Editing, Nuance of Phrase, and Undercutting Female Characters

I rarely make a hard decision about a character's gender or sexuality for a particular reason. For instance, the main character of this year's NaNoWriMo novel was a woman because she came to me first. It just as easily could have been the leader of the compound, but it would have been a very different story.

I'm working on editing DREAMING OF EDEN (still) while the Internet is down at home, and I discovered a line that I first changed, and then stopped and really looked at:

Her hips swayed in a way that commanded attention...

I changed it to the way she moved, because I wanted her to appear confident (she is) and because the character isn't supposed to be a sexual one. 

To be slightly fair to myself, at this point in the zero draft was only her second introduction -- her first being an offhand mention of a sexual encounter that wasn't described and where she didn't even have a name. It wasn't until a couple chapters from this line that her personality really showed in draft zero, and I realized she was not just someone to be looked at. She was actually important to my plot.

But I wrote this during NaNoWriMo in 2010 -- I was writing off the top of my head, as it occurred to me, and the first things I point out about her are the sway of her hips, and the way she commands sexual desire. In some ways it's simply a trope of fiction to build everyone as beautiful and desirable, but it bothers me what this says about me as a woman and as a writer.

It's not a secret that I went through my teens believing that I was only worth what I could offer sexually, that because I was not beautiful I had to be promiscuous to make up for it. So I do tend to create characters who are arresting, who bring in second glances and take people's breath away by the virtue of their beauty. At some point I have to admit it's about writing wish fulfillment. Hell, the particular character isn't even thin; I was creating her as plump and gorgeous because it felt good, and because I had that power. As though I could write those feelings away by removing them from the worlds I create. 

Except I'm really just perpetuating the same misguided bullshit that made me so miserable as a teenager and young adult. I'm not creating a world where people aren't judged based on their looks. Instead, I'm reaffirming the belief in the reader that this character is worth noticing because she's beautiful. I realize it's egotistical and incredibly lofty to look at my novel and think about the hypothetical readers and how I might be affecting their world-view, but it's the little things. No one ever told me that I wasn't beautiful (okay, maybe once or twice) or that I had to be sexual to gain worth -- it was the implicit things that created those ideas in me.

Despite this character having strength beyond her looks, by having my viewpoint character denote her by the way her hips sway -- and then by having him note how he's not impressed -- I've undercut her. No matter what else I have to say about her, she's forever characterized by the sway of her hips. And it's not as though she's the only character I'm policing for bullshit stereotypes (beyond the scope of their character).

Editing this novel is an exhausting exercise in looking at myself.