Post by birdg on Dec 27, 2009 14:57:18 GMT -5
And I cannot remember any place where Ginny is described as being short.
It's mentioned several times, most notably in OOTP and HBP. She is also mentioned as resembling the Twins.
And Ginny probably is more on the plump Molly-Charlie-Twins side rather than the thin Arthur-Bill-Percy-Ron side but 1.) JKR never mentions it just like she refrains from mentioning the build of most female characters in her later books and 2.) Most of fandom is made up of people who think Bonnie = Ginny even though Bonnie doesn't look much like Ginny at all and would probably make a better young!Lily.
This isn't so much about "hatred" of female characters as "messed-up ideas people have about women and female characters as a result" but I've been rather intrigued by how fandom treats the sex lives of certain characters.
I can not think of a fic where - positively or negatively - Bellatrix and Pansy weren't shown as anything but promiscuous and having high drives despite the fact that they are two female characters who were shown as being slavishly devoted to one wizard for the entire series. This is contrasted with characters like Ginny and Hermione who are shown to be very "vanilla" or prudish.
(Exceptions to this rule are Luna, who is just ~free-spirited~, not socially-awkward and Narcissa who is someone's mother and shouldn't be having sex ever, omg.)
And again, sometimes it's people who like these characters who are writing it this way but, at the end of the day it's the bad characters (the ones who are racist, who support torture and genocide) who are associated with sex. Sex is something bad people do. Good people don't like sex or don't like sex outside of loving relationships.
It reminds me a bit of the way pagans/atheists are portrayed in fandom. Slytherins are almost one or the other (because people fanatically devoted to a supremacist cause would have no interest in being part of the dominant religion, I guess) and usually this is portrayed as a good thing except at the end you've made the murderers and racists pagans or atheists and the heroic characters are Christian even if just nominally so.
It's just one of those moments when I fear fandom has not thought their cunning plans all the way through.