Is there some hard and fast rule which dictates that while it’s perfectly acceptable for female book characters to be frumpy or have a uni-brow or hips as wide as Texas, the same does not apply once that female book character jumps to the small screen? More to the point, do television producers honestly believe viewers (especially of the male persuasion) to be so shallow that they’d never watch a show where the lead female character was anything but a hot babe? Sadly, that seems to be the case.

Let’s examine the evidence, if you will. Some of the most memorable and popular male TV characters would never come close to being described as “beefcake material”. Take for instance Hugh Laurie, as Dr. Gregory House from the TV show House, the brilliant, albeit cynical narcissist who never met a razor he liked. Or how about Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo, from the eponymous TV show, who looked like a bum off the streets with his rumpled raincoat, chomped-over cigar and clunker of a car constantly on the fritz. And who can forget the chubby, blue collar bigot, Archie Bunker, from All in the Family or the infamous J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame and his creepy eyebrows that seemed to have lives all their own? None of these guys would even come close to placing as runners up in a beauty contest and yet all were compelling characters.

Alas, not so for women characters on TV, especially those who transitioned from the book pages to the small screen. Think of the bodacious Lynda Carter from the seventies television show, Wonder Woman. Would anyone have bothered watching Wonder Woman had Lynda Carter been a flat-chested, wide-hipped version of Fran Drescher? And how about Michelle Maxwell from the short-lived television show, King & Maxwell, based on David Baldacci’s crime novel series? Rebecca Romijn looks like she stepped off the front cover of Vogue – after sprinting her way across six city blocks in hot pursuit of an unsub. And let’s not forget the more recently departed crime-fighting duo, Rizzoli and Isles, characters adapted from the popular crime series books by Tess Gerritsen. In Gerritsen’s books, Detective Jane Rizzoli has hair that’s often described as frizzy and she seems to favor wrinkled pantsuits more often than not. Flash forward to the small screen and you’ve got the beautiful, willowy ex-model Angie Harmon playing her character, with the very pretty blonde Sasha Alexander playing the part of the medical examiner, Dr. Maura Isles, who regularly attends crime scenes wearing killer heels and the latest in designer duds. What real-life medical examiner does that? Likely not a one!

It sadly seems as though these female book characters are being made over to appeal to male viewers, no two ways about it. In other words, if the chick ain’t eye candy, she ain’t worth watching. Clearly, it’s all about marketing and demographics, but more to the point, it says something about our society in general, wouldn’t you say?