Southern Fried Chicas

Dad: “Boys are made of snips and snails and puppydog tails.  Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.”

Little Raine: “Why?  Can’t I have a puppydog tail too?”

We’re making a quick trip through ye olde Double S ranch today.
That’s “S” for “Standard”.

A great many romance readers seem to like the proverbial “bad boy”.  I’ve written one or two myself.  He’s the gruff, charming, sleazy, Alpha, can’t-keep-a-job, spit-in-your-face, don’t-like-it-bite-me kinda guy your mom always told you to stay away from.
Yeah, right. 
He’s also, generally speaking, a whore.
Whoops.  S’cuse me—a stud.
At least, until he meets the heroine that makes him change his ways.

I find myself thinking of this guy when I’m working on one of my latest heroines.  In a brief conversation with Ames recently, I told her I’d given up the ghost, after a prolonged war, and decided to write the character the way she seemed to be demanding.

She was a total bitch.

Ames asked if I wasn’t writing her that way because I was worried she wouldn’t sell.

And although I wasn’t really CONSCIOUSLY aware of it, I think that was probably true.
And shame on me for thinking it, and not writing the story as it needed to be written.

This heroine is aggressive.  Pitiless.  Immoral.  Deadly.
She’ll do whatever’s necessary to get exactly what she wants.  Whatever.
Her one redeeming characteristic is that she has the capacity to love, and she finds that with the hero.

So why should a reader find her any less acceptable that a hero with the same traits?

Do you find yourself expecting your male and female characters to adhere to different standards in your reading and writing, whether you intend it or not?