Terrible descriptions of women in books have been a running gag for a while now.
"Hello..." She boobed, boobily.
And I love a good hate-read, so I asked people for some of the most ridiculous descriptions they've ever read.
Here are some of the responses I got from the BuzzFeed Community, with some from Reddit thrown in for good measure:
1. "I once read a book where a woman gave birth and had sex a few hours later. I'm a guy, and even I know how stupid that is."
2. "John Updike’s amazingly weird ideas about the female urinary system in The Witches of Eastwick: 'She had to sit on the toilet some minutes waiting for the pee to come. Men, they were able to conjure it up immediately, that was one of their powers, that thunderous splashing as they stood lordly above the bowl. Everything about them was more direct, their insides weren't the maze women's were, for the pee to find its way through.'"
"…So, I’m not sure why he thinks women’s urethras are some sort of labyrinth situation." —llenc42f018350
3. "She was not like other girls."
"Ugh." —u/T-Cosy
4. "From Stephen King’s The Stand: 'She thought that the female body always looks its best when it is flat on its back, stretched out, the tummy pulled flat, the breasts naturally upright without the vertical drag of gravity to pull them down.'"
"Nobody thinks their boobs look better when they’re flat on their back. Gravity doesn’t just stop working when you lie down, Stephen." —Swiftie1993
5. "I read a book where the female lead (eventually love interest) was described down to a T; meanwhile, you barely even knew what the main character looked like."
6. From Eleanor and Park: "She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something."
"I'm sorry because I loved this book as a teen, but this quote is cheesy and emits such 'nice guy' vibes. Women don't need ~intellectual men~ to validate their attractiveness or perceived lack thereof." —hiitsnicetomeetyou
7. "It bugs me when women are written as the emotional saviors who seem to exist only to help the male main character work through his troubled feelings. This sometimes happens when it's TOTALLY out of character for the female too."
8. Stephen King, Carrie
"Just all of Carrie. Stephen King doesn't know how women work, and that's a fact." - tedpreston234
9. "One of Lora Leigh's books in the Trojan series described a woman getting a Brazilian wax every week. As someone who has been getting waxed for nearly three years, there's no reason to do it that often."
10. "I'm thinking of [theWheel of Time series], but I hate it when authors write all of the guys as absolutely clueless about women, and all of the women know that they are clueless and act like they're so much better just because they're female. Sure, some people might be like this, but not all of them. Not all the time. It's extremely inaccurate."
11. "I love Aeschylus (the Ancient Greek playwright), generally, as he writes very beautifully most of the time. I say 'most' because in The Eumenides there's this absolutely awful little segment:
'The mother is no parent of that which is called her child / but only nurse of the new-planted seed that grows. / The parent is he who mounts. / A stranger is she who preserves the seed, / if no god interfere.'
It is said in all earnest by Apollo, and the argument helps the protagonist get off the charge of murdering his mother.
I have nothing to add because that should speak for itself."
12. "Female Character is good at something beyond nail polish, clothes, and emotions. Male Character asks her where she learned this skill. Female Character laughs and says that she had a lot of brothers growing up."
"...Maaaybe this trope works in Ye Olde Writinge, set in an era where women legitimately couldn't take a carpentry class at the community college, but these days, it just grates. It's based on the assumption that women can't take any initiative and just...randomly absorb stuff from the environment. And that all the stuff worth knowing can only be learned from men, of course. Kill it with fire."
13. "I'm a strong female character! I am one of the boys! Haha, that guy throws like a girl! See, that is funny because girls can't do the sports well, but not me — I like football and beer, and I am strong, like guys!"
"YAWN." —u/madPhyz
14. "A lot of the heroine's inner thoughts on observing her chest and how it...bounces."
15. "Tough on the outside, soft on the inside. What's wrong with being tough all the way through?"
16. "I edited a story for a guy whose main character was a guy with a female best friend. The entire function of the female was to follow him around so he had someone to make conversation with so the story wasn't one massive monologue about how mysterious and awesome he was, and how dangerous this mission was. She was constantly staring at him with big eyes and crying when he thought about putting himself in danger. She wasn't a character; she was a prop that fed the main character's ego."
17. "Manic. Pixie. Dream. Girl."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.