But it still makes me, as a woman, think I would never consider my breasts in any garment. All he needed to say was she wore a vest. There really is no need to mention her breasts at all, and certainly not mention their size.
GRRM, I have to be honest, is someone I think has enforced stereotypes of women in fantasy -- even though, I suspect, he tried to go out of his way not to. Not so much in what he says, or even in the characters he creates - Arya is excellent, for instance -- but in his casual acceptance of their place, their commodity. Now, I know the argument is that he's depicting a real, gritty world, and these things happened. My concern is that, sometimes, it gets too close to gratuitous for me. It's been a while since I've read the books, but the one bit that sticks in mind are the serving girl who stands in as Roose(? I think) Bolton's wife, and the first sex scene with her and Reek. And what happened with Tyrion's wife, that was too much, I thought, like the playing out of a fantasy, somehow. I also didn't like Cersei's walk of shame, and whilst I know there is a historical precedent, it wasn't a common punishment.
That slipped into gratuitous for me.
But, KMQ's article is right: the thing I find most dislikeable is the type of peril the women face, but the men don't. It's not just rape -- I accept male on male rape is a taboo many don't like to face, and it's a hard sell in a book (darn) -- but even eg. the walk of shame. Jamie has something happen to affect his perceived manhood, and it's to do with his fighting ability (trying to avoid spoiling here), Cersei's is to do with the displaying of her naked body. One gains sympathy as a character, one doesn't. The punishment meted out seems to reinforce the stereotypes of men as fighters, women who have to use other means of fighting. Even when with Brienne, of her and Jamie, only one faces the sort of danger we'd expect of one being captured in such peril.
It is the casualness which it is applied, often without the writer consciously doing it. I do it myself, even knowing it's there. But a woman thinking about the size of her breast inside a garment, in her point of view, that, regardless of the context, is a male writing a female. To take something Mouse said in the writing group once, and turn it around slightly, would GRRM say something like: he pulled on the traditional kilt, and felt the air shift around his somewhat shrivelled penis? I don't think so... (he'd probably show them peeing instead. He likes his peeing.
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