I’ve talked recently about what makes a great romance novel hero and heroine for me, but I want to throw it out to you today on an absolutely superficial level and ask, what kinds of men and women do you find most attractive on a purely physical basis? Do you like a hard-bodied man with big, rippling muscles, or do you prefer a lankier type? Do blonde women really have more fun, or are brunettes the stunners that catch your eye? How about faces? What do you notice first about them? Eyes? Lips? Proportions? Expressions? Do you think thin, angular women are sexier, or those with curves and a little meat on the bones? When you watch a man walk, are you checking out his shoulders, his legs, or, ahem, somewhere in between? Does size really matter?

Girls like me wanna know.

I’ve heard red-headed heroes don’t fare particularly well as romance leads. Is that true for you? Flaxen hair seems more common on heroines than ebony tresses – or do I maybe just notice that more? And do heroes or heroines EVER have rich chocolately eyes instead of those the color of the sea in a storm?

I myself prefer the tall, dark, handsome, and somewhat lanky hero type, a la Robert Pattinson or Ralph Fiennes. With gorgeous blueish-greenish-grayish-yummyish eyes. I guess that’s more medium than dark. Whatever. As a teen in the 80’s I thought there was no one sexier than a blond-headed man. Yet now? Not so much. With exceptions, of course, including my beloved, sexy, snaggle-toothed (at least before he fixed them) Bradley James, who played Prince Arthur in the recent BBC series Merlin. Whoah, mama, he’s fine. But most of the time it’s the tall, chestnut-haired, light-eyed, leanly muscled fellows that are gonna start me drooling. Especially if they have nice mouths. I notice mouths a lot. Is that kooky? If so, blame my mother – she’s the one who taught me to focus on lips and such because she always talks about them herself.

As for women, I admit it, I tend to think of blonde-haired blue-eyed beauties for romance heroines. Bad Margaret. Bad. (In my defense, of the 5-6 additional stories I’ve sketched out, I’ve made sure to have 3 of the heroines have darker locks – and two have darker eyes, as well.) I like my women to have curves, too, because, well, I do (although they don’t need as many as I have, unless they’d like to help me out by taking a few of these pounds off my hands. And my hips.).

Hopefully as I get farther down this writing path I shall challenge my own preferences, because certainly there must be people out there hankering after fellows with straw-colored hair and walnut eyes, just as there have got to be people for whom anything less than a raven-haired vixen with mahogany orbs just won’t do. And I haven’t even mentioned people of other ethnic backgrounds, although there are certainly many men and women from all over the world and all sorts of heritages that I find super sexy. I guess when reading romance, because I read Regencies, perhaps, most of the characters are white-skinned. Most, not all. Have you read romances featuring a broader selection of ethnicities?

In any case, let me know what gets your juices flowing. And if you need a little eye candy to help you out, here’s my Pinterest board full of people I find attractive. Which of course I have purely for research. Right? Right.

A few weeks ago, I mused on what makes a great hero – and asked for your own definitions of the ideal man.

Today I’m wondering, what characteristics in a heroine appeal most and least to you?

I’m pretty sure I read somewhere once that romance novel heroines are intentionally less well-defined and sketched out than the heroes are, because authors know that we the readers want to be able to imagine ourselves in the place of the heroine. At the time, I balked at that notion, thinking of all the descriptions of flowing hair and heaving bosoms that I’ve read over the years. I certainly was never a diamond of the first water with an enviable waist size and the ability to outride, outshoot, or outfox the handsome devil determined to stir up trouble (and my hormones).

And yet, I think there is some truth to it. Or at least some truth to the fact that I want heroines who feel like someone I think I could be – or would want to be. Perfect heroines don’t interest me. Neither do perfect heroes. I like flaws. I like challenges. I guess most of us do – perfection may seem fine for models in a magazine, but for characters in a book, give me depth, give me quirks, give me faults and foibles and challenges to be overcome.

But a heroine with spunk? Yes, please. Anxiety rules my own life, so it’s fun for me to pretend, if just for a little while, that fear doesn’t dictate my every action, that I would be willing to sass the Duke, to defy the Viscount, to seduce the Earl. An adventuresome, bold heroine can make me feel like I’m behaving in ways that I’m not, just because I’ve immersed myself in her story and taken on her identity, if you will.

Yet there are definitely things that make or break a heroine for me, some character traits or idiosyncrasies that can make a heroine really pop – or really turn me off.

Maybe it’s because I’m, um, getting older, but I don’t usually care for the super-young heroines. In the 1980’s, when I first started reading romance, it seemed every hero was 32 or 34, and every heroine was 17 or 18. When I was 9, 10, 14, 16 (don’t tell my mom I started reading romances at 9), this sounded hot. Now it sounds creepy. So I’m grateful that many of the newer authors are giving us heroines in their 20’s, and sometimes – wait for it – even in their 30’s.

On the other hand, I’m such a traditionalist in romance that I still prefer my heroines not to have slept with everyone in town. Yes, it’s ludicrous as a feminist in the 21st century to want less sexually-experienced women to star in my beloved stories. Yes, it’s a double-standard in that I don’t expect the same of the heroes, but hey, I’m just being honest. That doesn’t mean I think everyone has to be a virgin – I definitely like that sexual purity is not the sole thing that defines a “good” woman anymore. And I appreciate the authors who throw in a virgin hero every once in a while, just to shake things up.

But I’m still not wild about novels featuring women who are courtesans or experienced mistresses or former prostitutes. Maybe because I’ve never felt the desire to be a courtesan, even a reformed one. For me sex and love are intimately intertwined, in real life and in romance. Not everybody feels that way, and that’s fine. Just a personal preference.  You can bet that fidelity between the hero and heroine is also a must for me. Rakes make great heroes as long as they’re reformed – or reform for the heroine.

My favorite heroines are the quirky ones. The ones who don’t quite fit the norm. I want them smart – very smart. Give them a love for books. Make them fascinated with bugs or maps or ancient history. Have them be less than physically perfect – maybe they need glasses, or walk with a limp, or have a darling lisp. Perhaps they’re even, *gasp*, slightly plump. When a heroine has something that marks her as a little different, a little more of an outsider, I immediately fall for her. Because *I* have always felt a little different, a little on the outside.

Stick those little differences on a beautiful, daring, witty, alluring heroine, and I’m enthralled. It’s like I get to be the weird me and the sexy seductress, all at the same time. A little Velma and a whole lot of Daphne, instead of the other way around.  And the best part? The hero is going to fall for it, all of it, the whole package. If he can fall for that, he could fall for ME, right?

How about you?