“Men Writing Women”: 30 Times Male Authors Wrote Female Characters So Poorly, It’s Almost Like They’ve Never Met A Woman Before

Why “Men Writing Women” Keeps Happening

When writers default to “man” as the human setting and “woman” as a decorative add-on, female characters get written from the outside in: how she looks,
how she’s perceived, what she “does” to the male protagonist’s mood. That’s not character developmentit’s a human-shaped reflection.

Critics and writers in major U.S. outlets have pointed out the same pattern from different angles: men are often treated as universal, women as “Other,”
and the result is a weirdly narrow range of roleslove interest, mother, temptress, trauma device, mysterious puzzle box. (Bonus points if her job
disappears the second a man enters the room.)

Also: perspective is a skill. Writing outside your own experience can be brilliant when it’s done with curiosity and humilityless “I will explain women”
and more “I will listen to women.”

The 30 Times It Went Off the Rails

Think of these as recurring “tells”the little tropes and choices that scream, “A man wrote this and then immediately high-fived himself.”
Each one is fixable. Each one is also… shockingly common.

1. 1) The Mirror Inventory (aka “Hi, I’m My Own Boob Report”)

   She meets a mirror and instantly itemizes her body like she’s writing a police statement about her own curves. Real people don’t narrate themselves
   like a catalogunless they’re trapped in a skincare commercial.

2. 2) “She Breasted Boobily” Physics

   Her breasts lead the scene like eager interns, arriving five seconds before the rest of her. If your sentence makes a reader wonder whether boobs
   have legs, it’s time to revise.

3. 3) The “Outside-In” Woman

   We learn every detail of her body, and nothing about what she wants, fears, or believes. She’s written as a view, not a personwindow dressing with
   a pulse.

4. 4) The Vagina as Storage Unit

   The infamous “purse pocket dimension” moment: a woman’s anatomy treated like a tote bag with trauma. If you’re unsure how a body works, don’t guess
   with confidenceGoogle exists.

5. 5) The “Her Tits Walked Out” Metaphor Olympics

   Boobs that emote, wander, announce opinions, or file for divorce. Metaphors are great; metaphors that turn body parts into separate roommates are…
   a choice.

6. 6) The Period as Plot Twist

   A woman is “late” and the story treats it like a mysterious curse, complete with male panic and medical nonsense. Menstruation isn’t a jump-scare;
   it’s a calendar event.

7. 7) “Not Like Other Girls” as a Love Letter

   The hero praises her by insulting women as a category. It’s not a compliment if it requires stepping on a whole gender to lift her up.

8. 8) The Cool Girl Resume

   She loves burgers, hates makeup, never gets mad, and exists to validate male taste. She’s not a charactershe’s a fantasy LinkedIn profile.

9. 9) The Woman Who Has Never Eaten Food

   She “picks” at salad, is “too nervous to eat,” or survives on one strawberry and vibes. It’s not dainty; it’s a diet culture jump cut.

10. 10) The Femme Fatale Who Exists to Be Punished

    She’s written as temptation, then “taught a lesson” for it. If your story acts like women must pay a tax for being desirable, the villain is the
    worldview, not her.

11. 11) The Dead Wife Starter Pack

    She appears only as a tragic memory to motivate the male hero. Grief is realbut if her entire purpose is to make him interesting, she’s been
    reduced to narrative fuel.

12. 12) The “She’s Mysterious” Cop-Out

    The author calls her an enigma because they didn’t write her interior life. Mystery is a trait; vacancy is a draft.

13. 13) The Competent Professional Who Forgets Her Job

    She’s a doctor/lawyer/spy… until a man enters, and suddenly she’s just “a woman.” If attraction deletes her competence, that’s not romance; it’s
    sabotage.

14. 14) The Strong Female Character™ With No Soft Tissue

    Strength gets mistaken for emotional numbness. A “strong woman” who never doubts, laughs, rests, or connects is just a cardboard cutout with a sword.

15. 15) The Trauma Trophy

    Her pain exists to deepen his character arc, like adversity is a gift basket delivered to the male lead. Trauma isn’t a prop; treat it like a life.

16. 16) Catty Rivalry Olympics

    Two women meet and instantly hate each other for sport, because apparently friendship is illegal in this universe. If every female interaction is a
    dagger fight, that’s not realismit’s a bias.

17. 17) The Breast-Centered Backstory

    She’s described via her mother’s body, her own body, or the male narrator’s body reacting to her body. Nobody asked, yet everyone’s chest is in the
    meeting.

18. 18) The “She’s Emotional” Get-Out-of-Writing-Free Card

    Her feelings are used as shorthand instead of motivation. Emotion isn’t irrational; it’s information. Write what it means, not just that it happens.

19. 19) The “Feisty” Label That Means “Unreasonable”

    “Feisty” becomes code for “she won’t quietly accept disrespect.” If the story punishes her for boundaries, it’s telling on itself.

20. 20) The Seduction-by-Exposition Scene

    She’s mid-conversation and the narration detours into a five-paragraph body scan. The plot didn’t ask for a slow pan; the camera just wandered in.

21. 21) The “She’s Hot, Therefore She’s Good” Shortcut

    Her virtue is tied to attractiveness, while men get moral complexity regardless of jawline. If beauty is her main credential, she’s been hired for
    decoration.

22. 22) The Woman Who Exists to Fix Him

    She’s basically an emotional support human whose dream is to rehabilitate a brooding man. Therapy is great. Assigning it to your heroine as unpaid
    labor is not.

23. 23) The “She’s a Siren” Wife

    The wife is written as unknowable, alluring, and vaguely threateningbecause the male narrator can’t imagine her as a whole person with autonomy.

24. 24) The Male Author Writing “Female Voice” Like a Costume

    The narration tries to sound “girly” by adding insecurity, gossip, and body obsessionlike femininity is a filter. Voice comes from values and
    perspective, not glitter.

25. 25) The Alluring Child (Please Don’t)

    A teen girl described with adult erotic language is not “edgy”it’s alarming. If your prose makes readers protective instead of impressed, listen to that.

26. 26) The “She Doesn’t Know She’s Beautiful” Commandment

    The story insists she’s hottest when unaware, like confidence would ruin the aesthetic. Let women know themselves. It’s not a crime; it’s selfhood.

27. 27) The Mom as Furniture

    Mothers appear only as warm objectsnurturing, nagging, or dead. Mothers are people with opinions, histories, and messy interior lives. Give her a life
    that isn’t just “other people’s needs.”

28. 28) The Sexy Armor Problem

    She’s a warrior in protective gear designed by someone who hates internal organs. If the outfit is engineered for the male gaze, it’s costume, not armor.

29. 29) The Manic Pixie “Fix My Sadness” Button

    She’s quirky, magical, and exists to teach a man how to livethen she evaporates. Characters aren’t self-help apps; they need their own stake in the story.

30. 30) The Ending Where She “Learns Her Place”

    The plot rewards her for shrinkingquieter, softer, less ambitiousbecause that’s what “mature” means to the narrator. Growth should expand a life,
    not fold it into someone else’s pocket.

How to Write Women Like They’re People (Wild Concept!)

Start with desires, not details

Before you write a single physical description, answer: what does she want today, and what does she want in life? Desire creates motion. Motion creates plot.

Swap the “camera” for a mind

If your narration treats her like a shot list, rewrite from her interior: what she notices, what she interprets, what she hides, what she risks.

Let her be contradictory

Realism lives in contradiction: brave and anxious, nurturing and resentful, ambitious and tired. Flat “strong female characters” aren’t strongthey’re unfinished.

Use specificity that isn’t sexualization

Details can be intimate without being objectifying. Show how she moves through the worldhabits, humor, competence, tastes, grudges, joys. If the detail
primarily serves the male gaze, ask why it’s there.

Get feedback from women (and actually listen)

Not as a checkboxlike you’re hiring “Woman, The Consultant.” Listen for patterns: when readers say “this felt off,” that’s not an attack; it’s a map.

Extra: of Very Real Reader Experiences

If you’ve ever been deep into a booktwo chapters from the twist, emotionally attached to the dog, fully ready to recommend itand then a female character
appears like she’s being introduced by a frat-house narrator, you know the exact sensation: your brain hits the brakes so hard your soul gets whiplash.

It’s not even always the big stuff. Sometimes it’s a single line that makes you pause and stare at the page like it insulted your family. A woman “smiles
despite herself” for the 800th time. She “doesn’t realize she’s beautiful,” which is a weird thing to keep insisting unless the story is terrified of women
who recognize their own power. Or she’s a detective with awards on the walluntil a man flirts with her and suddenly she forgets how doors work.

Readers swap these moments the way people swap bad first-date stories: half laughing, half asking, “How did that get published?” Because here’s the thing:
you can feel when a character is being watched instead of lived. The prose becomes a spotlight aimed at a body rather than a mind. And once you notice it,
it changes how you read everything around it. You start asking: does she get to want anything? Does she make a choice that isn’t about him? Does she have
relationships that aren’t romantic, maternal, or competitive?

In book clubs and online threads, this topic keeps resurfacing because the experience is so recognizable across genres. In thrillers, it can show up as the
“mysterious wife” who exists to confuse the male protagonistshe’s written like a riddle because the story doesn’t care what she’s thinking. In fantasy,
it might be the warrior whose outfit is basically a dare. In literary fiction, it can be the well-crafted sentence that still can’t resist making a woman’s
body the emotional barometer of the scene. The writing may be elegant; the perspective still feels lopsided.

For writers, these examples can be oddly usefullike a neon sign that flashes, “Don’t do this.” Because the fix isn’t complicated. It’s attention. It’s
empathy. It’s letting women be specific, motivated, messy people who sometimes fail, sometimes triumph, and often do both in the same afternoon. The best
“men writing women” success stories don’t come from male authors trying to “get women right” like they’re solving a puzzle. They come from male authors
writing women with the same respect they give male characters: interiority, agency, complexity, dignity, and room to be funny without being the joke.

And for readers? There’s a certain joy in watching the bar rise. Once you’ve read a woman written with full humanity, it becomes harder to tolerate the
old shortcuts. You want women who breathe on the pagenot mannequins with great hair, not trauma props, not walking metaphors for a man’s loneliness.
You want characters who feel like they’d keep existing even if the hero left the room. Honestly, that’s the whole point of fiction: making lives feel real.

Conclusion

“Men writing women” is funny until it isn’tbecause underneath the memes is a serious craft issue: when female characters are written as objects, symbols,
or plot devices, stories get smaller. The good news is that the fix is refreshingly unsexy: write women with agency, interiority, contradictions, and goals
that don’t orbit a man like he’s the sun.

Laugh at the “breasted boobily” lines if you want (they’ve earned it). Then write something better. Your readers will feel the difference.

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