Women roast lazy male authors with this Twitter challenge

Here's a newsflash for male authors of the world: women don't just want to read about female characters, they want strong female protagonists who have actual personalities.

A new Twitter challenge proves it.

On Friday, writer Gwen C. Katz posted a screenshot of a male author's attempt at writing a female character.

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According to this character's inner monologue, she's "a little tall (but not too tall)" and wears "pants so impossibly tight" that if she had a credit card in her back pocket, "you could read the expiration date." Um, OK. That's definitely what women think about when they pick out their clothes.

Katz tweeted more screenshots from this author's story, in which the female character "blushed on command," and included cringey phrases like "and of course, my boobs." Ew.

Can men even write about women without sexualizing them? The ridiculous writing inspired podcaster @whitneyarner to challenge Twitter users to describe themselves like a male author would.

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Twitter users covered tropes of women in literature -- for some, it's men's reluctance to listen to peers.

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And for others, it was male authors' absolute inability to describe a female character without mentioning her chest.

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Some women were tired of being racially tokenized in literature.

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While others took a more unconventional approach at describing the male gaze.

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As Katz pointed out in her Twitter thread, these parodies don't mean that men can't write strong female protagonists. It does, however, mean that they should consider looking for feedback from an actual woman before they send their writing for publishing.

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And please, for the love of literature, never include the phrase "And of course, my boobs" in your writing.