Lavender vs Hermione (was:Re: Lavender Brown - help needed)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 160337

> >>DA Jones:
> <snip>
> However, even before the movie's came out, fan fiction convention 
> had turned Lavender into a skinny blond. 
> <snip>
> My main point is what does it say about our society that Lavender 
> evolved this way in fanfiction. It is almost considered violating 
> canon in fanfiction to write her another way and most fanfiction   
> authors assume that  'canon' Lavender is this way. But we don't   
> know what she looks like and the closest thing to canon is the     
> movie in which she is black.  
> Why do so many girls want to be Lavender instead of Hermione, when 
> Hermione is heroic. Aren't readers supposed to identify with the   
> hero?

Betsy Hp:
The very fact that JKR doesn't describe Lavender in the books means 
that she's open for fans to picture in their own way.  I'm not aware 
enough of teenage fanfiction to know what "look" is popular, though 
I honestly don't see a problem with describing Lavender anyway you 
want to.  That's what the imagination is for.

I'm also not aware of Lavender being more popular among young female 
readers than Hermione, but I will say that I can understand why 
Hermione is not a character every young girl can relate to.

Heck, *I* don't relate to Hermione (at this point I out and out 
don't like her), and I certainly wouldn't have related to her as a 
teenager, hero of the book or no.  She looks down on the sort of 
girlish behavior I always enjoyed. And she's also down on the sort 
of imagining I was into.  (For a "bookish" character, Hermione is 
very factually oriented.)

I hate to sling the "misogynist" claim around (it gets used too 
quickly, I think). But I don't think JKR and I see eye to eye on 
what it is to be a girl. It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that 
there are young girls out there who feel the same way.

(As a caveat, of *course* Hermione doesn't have to be the poster-
girl for young girlhood.  It's good that she's her own character 
with her own strengths and foibles.  And I'm betting Lavender's 
popularity in teenage fanfics has more to do with her being more of 
a blank slate than something being wrong with Hermione.)

Betsy Hp (not sure she's made any sense... but posting anyway! <g>)