After his last book was published, several people complained that as a man he had no right to describe a woman's appearance.
He had a good think about it and decided not to describe the appearance of the female protagonist in his latest book "Snow Country". He's leaving what she looks like to his readers' imagination. There are one or two hints but that's it.
Other authors have leapt to Sebastian Faulks' defence, saying it's absurd not to describe a woman's appearance. "The idea that writers can't invent characters beyond their own communities is ridiculous" says Bernardine Evaristo. And Dawn French says "The minute we start to police people's imaginations, we go down a very nasty old route."
The logical conclusion of a man not writing about a woman's appearance is that he shouldn't write about women at all, which would be ludicrous.
Surely the real issue is not whether a man writes about a woman's appearance but how he writes about it. If it's merely a matter-of-fact description of her physical features, what's wrong with that? But if he describes her in a sexualised way (big boobs, tempting lips, shapely bottom etc), that's entirely different and obviously annoying to many female readers.
If a man couldn't write about women, or white people couldn't write about black people, or heterosexuals couldn't write about gay people, and so on, where would it end? Books would be stripped to the bone. You could just about mention Jasper the dog and that would be that. Until someone objected that you couldn't write about dogs because you weren't a dog.
Sebastian Faulks should have stood firm and ignored the idiotic criticisms.
