{"id":108,"date":"2008-08-23T19:10:36","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T00:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=108"},"modified":"2025-08-01T02:00:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:00:36","slug":"pretty-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/pretty-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty women"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: I can\u2019t stand Hillary Clinton. At all. But \u2026 I find her very attractive in this picture<\/em><\/strong>. I\u2019m not even going to chalk it up to the hair (very nice) or necklace (meh\u2014not a fan of chunk jewelry). Perhaps the smile? Yes, that\u2019s it. It looks \u2026 genuine. Happy. Even as much as I despise her, I didn\u2019t like the constant yammering on her looks. On the other hand, if she\u2019d let this side of her show more often, would she have gotten further?<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s this picture of Dame Helen Mirren who, at 62, is totally rockin\u2019. I wouldn\u2019t have posted it because Karen already did, but it\u2019s stuck with me for 3 days. To me, it\u2019s an illustration that Mother Nature doesn\u2019t necessarily punish us XX types for having the audacity to turn 40. Or 50. Or 60.<\/p>\n

ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/p>\n

And the last 2 ladies in today\u2019s lineup are Alfre Woodard (56) and Diane Keaton (62). I don\u2019t guess I have any commentary because, well, look at \u2019em. Obviously, I don\u2019t know which ladies have had what work done, if any, but still.<\/p>\n

Over at Teach Me Tonight, Laura Vivanco discusses the topic of older women in romance<\/a> vis a vis Charlotte Lamb\u2019s novels. She also points out RfP\u2019s post at Access Romance and about young heroines who don\u2019t really seem<\/em> young<\/a> and Robin Uncapher\u2019s post about the time warp in romance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ll tell you. I didn\u2019t really feel like writing an ingenue because at my age, it\u2019s just silly and I was never an ingenue when I was that age. I wanted to write people who had some experience with life. Now, Susan Elizabeth Phillips writes older romance, but always within the context of having the older couple as a secondary love plot.<\/p>\n

Mine aren\u2019t 50-ish, but they are 40-ish and as the series progresses, they age. In book #2 (Stay<\/em><\/a>), the hero and heroine (Eric and Vanessa) are youngish by my standards (late 20s and early 30s, but this is a challenge I set for myself). By book #3 (Magdalene<\/em><\/a>), the oldest of the original characters are on the wrong side of 45 and still going strong. Mitch and Cassie, the hero and heroine of Magdalene<\/em>, are on the wrong side of 45, with grown\/almost grown children and possibly a grandchild or two.<\/p>\n

So along with my other crimes against romance, you can add major characters in their 40s. Gee, how many other ways can I bend this genre?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: I can\u2019t stand Hillary Clinton. At all. But \u2026 I find her very attractive in this picture. I\u2019m not even going to chalk it up to the hair (very nice) or necklace (meh\u2014not a fan of chunk jewelry). Perhaps the smile? Yes, that\u2019s it. It looks \u2026 genuine. Happy. Even as much as I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales-of-dunham","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17239,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/17239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}