Forum: Author Hangout

Fruit

red61544 🚫

I'm reading a "Much Sex" story in which the author, every time he describes a woman's breasts, uses a fruit metaphor.
One woman's breasts were big, like grapefruits. Others were smaller like half an orange. Fortunately, there were no kumquats or uglis involved! This continues through three books and is driving me crazy. Why? When I read, my mind automatically pictures what I am reading. What I am picturing now is a beautiful girl, lying on her bed, with grapefruit growing out of her chest! Every chapter has at least one of more pieces of fruit where there should be beautiful breasts. Authors, please, find a different way to describe tits without comparing them to fruit! Please! Now I have to go and eat an orange to quell my sexual urges.

Replies: Dominions Son Switch Blayde ystokes Paladin_HGWT richardshagrin ystokes ystokes joyR

Dominions Son 🚫

@red61544

Well, do you have any suggestions for alternate metaphors for breast size?

Too many others complain about using bra sizes, so that's out.

Replies: red61544

red61544 🚫

@Dominions Son

I'd like to think that, with both men and women, size doesn't matter. If the breasts fit the body, they are perfect! The same goes for nipples! I've read about too many cherries and grapes and seeing a grapefruit with a cherry on top really isn't erotic. What does breast size actually have to do with the sexiness of a woman? Once we are beyond our teens, we develop a different way of appreciating a woman. If we're still fascinated by huge mammaries, we probably haven't progressed beyond adolescence.

Replies: StarFleet Carl awnlee jawking Dominions Son Switch Blayde

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@red61544

If we're still fascinated by huge mammaries, we probably haven't progressed beyond adolescence.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@red61544

What does breast size actually have to do with the sexiness of a woman?

Obviously you're not a breast person ;-)

AJ

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@red61544

What does breast size actually have to do with the sexiness of a woman?

Supposedly, it's an evolutionary thing. Theoretically, breast size will have some relationship (though not the sole determinant) with milk production and therefore, back in the days before formula, a woman with larger breasts could better feed a baby, therefore would make a better mate.

At the lizard brain level, it's all about improving the odds of reproductive success.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@red61544

What does breast size actually have to do with the sexiness of a woman?

Actually, quite a lot.

Some guys like huge breasts. The bigger the better.

Some like petite women. Small breasts, narrow hips, etc.

Some like small breasts with long nipples.

I guess some might even like breasts hanging down to the belly button. Or maybe they might describe that as a negative.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@red61544

a fruit metaphor.

No watermelons?

ystokes 🚫

@red61544

Breasts that turn me off are pancake breasts that not only can pass the pencil test but also the dumb-bell test.

Paladin_HGWT 🚫

@red61544

I was expecting a discussion about fruit. Not a discussion about character descriptions; breasts in particular.

Fruit being used as a metaphor to describe breasts is quite common, not just in writing, but I have heard such descriptions since I was at least ten years old. Fruit is round, but not always perfectly so, similar to breasts. Fruit can often be squeezed, just like breasts. Fruit is firm, and many people who are attracted to women like firm breasts (some seem to prefer softer, "like pillows" breasts).

Size Does Matter! There is significant differences of opinions about specific sizes. Few people truly like All sizes. Claiming "size doesn't matter" is PC crap. Mostly. I have known a very few people who are actually attracted to people with little regard to most factors of appearance. (Hygiene, or excessive piercings, tattoos, or other matters of choice are often more influential than how large or small a woman's breasts, or even how fat or skinny they are.)

Many people who are attracted to females often have preferences for "average" skinny, fat, etc., less so short or tall, skin color, breast size, or shape and size of their posterior; most people have a preferred type (or types).

I could imagine a (short) story with just two main characters where no descriptions are given, and most readers accept the two are attracted to each other without any reasons being given why.

Physical descriptions of a character make sense because humans most acute sense in vision (with exceptions, but few stories are from the perspective of a blind person). Males are more strongly attracted by the appearance of a potential "mate" (for the night, or a "lifetime") than females; however, many females are influenced by the appearance of a potential mate.

In a longer story if a character is consistently attracted to blonds, or shorter women, or women with large breasts, it is probably an indication of their preferences. If a character is suddenly attracted to a tall black-haired woman with small breasts, there should probably be a reason for it that comes out in the story.

If you have a story set in Alabama, and you have a police officer harassing the male character, possibly even assaulting him, although the male character broke no laws it would seem odd. If you described the male as a powerfully build Black man, and the female as a Blond hair, blue eyed female, it is more comprehensible. Immoral, and illegal but believable to most readers.

Red, it seems to me you have a rather unusual "sqick" about fruit and body descriptions...

Now I have to go and eat an orange to quell my sexual urges.

It seems to me that a very tiny number of people are "upset" about body descriptions, no matter if it is fruit, or bra cup sizes.

Replies: red61544 Switch Blayde

red61544 🚫
Updated:

@Paladin_HGWT

Red, it seems to me you have a rather unusual "sqick" about fruit and body descriptions...

The point I was trying to make is that using fruit to describe a woman's breasts has became a cliche and, if I remember my composition classes correctly, should be treated like a sin by good writers. If I have a squick, it is reading stories that have the same boring descriptions that have been used by hundreds of other authors. A good writer's imagination is a gift from the muses; use it!

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@red61544

a cliche and, if I remember my composition classes correctly, should be treated like a sin by good writers.

Whoever taught you that was being over-simplistic. Cliches became popular for a reason - they work.

Have you read works by other authors who used other forms of comparison that worked better?

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Whoever taught you that was being over-simplistic. Cliches became popular for a reason - they work.

And the problem with cliche avoidance is that most of the alternatives won't work as well and when someone does stumble onto an alternative that works as well as the original cliche then everyone else will flock to that one new alternative and then that becomes cliche too.

Political Correctness has the same kind of problem.

Some term used to refer to some group has negative connotations so lets insist that everyone use this new term we just made up.

The fatal flaw to this is that if you don't do anything beyond changing the terminology to change people's view, the negative connotations of the old term will eventually attach to the new term.

It then becomes a never ending arms race of ever changing terminology to refer to the same thing.

In the end it accomplishes nothing.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Paladin_HGWT

I was expecting a discussion about fruit. Not a discussion about character descriptions; breasts in particular.

There really aren't many other metaphors other than fruit to describe breasts. Softball size and handful work. Then there's the pebble or eraser size nipples. But the majority are fruit because fruit sizes fit best. And fruit shapes too, like pear shaped.

Replies: Paladin_HGWT

Paladin_HGWT 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I agree with you Switchblade.

My first comment was indicating I hoped this topic was about Fruit as food, or even growing fruit.

I like food, and enjoy descriptions about food, making food, recipes, meals, and feasts, and pleasant activities involving food. Such as genial conversation around a table as a meal is winding down. Perhaps a description of a well prepared roast, seasoned with garlic and peppercorns, baby red potatoes, and grilled asparagus. Then after a bit of conversation, coffee and cherries jubilee.

Strawberries dipped in chocolate, as well as champagne as part of a seduction.

Or, because I have been reading a number of Time-Travel / Survival stories, or Post Apocalypse, a discussion about what sorts of fruit could be successfully grown, providing essential nutrients, or citrus fruits to prevent scurvy, or just for flavor and variety of diet.

Discussing the merits and drawbacks of how to describe characters is useful too.

richardshagrin 🚫

@red61544

"Beans, Beans, the magical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel, so lets have beans with every meal."

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit" is a playground saying and children's song about the capacity for beans to contribute to flatulence.[1]

The basis of the song (and bean/fart humor in general) is the high amount of oligosaccharides present in beans. Bacteria in the large intestine digest these sugars, producing carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane. These gases are expelled from the body as flatulence.[2]

I doubt we would be better off if breasts were compared to beans. Human beans?

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@richardshagrin

"Beans, Beans, the magical fruit

Beans are a legume, not a fruit, although in culinary terms they're a vegetable.

AJ

ystokes 🚫

@red61544

If you really want to be mean to your kids do what my mom did, white beans and ham on Wednesday night.

Replies: Keet awnlee jawking palamedes

Keet 🚫

@ystokes

If you really want to be mean to your kids do what my mom did, white beans and ham on Wednesday night.

Add hot and spicy tomato sauce and it's great!

awnlee jawking 🚫

@ystokes

white beans and ham

I must be missing something. What's the cultural significance of white beans and ham?

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

What's the cultural significance of white beans and ham?

Why does it need to have any significance beyond family tradition.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

The OP made it sound pejorative.

I don't understand 'white beans'. Several types of bean available in the UK are white or whiteish.

AJ

palamedes 🚫

@ystokes

white beans and ham

add cornbread and that was a weekly dish growing up that I still eat. Very rare did the white beans come from a can. The beans where dry so we would soak them in water overnight. As for the ham well grew up on a hog farm one week you might be looking dinner in the eye ...

ystokes 🚫

@red61544

It's when you go to school the next day.

joyR 🚫

@red61544

What I am picturing now is a beautiful girl, lying on her bed, with grapefruit growing out of her chest!

So the problem is how you picture things you read and your solution is to have others change to suit your issue rather than you addressing your own problem.

What if authors describe nipples in terms of what socket spanner they fit. Read a simple scene involving several pairs of nipples and by morning you'll have your entire car in pieces...

:)

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Forum: Author Hangout

Fruit

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