Curly Girls

One of my favourite episodes of Sex and the City is the one I think of as the Curly Girl episode. 

Remember when Big was dating (engaged to?) Natasha, the perfect, tall, sleek-haired younger woman. It's a pivotal moment in Carrie's life when it hits her that she and Miss Sleek might both be smart, successful women - but they are not the same species.

For Carrie is a Katie Girl (aka Barb in The Way We Were); fabulous, unique, raw, untamed, wild, unfinished, searching, and not kind of girl who classically ends up with the Bigs (or Hubbells) of the world.  For Katie - and Carrie - are determined to be themselves, to own their quirks, to not conform to current social norms in the face of loving larger than life men.

They are curly girls.

It was no accident that 'Natasha' had dead-straight hair. For straight hair is considered professional, beautiful and aspirational. (Which it is!) I'm just saying, when did it become so that curly hair isn't thought of the same way?

There have been moments when a Curly Girl's curls have made a big impact - Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Keri Russell in Felicity, Debra Messing in Will and Grace, the glorious Bernadette Peters in everything she ever did. Meg Ryan flew the curly flag in a number of films. But over time even they have succumbed to the pressure to defrizz. And Hermione (a total Curly Girl) began the Harry Potter franchise with curly hair only to see it smooth out as the films went on.

When Viola Davis wore her natural hair to the Oscars in 2012, rather than a glossy 'straight' weave,  it made international news.

Chris Rock made a fabulous documentary called Good Hair which talked about the overwhelming number of African American women who chemically straighten or weave their hair. He made it for his daughters in an effort to show them that their natural curly hair was amazing, to be celebrated, and need not be homogenized.

Quoting the New York Times, as recently as February this year, the "the City of New York, through its Commission on Human Rights, officially banned discrimination based on hairstyle." Because before then it was actually ok to have rules and policies against cornrows, Afros, Bantu knots, curls, hair that stood taller against the crown than a certain measurement. I kid you not. 

A great deal of the pull for me regarding this subject, is that I've always identified as a Curly Girl, whether I straightened my hair or not. Off centre, not so neat and tidy, a little rock chic. And as a kid I had wildly curly-hair. It frizzed, it fuzzed, I had no clue how to tame it, but I owned it. It was a big part of who I was.

Though as time went on and kids came along, my hair changed, it spent most days in a messy bun, or was straightened in an effort to at least appear as if I had it all together. My curls made the occasional come back, but by putting them out to pasture meant I lost a little of the Curly Girl part of myself along the way.

And then came the Curly Girl Method movement. And hallelujah!

Those of you with latent waves or under-appreciated curls, read on.  For what I'm about to tell you may well change your life.

For Curls are making a come back. Curly Girls (or wavy woman, frizzy females) are out there, sharing the right combination of products, and methods, to bring out the best in their curls. Products that are sulphate, paraben and silicone-free which stops the coat-then-strip coat-then-strip merry-go-round. Methods in which you learn about trapping moisture, deep conditioning, beer-protein-rinses, squishing, and scrunching.

It can be as fun and full-on as easy and light as you decide for it to be. For someone who's used the exact same (wrong) shampoo and conditioner for 20 years, for me it was time.

I've taken the plunge. I gave away all the smoothing, 3-day straight, silicone de-frizzing gloop filling my bathroom cupboard and bought leave-ins, and curl creams and apple cider vinegar and a bowl with which to saturate my clumps. I no longer use a towel to dry my hair, rather one of my husband's old t-shirts.

And I love it! My curls are back. My hair has NEVER felt better. And my inner Curly Girl is punching the air with glee!


If I'm ever caught glued to Youtube, my kids are all like, "Which Curly Girl are you watching?"  My eight-year-old son wants to start a movement called "Spiky Boy" and he squishes in his conditioner like a pro. And watching Iron Man 2 the other day, he took one look at Black Widow and said, "Mum, she's a Curly Girl!"

Since I'm also a Never Say Never kind of girl, I may straighten my hair again one day. For fun. But for now - I'm out and proud and au naturale!

My name is Ally, and I am a Curly Girl.

How about you?

Why are heroines always beautiful? - Kandy Shepherd

A friend was reading one of my books recently. “Why do all your heroines have to be so beautiful?” she asked. (The book was Hired by the Brooding Billionaire and the heroine was indeed beautiful though with a quirky nature and prone to dressing in khakis and steel capped worker’s boots to play down her looks.)

“Because a romance has an element of fantasy,” I replied to my friend. “As readers we want to identify with the heroine. We like to see an idealised image of ourselves and that usually means beautiful.”

Then I stopped myself. All my romance heroines are not necessarily beautiful. In fact one of my favourite (and best-selling books) From Paradise to… Pregnant! features a heroine who is actually quite plain. The book starts:

“Zoe Summers knew she wasn’t beautiful. The evidence of her mirror proved that. Plain was the label she’d been tagged with from an early age. She wasn’t ugly—in fact ugly could be interesting. It was just that her particular combination of unruly black hair, angular face, regulation brown eyes and a nose with a slight bump in the middle added up to pass-under-the-radar plain.”

Zoe gave herself a makeover and even got a nose job that she confesses to late in the novel. She is immaculately groomed and dresses elegantly. Even so, she still feels a degree of insecurity about her looks. But the hero fell in love with pre-makeover Zoe back when they were teenagers. He doesn’t notice her nose, or care about her hair, he sees beauty in her just the way he is.

Zoe is my only heroine who is out-and-out plain. Others are stunningly beautiful. Mostly they’re attractive or above average in looks. Each has to be written so they are relatable and sympathetic. But they’re always beautiful in the eyes of the hero. That goes without saying!

What about in movies and TV shows? I’m binge watching The Blacklist at the moment. My husband thinks lovely actress Megan Boone is too beautiful to be believable as an FBI profiler. “Can’t they at least have her wearing glasses?” he asks.

Megan Boone

What do you think? Does it matter if a romance heroine is beautiful or not? I’d love to hear your comments.

I leave you with one of my favourite movie romance heroines played by Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing. She’s often described as plain, but I think she’s beautiful. Can you believe the movie is thirty years old this year?

Lest We Forget: The Women of Gallipoli

I make no apology for writing a similarly themed post to last year.

It is 100 years since Gallipoli and we have mourned and celebrated the lives of the men who bravely fought there- and we should go on doing this in gratitude for their service for as long as we all can. Because of their sacrifice we can live our lives in relative peace and without fear.

What I did not know, however, was that there were 8 women at Gallipoli too. Seven Australian nurses and their matron were on board the hospital ship The Gascon moored off Anzac Cove. From the ship's deck these women had to witness the massacre, listen to the cries of the fallen and dodge shells fired at the boat. They then had to tend to the wounded, deal with serious overcrowding on the ship and cope with rapidly diminishing resources. There is a detailed account of one of those nurses here. Muriel Wakeford wrote letters to her local newspaper back home describing the Gallipoli campaign and telling of the need for more medical personnel, braving a backlash from the government who had been sending out propaganda that we were winning the war. Having worked as a nurse for many years I cannot begin to imagine what life must have been like there, the horror and the suffering and the utter helplessness and frustration at not being able to give the care needed.

But this is also a romance blog and we celebrate the triumph of love over all, and I'm happy to say that Muriel led a life befitting one of our heroines- dealing with conflict and disapproval from all and amidst the chaos of war she fell in love with a dashing officer on board ship (which was obviously forbidden, plus he was catholic and she was protestant), but she finally overcame all barriers and married her sweetheart in 1916. They moved to Kenya and then to London after the war and had (at least) one son.

So, on ANZAC Day, while remembering the men who gave up their lives, please add in a huge prayer of gratitude to the 8 amazing women who cared for the sick and tended to the fallen with as much respect and honour as they could. And send up a little extra cheer for Muriel Wakeford, a true heroine of the time.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them

Judging A Book By It's Cover....

By Helen Lacey

I love book covers and do tend to look at the covers when I'm deciding what books to buy/read. Of course that's quick to do when trawling a site like Harlequin, Entangled or Amazon etc, because you can flick through titles easily and select what you want with a click of a button. But what I really love is checking out the new releases in a bricks and mortar book store.

Last week I took a trip to my local book store and spent a fun half hour looking over hundreds of titles. I bought two - Half Moon Bay by Aussie author Helen Young (I always buy her books but the cover of this one is fabulous) and The Storyteller by Jodie Picoult. I've only read one other Picoult book, but this one caught my eyes based only on the cover. One of my favourite covers is from an old Doreen Owens Malek

romance called The Highwayman... it's got the 80's/90's bodice ripper cover thing all over it. Plus it's an awesome book.

I'm something of a lazy reader, so I like the cover to tell me a bit about the story...if it's a romance I like a good shot of the hero and heroine in some kind of clinch. If it's sci-fi or fantasy I want something relevant to the quest. Remember the cover of Jaws? A lone woman swimming and a massive shark head looming underneath her....frightening....and there was no doubt what that book was about.

When I look for a category romance novel, I love how the covers tell something of the story. A Presents book about a smouldering Greek hero and feisty heroine will usually have them in a passionate embrace. A home and heart story about a single dad will often have kids on the cover too. And what's a sexy as sin cowboy without his horse?

Harlequin have recently  given some of their lines a cover makeover and my next Special Edition looks like this.....

What do you think?

Do you judge a book by it's cover?

Does a fabulous cover make you love a book even more?

In The Footsteps of....

by Sharon Archer

In the footsteps of ... lots and lots and LOTS of real-life heroes and heroines!

We're on the road in Outback Australia at the moment and soaking up the hugeness of the country, the red soil, the vast skies, the enormous distances. I'm loving reading about the people who came here and did amazing things... but today I want to share something else....  I'm following in the footsteps of the heroines of the Lucy Walker novels that I so adored when I was a teenager living in New Zealand.  Australia and the Outback seemed an exotic, faraway place!

I can't name any of the novels now but I'll never forget the enjoyment they brought me, the thrill of escaping homework and teenage-angst to immerse myself in the Outback, the taciturn heroes - so tall and handsome and capable, the huge stations, and the courageous young heroines, so far out of their comfort zones, who carved a place for their future.

For some reason, it's the names of the rivers that have really stayed with me - the Murrumbidgee, the Darling.  Tonight we're camped at Bourke in Outback New South Wales on the banks of the Darling River!

So, from the photos we've taken so far, I'm going to take you on a little tour of some of the things that a Lucy-Walker heroine might have seen...

The wide open spaces...

Huge dams for watering stock... and perhaps a nice dip on a hot summer day...

A misty morning, ghostly gums and a rich red road....

A wash out on a creek line exposing roots sunk deep in the soil...

A full moon in a billabong...

Maybe the hero would have brewed her a billy tea... though I'm sure he'd have settled his billy on the fire much better than I did!  Looks ready to tip over, don't you think!

I took lots of these pictures at a magic little place we discovered near Nymagee, NSW - Four Corners Farm Stay.  We arrived for one night and, loved it so much, we ended up staying for two weeks!

So how about you... have you explored places you'd read about in a book?  Are there places you've read about that you'd particularly like to explore?

Heroines

by Michelle Douglas

Reading: Beauty and the Scarred Hero by Emily May

Listening to: Amy Winehouse

Watching: New Tricks

Making Me Smile: The Jennifer Crusie's on my TBR pile

What do you love in a heroine?

A lot of my friends tell me it's the hero that makes a romance special for them - a man who is strong, sexy and to die for - but I have a confession to make, it's the heroine who is most important for me. Now don't get me wrong, I want a hero who is strong and sexy and to die for too, but it is the heroine I empathize with and it is through her that I experience the ecstasy and agony of falling in love.

Which got me thinking - as a reader what do I love in a heroine? To find an answer, I went back to my favourite reads for the year.

Juliet from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society: Her voice compelled me to read on. She was witty and intelligent and had me laughing out loud. I actively wanted to know her better. Although she had plenty to feel depressed about, she never wallowed in self-pity. She maintained a sense of humour. She was proactive - she went looking for what needed.

Jane Eyre: Jane fights passionately for independence and the right to direct her own life. Adversity comes in the shape of villains and in the shape of her lover, but in the end Jane remains true to herself. That's what I love about her. (Oh and she's isn't beautiful. I loved that too)

Dr Erin Carmody from A Special Kind of Family by Marion Lennox: Okay at the very beginning of this book Erin, injured in a car accident, carries a heavy, ugly dog who is at death's door miles and miles to save it's life. I don't need to know anything else about Erin, because I now love her.

Annie from Christmas Angel For the Billionaire by Liz Fielding: Annie is in such an unusual and oppressive situation that when I discover she's not vanquished or diminished by it and that she can still act with grace, she gains my support. She's another proactive heroine who rescues herself rather than sitting around waiting for someone else to rescue her.

So what do all these heroines have in common? The trait that strikes me most forcefully is their courage - they all have that in spades. Secondly, they are all proactive. They don't sit around waiting for their lives and/or circumstances to change. Instead they set about changing their circumstances themselves. Although they are all very different in temperament they each had a quality I admired and it was different for each one: Juliet's humour, Jane's honesty, Erin's grit and Annie's determination.

Basically, they are all women I'd like to be friends with.

What about you? What do you love to see in a heroine?