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).
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
March 25, 2008 at 6:13 am
Sisyphus
There’s something going on in addition —- I think someone made the theory of the “moving erogenous zone” — I think we’re coming back to backs being seen as sexy (sexiest? hmm) right now, that is getting picked up in these covers.
Of course, to get those “lines” — not quite “cut” like the whole “she’s gotta have a six-pack” fad, but still with distinct definition — one needs to be both very thin and muscular.
And as someone who is never either, I say phooey.
October 27, 2008 at 2:17 am
Nicola
I’m a huge reader of romance novels, and I was just thinking today how much I like the recent trend in covers that picture a man’s torso, and usually just a part of his face, or none at all.
Not because I want to objectify them, but because I prefer to let my imagination and the words of the author form the vision of the character in my head.