wanting to be like Robert. Nothing about that sex scene screamed that it was meant to turn me on. It was more like Cersei trying to be dominant and goes along quite well with her frequent comparisons of herself to Tywin and wanting to be in charge.

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Recently ASOIAF was mentioned in of all places, a Cracked article titled "5 Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women" (yikes) In one of the examples the author, David Wong, uses an excerpt from a Dany chapter to make his point about how men find it difficult to imagine what it's like to be a woman. He says,

...My thoughts: so it's a throw-away line, but it's the accumulation of these little things throughout all of fiction that is worrisome. The relentless use of women's appendages in mundane descriptions (with no description of men's penises moving freely in their clothes as they walk) hint that the female characters are objects to be looked at. Whether written or visual signals (as in ads), the effect is the same.

Now, here's where I start to think about how this affects the relationship between writer and reader. Might this slight objectification affect Dany's characterization as a whole? GRRM is not private about his lust for her. It makes me wonder if creating a woman out of your own sexual desires inherently stunts a character in some way (not sure how, or if it even does). In the inverse I'm reminded of one of the gods from NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms who has all the qualities of a Trent Reznor/Brandon Lee fanfic female masturbation fantasy. And that character was...really crappy (honestly Dany is much better written, so maybe this isn't a productive comparison)

And I have read numerous novels written by women that have given appreciative descriptions of men's bodies, the difference being women don't generally describe penises swinging in pants the way men describe women's breasts under shirts...

The reason why writers generally avoid descriptions of swinging penises is because if you are wearing underwear they won't. And depending on the cut of your trousers, in which you traditionally dress left or right, you might not either. In fact unless you are wearing a kilt (or nothing at all) in at least reasonably warm weather and standing with legs apart on a swinging pendulum there's no going to be much chance of left-right swinging, and what chance there is will be dependant on penis size and relative engorgement (I apologise if this is too graphic for tender consciousnesses, but it's all just mechanics really). Back and forth swinging for anatomical reasons is also unlikely.

One of the interesting things about ASOIAF is that we get to see characters responding to each other and drawing the wrong conclusions about people purely on their appearance. For instance the way Jorah thinks about Dany. Dany generally is I think underestimated by those you come into contract with her because she is young and blonde and pretty. (I suppose Sansa too, dismissed as foolish because she looks nice). Nobody acknowledges the fire and blood side of her nature (until it's too late) perhaps they are too mollified by her physical appearance. She is nicely contrasted with Brienne who is dismissed because of her appearance and treated as a joke. Thinking about it the way Shagwell and co talk about Brienne pretty much mirrors the kind of attitudes that Mr Wong discusses in his article. And I'm quite sure that the Brave Companions' attitudes towards women are not held up as exemplars of right and proper behaviour in the text.

I would say that objectivication is actually important in the text. You are taken for what you are perceived to be. You suffer the consequences for making the wrong assumptions about people.

...Also Cersei/Taena scene wasmore like a man's porn vision of 2 women having sex, than what I think women would actually do in intimacy...

Do you think that a man's porn version of two women having sex ends with one of them deeply unsatisfied and angry?

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I think that George R. R. Martin's female characters are generally well described but sometimes he "slips" on some details.

Like Sansa's first period... I mean, really? It was like a pool of blood... usually it doesn't become a proper period until, like, 6 months. He's probably thinking about problems that much older women have. That was unrealistic.

Yeah, Sansa's first period was really weird. When I was reading it I kept thinking maybe she had accidentally cut her leg or something while she slept. Like maybe she kept a dagger in her bed for safety. When I finally realized that he was writing about her first flowering, I couldn't help but scratch my head and wonder why he didn't read up on it because I've never heard of a girl having pools of blood on her first, second or third bleedings. Or maybe it's just how periods work for women in ASOIAF.

It's when she's in Qarth:

Haha. That makes David Wongs assessment of that particular line even more ridiculous. That entire scene is describing how Dany feels freer when she isn't wearing her 'floppy ears'. For most women, wearing clothing where our breasts are free from the bindings of bras can be bliss.

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Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest

A woman might notice, as she is walking, that her breasts are moving freely - but only if she is used to more restrictive clothing and walking without feeling her breasts moving. I doubt very much that as she's walking she would be thinking of the size of her breasts, i.e. small or large. She'd only think about size if she were trying on clothes, or observing her boyfriend looking at other women's breasts, or if there several women around her wearing tight or revealing clothing that made their breast size obvious. Dany would know whether she had small or large or medium sized breasts; it's just not a detail that would pop up in her thoughts when she's walking from one place to another.

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I completely disagree with the people who are talking about an omniscient narrative, or saying that it's not narrated from the character's perspective.

GRRM has stated in interviews that he doesn't like omniscient narratives because being able to get into everyone's heads at the same time is messy. The narrative in any given chapter is written 100% from that character's perspective, whether we deem that perspective to be realistic or not. The fact that it says 'her small breasts moved freely' not 'she felt her small breasts moving freely' does not mean that that observation isn't meant to be coming from Dany's head.

Anyway I don't think this is necessarily just GRRM accidentally objectifying Dany. I think that this, taken with all of the other apparently objectifying observations of Dany, merely demonstrate that she is acutely aware of her own femininity, and that other characters' expectations of her will be at least in part based on the fact that she is a young woman.

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Do you think that a man's porn version of two women having sex ends with one of them deeply unsatisfied and angry?

I think the whole concept of violence/domination linked to sexuality is more important for men than it is for women.

I thought the whole "trying to be Robert" thing was... I don't know, it didn't feel realistic, even if Cersei is quite messed up.

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I think the whole concept of violence/domination linked to sexuality is more important for men than it is for women.

I thought the whole "trying to be Robert" thing was... I don't know, it didn't feel realistic, even if Cersei is quite messed up.

Ha! The time to be worried is when Cersei's inner feelings and thoughts do seem realistic to you :)

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This isn't a bad decision on George's part at all. He wanted Daenerys to be a bit timid and self concious at times. He created his characters and chose how they'd be, it's only fitting if he's the one to choose their personalities.

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Well I guess if her small breasts really did moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, it's ok to point that out.

ETA: spacing

They did, it wasn't her thinking "My breasts are moving freely lemme stretch", it was a description of simple fact brought on by her dress, like Eddard's leg hurting like hell, or how someone looked in a robe in the wind or something.I could buy this argument more if the men wore clothes that would let their penises swing around and it wasn't shown.

There are things that really urks me in the book. For example, the one Dany was in Vaes Dothrak after eating the horse heart. He wrote about the crone's nipple dangling freely in their robes or something ... it was wordless for a moment there.

I think people need to have some perspective here. Many societies do not have the same silly, oversexualized view of breasts as the one you come from. I've seen women working or breastfeeding in other parts of the world with their breast out with absolutely no shame about it, while in America breastfeeding apparently requires you to wear some sort of cover. Yes, the sexualisation of breasts has literally usurped their main purpose. But the point is, in some societies people will have their chests out, it's not always from the author's fevered sexual dreams. In some places breasts still serve their main purpose.

And as for the writer describing men's cocks, has anyone forgotten Tyrion's chapters? Or Jaime's with Brienne, men are also quite aware of their...appendages. Seriously, people claiming that he doesn't show Tyrion's cock is silly. It's there. A LOT. From his perspective and once even from Sansa's!

As for David Wong and Cracked, there's a reason I stopped reading. That paragraph you quote was one reason, it was idiotic, in it's misrepresentation if nothing else.

In general, the female characters in ASOIAF are well crafted and all have personalities of their own, but there are occasions of slip up, I think especially when it relates to Dany. Her Stockholm syndrome marriage to Drogo, some of the descriptions of her an the gratuitous and silly lesbian sex scenes.

Because it's not like people falling in love with their captors is so common that we have a name for the phenomenon-oh wait... The situation is different from a modern one, Dany has been under Viserys's boot for a while and in those societies marriage to someone you didn't choose happens, never is it to someone like Drogo but it happens. As for the crazy sex with Drogo, sex was considered part of a man's rights, I wouldn't be surprised if Dany wrote it off as Drogo taking his rights that him being a brutal bastard in bed. The argument here basically seems to boil down to "things inconvenient to my worldview happen, and it makes me uncomfortable"

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Women are conscious about their breasts. The "writer" was just trying to stir something up or be controversial.

I assume that small breasted women only think about their boobs when they compare themselves to their counterparts, but if you have a better rack (unlike Daenerys) then you think about them when you wear clothes that don't flatter them, don't wear a bra thus causing them to swing...

Interesting article...

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2460501?uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698963793087

I think that George R. R. Martin's female characters are generally well described but sometimes he "slips" on some details.

Like Sansa's first period... I mean, really? It was like a pool of blood... usually it doesn't become a proper period until, like, 6 months. He's probably thinking about problems that much older women have. That was unrealistic.

Also Cersei/Taena scene wasmore like a man's porn vision of 2 women having sex, than what I think women would actually do in intimacy.

The fact that Daenerys is thinking about her breast movements could not be that far off from reality, if you think that she might be used to different kinds of clothes (dresses with corsets, for example), so she is not used to the freedom of movements that the Dothraky vest allows and could be self conscious about that.

Actually Sansa's first period was really accurate to me... though I don't think he described the texture of the blood correctly, but the volume is not necessarily inaccurate for a first period.

I think the whole concept of violence/domination linked to sexuality is more important for men than it is for women.

I thought the whole "trying to be Robert" thing was... I don't know, it didn't feel realistic, even if Cersei is quite messed up.

I think Cersei's sexuality is very masculine, if you consider masculinity to be about domination and narcissism...

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Because it's not like people falling in love with their captors is so common that we have a name for the phenomenon-oh wait... The situation is different from a modern one, Dany has been under Viserys's boot for a while and in those societies marriage to someone you didn't choose happens, never is it to someone like Drogo but it happens. As for the crazy sex with Drogo, sex was considered part of a man's rights, I wouldn't be surprised if Dany wrote it off as Drogo taking his rights that him being a brutal bastard in bed. The argument here basically seems to boil down to "things inconvenient to my worldview happen, and it makes me uncomfortable"

You are projecting things onto me I have never said. A lot of things in Westeros would be stuff that don't fit into my worldview. For instance, I am strongly in support of Catelyn not being a mother for Jon Snow, due to how society was structured and that it makes sense from inside the story, which a lot of people find hard to fit in their worldview.

However, Dany is 13 in AGOT and is married off to a man she found terrifying and who rapes her repeatedly. Compare it to Sansa's marriage to Tyrion (she is more or less the same age, plus minus a few month) and it's fairly clear Tyrion sees her as a child, and a scared child at that.

Someone posted the lines about Dany crying in her pillow not long ago, and I am not sure how anyone can see that for anything but pretty awful rape, and dismissing that out of hand as something that "doesn't fit in my worldview", well, in what world view does marital rape fit? It certainly doesn't seem to be widely accepted or pomoted in Westeros, since Cersei complains to Robert about him hurting her and he's ashamed of it, and that's definitely a marraige without any love in it.

Even so, what makes it difficult to suspend disbelief is that a terrified 13 year old suddenly gets so empowered that she doesn't only turn her entire marriage and sex life around, but she also comes to love her previous rapist. Sure, it *could* happen, but it seems far fetched. And this has nothing to do with my worldview.

EDIT: Then there is also the gratuitous lesbian sex. Why does Dany need another woman to give her a helping hand having a wank? Is she incapable of doing it on her own? As she has spent some time and effort on learning about sex and her body, it should not be rocket science to her, which makes involving another woman seem pointless.

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I agree that Westeros, in particular, is a misogynistic land and Essos isn't much better. Does it necessarily follow that the author is also a misogynist? No.

Certainly male oriented.

I can think of few places where GRRM notes male anatomy. Mainly the part about Hodor's impressive member and then, maybe a peeing scene.

I thought Cersei's lez scene was indicative of her... penis envy and general desire to dominate.

I don't know that I agree with a diagnosis of Stockholm's for Dany. I saw it more that Dany used sex to gain some control. Once she mounted Drogo, their dynamic changed.

I do know I wouldn't want to be a woman in GRRM's world. o.O

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I did not read the whole thread, with a subject like this I should have, and I may get ripped apart here, lol. On Dany, her Dothraki vest and her small breasts I think this is maybe being taken wrong a little. First I am a woman with small breasts and I find this realalistic. I always found in the story that Dany loves wearing her Dorthraki garb for so many reasons and this is one of them. There are certain things I love to wear, that I may only wear at home, and I love the way my small breasts feel when I wear these things, or don't wear, and it's not just a thing for women with larger breasts.

Another thing about Dany's vest is it does not seem very revealing and that adds to the comfort, she can have her small breasts moving freely and still be covered, which was one problem with the Qartheen gown. Yes I think about the size of my breasts too, I am very proud and I still get surprised that I think about them because of the size, women that are bigger act as if I should not have any problems or even that I would never think about them because of size. This is silly, I am aware of them and women that are smaller can be even more aware and not always in a bad way, like enjoying moving freely.

Now about why some think we do not hear enough about men, first are you saying that you want too? Don't act as if women don't wear things to show off their breasts and men are creeps, breats are beautiful and women make sure people notice, not the same as a penis, sorry. ( well let's hope not, some men do try to "show it" )

Anyway I am a mother of two sons and while I don't know what it's like to have a penis I do have a little insight to how much it can bother them, if only them complaining about the type of underwear or something similar. Girls don't have breasts until they are older and they start complaing about bras and things similar, but boys have their parts right from the start and my sons do not complain about this. ( now that they are older I hope they never mention it to me! lol ) But all the same children complain to their mothers when they are uncomfortable whether it's something like this or not.

This all is not to say that there absolutely is not some doulde standard here but I think women have to accept some responsibilty on this particular subject if there is and stop having them in everyone's faces. Yes women should be allowed freedom to do what they want but if you don't want men and women alike to be obsessed with breasts then reconsider what you wear. I don't have an issue so I will wear what I want but if I did have a problem then I might be more conscious. Would it be ok if men had a fashion trend that attempted to show their size and movement? If men wore things like that for a long period would society become a little more penis conscious? Would people assume men who did not wear these small tight articles of clothing that he is small in size? This is silly to even think about, lol, watch for the swing ladies!

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the sentence tells me, mostly, that she is comfortable in her new Dothraki attire. Not really a big deal. Not everything is about boobs for the sake of boobs.

Even so, what makes it difficult to suspend disbelief is that a terrified 13 year old suddenly gets so empowered that she doesn't only turn her entire marriage and sex life around, but she also comes to love her previous rapist. Sure, it *could* happen, but it seems far fetched. And this has nothing to do with my worldview.

All this about Drogo being some brutal child rapist... The thing is there was nothing 'sudden' about any of this. It happened over the course of several months, doing the same thing every day.. riding in the hot sun and getting 'marital raped' by Drogo at night. Gradually she got better at riding her horse, her saddle sores went away and she felt healthier and stronger.. she learned to eat horse jerky.. she learned to enjoy sex wtih Drogo. Sex with Drogo was just one aspect of dany adjusting to a new life.

Unlike Cercei, she's never once looked back at her time with Drogo and thought of it as rape, because she fell in love with him.. that's something that's been projected by readers. The truth is that on the wedding night, Drogo gave her the opportunity to refuse. We don't know what would have happened had she actually refused, but even to offer seems like a big deal for a dothraki horselord. Once she consented, I guess Drogo saw it as a greenlight to take her doggy style every night with no regard for her comfort or pleasure. The Dothraki way, I guess. I suppose many a young terrified Dothraki virgin has gone through the exact same thing Dany has.. a rite of passage, of sorts. We like to think he could have been more of a gentlemen, but would that have been believable? I probably would have rolled my eyes in disbelief if Drogo was made to be that modern and sensitive.

It is all highly improbable, but I've come to see Dany as a remarkable person. I think she made a conscious choice to love Drogo, because he was all she had at the time. GRRM has stated that he meant for it to be a love story... it's up for debate how successful he was here, but he has offended feminist senibilities in doing this.

I can honestlty say however, that for me, before having discovered this forum, reading the book straight through and not poring over every detail, it did feel like a love story. It wasn't until I started discussing this with other people here that it even occurred to me how this would be perceived by others.

Chalk it up to to GRRM's vivid and descripting writing.. he is great at creating a sense of atmosphere that lets you get wrapped up in the characters and the setting. I think the same story told by an inferior writer would have seemed campy and, yeah, horribly horribly sexist, rather than 'maybe a little' sexist.

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I do think authors tend to do stuff like that, but I'd say GRRM is actually better about not writing terrible women's parts. His female characters are at least characters. There are plenty of books/movie/etc out there that include female characters solely for the pleasure of the male characters. I just don't think ASOIAF is one of them. Cracked could have picked a better example.

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The reason why writers generally avoid descriptions of swinging penises is because if you are wearing underwear they won't. And depending on the cut of your trousers, in which you traditionally dress left or right, you might not either. In fact unless you are wearing a kilt (or nothing at all) in at least reasonably warm weather and standing with legs apart on a swinging pendulum there's no going to be much chance of left-right swinging, and what chance there is will be dependant on penis size and relative engorgement (I apologise if this is too graphic for tender consciousnesses, but it's all just mechanics really). Back and forth swinging for anatomical reasons is also unlikely.

:huh: :o :blush: :) :lmao:

Are you telling me that when Michael Lewis wrote about "big swinging dicks" in Liar's Poker he was. . . . . . joking?

Since TMI seems to be a theme today, you didn't answer the other question - are you conscious of women eyeing the bulge in your pants as you walk down the street?

Thank you for starting my morning off, um, er, gee, huh, hmmm, right?

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