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Apparently publishers think if they slap a picture of a woman in a tightly bound corset on a book’s cover, it’ll be a hit. Every time I go to the bookstore, there’s another corset cover — and not where you might expect to find it, on bodice-ripping romance novels. Nope, they’re everywhere.
Jacquline Carey’s Kushiel’s Scion is a classic example.
In fact, each of the books in the Kushiel’s Whatever series features a scantily draped and tattooed woman on the cover. Yes, it’s sci-fi, a genre not necessarily known for its feminist book covers. Even so, I’m tired of looking at these women’s backs!
The young adult novel by Libba Bray, Sweet Far Thing, also features the back-turned, corset motif.
This weekend, browsing at my local Borders, I saw this on the New Paperbacks table: Leda Swann’s Mistress.
This book is described as a steamy historical romance, which makes the corset image more appropriate (I guess) but it’s worth including because it gives me an excuse to introduce you to “Leda Swann,” the pseudonym of the “writing duet of Cathy and Brent,” a couple from New Zealand. It’s worth going to their webpage just to see the pictures (under “Meet Leda”) of their incongruously ordinary family.
Feminism 101 tells us how to read these covers — it’s not accidental that the women are headless, faceless, identity-less, reduced to the status of sexual objects. But, what bothers me as much as the demeaning portrayal of women is how incredibly lazy and predictable book cover producers have become. What a staggering lack of imagination!
Caveat: I haven’t read any of these three books so I am, it’s true, judging the books by their covers. It’s a worthwhile practice, though, since the publishers seem to be asleep at the wheel.
I think it’s safe to say that none of these books will be featured in the annual Best Book Covers list complied at the Book Design Review (here’s the 2007 list).
I started this blog several months ago because I had reached a turning point in my academic career (having finished the book project that had kept me gripped in misery for so long). I wanted to become a participant in the academic blog culture that I had been reading and benefiting from for years. I wanted to explore through blog writing the idea that academia might just be a positive, constructive place for me, not merely a source of frustration, anger, and self-doubt.
However, what I’ve experienced is that all I use the blog for is complaining. Yes, I’ve been in the midst of a particularly busy and stressful semester, and I haven’t been handling it well — so complaints have been many. But, I have found it too easy to fall into the dominant discourse of academic blogging: the snarky, sarcastic, outraged complaint. Don’t get me wrong, there’s so much about academia that deserves a critical response. I’m as bitter as ever about the injustices that are perpetrated under the guise of genteel intellectualism. But, it hasn’t been helpful to my mind and spirit to indulge all my bitterness with so little attention to the positives in my life.
In addition, I’ve found academic blogging to be much more work than I expected. Between keeping up with what everyone else is writing, participating in the blog community by commenting and writing relevent posts, and the pressure (obviously of my own creation) to be “timely,” to have something new and interesting to say … Well, goodness sakes, that last thing I need is another obligation! And, that’s what this blog has started to feel like.
I contemplated shutting the blog down altogether but instead I’ve decided to refashion it. You’ll see, attentive Reader, that the subtitle of the blog has been changed and the blogroll omitted. This is no longer an “academic blog” in the narrow sense. I’m going to try blogging more generally on the topics that interest me. Naturally, I’ll write about my life as a professor but I want to explore other avenues, and essentially re-conceive this space of writing for more constructive and creative purposes.
Stay tuned.
I’ve been taking a break from blogging, especially since this blog has become a woe-is-me, life is a misery whine-fest of late.
Now I’m taking a break from everything thanks to the blessed institution known as SPRING BREAK. The academic gods did a good thing when they created this mid-semester holiday. Just in time for me to retain my sanity, catch up on my grading, do a little gardening, and maybe a little blogging.
I’ve come to a disheartening realization. I have realized that when I finished my book manuscript I honestly and foolishly believed that my life would be different, that the Post Book Period of my life would be a radical departure from the Book Writing Period which was characterized by almost unrelenting anxiety and stress, as well as a healthy dose of insecurity and an overwhelming sense of futility.
For me, it wasn’t the idea of publication that held promise — although I recognize that until the book is published, I’m not really in the Post Book Period. Instead, it was just finishing the manuscript. I worked on the book for such a long time, so many years, and the labor was always something I had to squeeze in as an addition to all my day-to-day responsibilities (grading, laundry, etc.) so to say that it was difficult to get any writing or research done is an understatement. I really thought that, once that burden was removed, I would recover all of the time and mental energy that had gone into it, which I would now be able to put to better purpose — such as having a real life, taking care of myself and my loved ones, pursuing some life goals that don’t have anything to do with tenure.
I finished the manuscript last Fall and I’m in the process of getting it reviewed — so I should be in the clover now, right? Wrong. This semester has been as hectic, frantic, and anxiety-producing as any before. I do not have more time, I am still working nights and weekends, I am still neglectful of myself and the people and things that require my attention. In other words: NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
This is extremely grim news to me. For so long, the prospect of just surviving the book-writing-torture is what kept me going. Kinda like how I survived the dissertation-writing-torture: by telling myself that if I just finished, everything would be better. (In that case, I was somewhat right: things did significantly change in my life once I finished my PhD and got a tenure-stream job; of course, then I was introduced to the grueling reality of being an assistant professor.) This time, however, I fear I was mistaken. I have a new perspective on the long life ahead as an academic and it ain’t pretty. If this is what is required of me than I think a change of career is a necessity. I simply can’t keep this up and the rewards are far too scarce.
Contemplating career suicide as I sit in my office on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with a stack of grading at my elbow and no end in sight.
