{"id":10818,"date":"2024-02-12T09:56:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T14:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10818"},"modified":"2024-02-12T09:56:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T14:56:13","slug":"at-least-its-pg-ish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10818","title":{"rendered":"At Least It’s PG-ish"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lots of stuff annoys readers\u2014long passages in italics, omitting quotation marks, yada, yada\u2014reported the Washington Post<\/em> last year. I wrote up these reader pet peeves here<\/a> and here<\/a>. One I share with the Post<\/em> kvetchers is the tendency of authors to describe even the most incidental female character in terms of her cleavage, the size of her bottom, the length of her legs, the sultriness of her glance. That\u2019s mostly a quirk of men writers (and I fear it suggests how they actually see women), though even some women writers have picked it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired and irritated, I wrote a short story, published in the Valentine\u2019s Day issue of Yellow Mama<\/em> (#102). It\u2019s the kind of hard-boiled private eye story\u2014venetian blinds striping the shadows, bottle of bourbon on the desk, dusty inbox\u2014I associate with those sexy descriptions. The new blonde bombshell client, lounging in her skin-tight crimson silk dress against the doorframe of the seedy office, kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one key difference. In my story, the sexy new client is a man and the detective is a woman. I hope readers get the sarcasm. I suspect they will. You can read it here: \u201cHere\u2019s Looking at You<\/a>.\u201d Artist J. Elliott nicely captured the vibe of that office, too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, the name of the online zine Yellow Mama<\/em> comes from the nickname of Alabama\u2019s now-disused electric chair. That transgressive allusion suggests the need for the publication\u2019s guidance for readers, \u201cif you are easily offended or under 18 years of age, please don\u2019t go there!\u201d You\u2019ll find my story is more PG. As for those sexy descriptions, I do set aside my objections for \u201cIt was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window\u201d from Raymond Chandler\u2019s Farewell, My Lovely<\/em>. Makes me laugh every time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of stuff annoys readers\u2014long passages in italics, omitting quotation marks, yada, yada\u2014reported the Washington Post last year. I wrote up these reader pet peeves here and here. One I share with the Post kvetchers is the tendency of authors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\"Here's Looking at You,\" a story based on a pet peeve, is out now in the Valentine's Day issue of Yellow Mama!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-2","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ou","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10820,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions\/10820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}