From Salon, I caught this article complaining about books-by-women-for-women, or more precisely, their covers. The writer Karen Heller is appalled at the dismembered female body parts trend that was really started by chick lit smash books like this one:
I haven’t read this book, making me the last woman in America it seems to have not read it, but I see the appeal of the cover immediately. Who doesn’t want to believe that being “good in bed” is about indulging your appetite for strawberry shortcake? In the real world, women experience sexual striving more as depriving ourselves of the shortcake.
Women’s literature has moved beyond the pale - all matter of pinks from pale to insistent - to dismemberment. These days, publishers are partial to flashing body parts, specifically women’s body parts, often legs and exquisitely shod feet, on book jackets…..
Publishers are also fond of blurry photos featuring the backs of women, often in fluttery summer dresses. No faces, please, we’re women.
It’s really tempting sometimes to just demonize on these fronts, but realistically speaking, book cover trends are driven by the marketplace, and this trend, like it or not, is a big trend because books with these kinds of covers sell better. Which leads me to believe it’s less that publishers are trying to insult their audience and more that the audience finds these covers satisfying for some reason. The reason I’ve always heard is that the faceless ladies—whether facelessness is achieved by just showing certain body parts or photographing someone from behind—are popular with audiences because it’s easier to project yourself onto the character. I would add, as someone with my own set of capitalism-induced body image issues, that the reason many of covers prefer to focus on feet or ankles is because it’s easier to project yourself onto a slender ankle than onto an impossibly slender thigh. True, the immediate solution to the latter problem would be to use cover art that shows women’s bodies that are not impossibly slender, but for various reasons, that isn’t going to be embraced. “Slender” marks something as classy in our culture, unfortunately, and women who are looking for escapist romantic fantasies in their books are going to want something that broadcasts classiness.
It seems that the market she’s describing is, in fact, about escapism more than any other factor. When criticizing the cover of a book that Heller doesn’t feel fits this mold, she tips off that there is in fact a mold.
Katie Crouch’s Girls in Trucks is one such book. The just-published debut novel about Southern debs gone bad is winsome. Crouch possesses a deft comic voice, a gift for observation, and the ending is free from the prince-saves-heroine gimmick of much chick lit.
I’m really sympathetic to the general complaint. I’m a big snob—I wish people read more for the edification of the mind and the deepening of the soul. But I’d be lying if I thought there was anything to hold against people who seek escapist entertainment. Hell, a lot of my reading, much less movie and TV-viewing, is pure escapism. Maybe I’m not as enamored of escaping through elaborate fantasies, but plenty of perfectly smart people are, and it’s hard to fault them for it. A lot of women work really hard at work, at home, with husbands, with children, and of course with extended family and community obligations. When they carve out time for themselves to read, it’s no wonder many of them would rather just curl up with an escapist fantasy where they can feel like a single woman whose main problems are madcap dating adventures that always end before the children-and-responsibility part of romance.
And since the market wants escapism, it’s in the interest of sales to make book covers say, “You can project yourself onto this character, who is the sort of person who runs barefoot down garden paths in vintage gowns, or perhaps lolls around with her feet up in the air with kicky shoes.” Hell, described that way, I want to escape into the fantasy. It’s not about being stupid, but being human, I’d think.
45 Responses to “Adult ladies and the non-cartoon strawberry shortcake”
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I thought it was more of a cheap way to look vaguely artistic.
I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive. But it isn’t really thoughtful. The belief that women can fantasize themselves onto a faceless image goes way back. Even though the show is fiction, I doubt they were referring to anything but reality when the characters on “Mad Men” suggested headless mannequiens so that women can more easily imagine themselves in the dresses.
This is just such a wrongheaded way to look at the problem of cover art. *Of course* its easier for any given reader to project herself onto a vague cover picture than onto one that is highly specific. Of course a partial image of a body is more abstract and therefore, sometimes, less deterministic than a full image. And of course all of non verbal artistic communication relies on using some images to stand in for storytelling–jeebus that’s why in non literate societies they used standard iconography to tell bible stories and to signify “buy beer here” instead of relying on long incomprehensible texts. This is news?
Also, showing an image of a woman’s two legs isn’t the same as showing “dismembered” legs or body parts.
I’d say the only sad thing about the images sold on chick lit is that they assume and foster the sexualization of women’s bodies for other women and they insist (generally speaking) on the glorification and normalization of a single body type and often (of course) a single racial or ethnic style. Of course there are books for black women, for brunettes, for jewish women, etc…but if you come accross an imprint for fat girls, middle class, intellectual married women do let me know. Otherwise if I want to read anything in this genre I’m asked to identify with a lot more that’s out of my comfort zone than just a pair of knees on a bed with some cake on the side.
aimai
Well, you’re not alone, Amanda; I haven’t read it either.
To be fair, a lot of romance novel covers chop men off at the neck too, so you see a broad, hairy chest, an open shirt, a belt, pants, and little else. I suppose that’s so Marge can imagine Homer’s face above the beefcake.
“Lisa, you’re ruining my sax!”
As a graphic designer, I don’t usually have issues with interesting crops, and honestly, I think this was started not from an intent to reduce women down to body parts, but because it was artistically interesting. That doesn’t mean that something that started off innocently, couldn’t have morphed into something else that reflects the sexism in our society.
I do think the point about allowing a woman to identify more with the cover character has a point. For another example, you only ever see the iPod people as silhouettes framing the object they are using. Enough detail is delineated to let you know that certain ethnicities, genders, subcultures are represented, but you never see the details of the person.
I do think aimai has a point about how the images used tend to still use a “normalised” standard of beauty.
This is an issue in all forms of literature; I’m most familiar with the phenomenon in books for young adults.
One problem is that publishers are often using stock photos, and it can be very difficult to find a photo that’s right — if you’re showing the character’s face, it has to be not only the right pose, clothing, etc., but also the right look. If you’re not showing the face, that eliminates a major restriction.
Also, if there’s any chance that the book will be a series, you don’t want to show the main character’s face, because it may be difficult to get photos of that same person for the next book.
This problem is usually raised in relation to women’s body parts, but I think it applies to men as well. The major difference is that there aren’t as many men who appear on book covers, I don’t think. Maybe books aimed at men tend to have more graphic cover treatments? Or maybe there aren’t as many novels aimed at male readers at all? Or maybe a photo of a man isn’t seen as the draw that a photo of a woman is, because men’s bodies are less sexualized? This is certainly an issue, but I think it’s a different issue from the “why don’t we show women’s faces” issue.
I have read “Good in Bed,” and it’s pretty much the opposite in the story of what this essayist is complaining about. The narrator and main character is an overweight magazine writer who gets pregnant when giving a sympathy fuck to her ex after his father’s funeral. Other than the complete absence of money troubles the heroine is remarkably ordinary. The fact that she isn’t conventiotnally attractive is a big part of the plot, and discussed in a very interesting and feminist sense. (Also, she never apologizes for being sexually active, and more experienced than her boyfriend.)
Not only have I not read the book, but I’d never even heard of it. You’re not alone there.
And neither are you alone in your interpretation of the cover. Sometimes legs are just legs, and I say this as someone who fancies herself a photographer. Cropping a part for the whole is not necessarily dehumanizing and not necessarily sexist.
Never heard of it either, but it’s that a shot of NY style cheesecake with a strawberry on top, not shortcake?
And it’s not like the “naked lower limbs” are in a Vee for Victory pose… so why the outrage?
Oh yeah, the trollop red manicured toes…
I’m an illustrator and designer with experience in book publishing.
It’s not just women’s books. If there’s a figure on the cover of any work of fiction it’s very, very rare to see their face. That’s because it’s been proven that audiences like to imagine the main character’s face for themselves. That’s probably, as you said, so they can project themselves onto that character, but the fact is that this rule of design has been in effect in the publishing industry for a long, long time. And, yes, it predates “chick lit” as we know it.
For once the media’s calling out sexism that isn’t there instead of ignoring what is.
Don’t forget the reverse side…
Non-ghettoized books featuring minorities, old people, non-glamorous white women? Ooooh, abstract designs! Landscapes! Weeeeee little figures in a busy graphic architecture!
I mean it about old people. Books like Curse of Chalion or Old Man’s War, which main characters are definitly on the downhill slide of age, have landscape covers.
Disabled people do get on covers sometimes actually. Makes me wonder…
I’ve been complaining about the legs-and-feet book covers for ages. I don’t think it’s about being dehumanizing. I think Amanda is right; it’s about the idea of women projecting themselves onto the protagnonist. I do object to the laziness of making all the book covers look the same, and what I perceive is a lack of respect for the female reader. Quit spoonfeeding us, really. We don’t need a bright pink cover and a pair of high-heeled shoes so we’ll know it’s a book for women without having to actually read it to find out. Why don’t they just go all out and start putting photos of Vulva Puppets on the cover?
Ranty, rant rant rant. Sorry. The legs-and-feet covers drive me nuts.
In my favorite series of books, the Nightside books by Simon R. Green, the covers never show the guys face either. They are modern fantasy, so they show a power halo around the head.
I suspect that is also so that the reader can get into the character more. On the other hand i don’t think it’s so we can imagine ourselves in the characters place. I think it’s so that the image used doesn’t disagree with the face our imaginations give the character.
On the other hand i only see random bodiless limbs in the books i like if they are the leftovers of a corpse. You never see just a guys arm, or torso, unless a very specific message is meant to be sent. (power for the guys arm, and male sexiness for a torso)
Of course the final thing about books that i have noticed is a large proportion have covers totally unrelated to the content. I don’t even check covers for interest anymore.
I prefer a disembodied ankle to Fabio.
Why don’t they just go all out and start putting photos of Vulva Puppets on the cover?
That would be awesome!!!
I’ve haven’t read or even heard of the book either. I
m not surprised though, as I don’t very much follow the chick lit publishing world. I don;t read many brand new books. There’s too much stuff already out there to read first.
Also, I agree on the cheesecake.
To some degree all genres have a standard cover design or several standard designs. Take mysteries, for example: it’s either a black cover with the author’s name in scary looking letters, or a colored cover with a weapon of some sort or a spooky looking building/corridor. Occasionally there’s a female body part with blood. Am I never going to read a mystery again because the cover designs are so much alike they’re blase’? No, course not.
Some of the cutesy cartoon covers on chick lit can throw off vibes of infantilization, but I don’t waste my time complaining about the outside of a book if what’s inside it is any good. I have to question the merits of a pulitzer prize-nominated critic who’s still going to Barnes and Noble and picking out books by their cover.
Well, the adage about not judging a book by it’s cover is the exact opposite of what publishers are trying to get you to do when they design covers. If there was a successful book (like the one listed above) other rival publishers will do their damndest to make you think that Their Version is just like The One You Already Liked. The main way they do that is with cover design.
This is especially egregious when it comes to fiction marketed to women; though I’ve heard wonderful things for years about The Time-Traveler’s Wife I have never had any desire to read it, mainly because of the cover.
However, this copycatting is by no means limited to that segment of the market. Look at all the historical conspiracy or art history thrillers to have come on the market in the last five years: most of them have taken something visually from the cover of The Da Vinci Code.
Interestingly, most mass-market romance titles do not crop faces. Some of the titles from crossover imprints (like Little Black Book or Red Dress Ink) which are owned by traditional romance publishers trying to break into ‘chick-lit’ will follow some of these conventions, but for the most part, there are still faces on most romance covers.
LOL @ Lisa re Fabio.
You might find interesting a post on Book Design Review from a while back about this cover and another one.
http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/search?q=weiner
It’s the same lemming approach that mass-market magazine publishers are following right now. Put Us, People and Life & Style magazines side-by-side and try to figure out which is which. They all use the same design now, because Us has been so successful that the other two are basically trying to trick you into buying them by mistake.
Jennifer Weiner gets tagged as “chick lit” since she was one of the most successful early authors and essentially kicked off the “genre,” but it’s kind of unfair. In Her Shoes isn’t Great Literature, but it’s a really good book about women’s relationships, IMO.
I wish I could style myself someone too good to care about the cover of a book, but I really can’t. Whether we like it or not, imagery is effective in putting people in emotional states—same with music. I can be pretty haphazard about the pictures I put on posts, but I absolutely feel that it’s part of why this blog does well, because pictures are eye-catching and improve people’s moods.
That’s definitely cheesecake and not strawberry shortcake (and the fact that it’s cheesecake may be a clue to the cover’s intended meaning)
They totally do make chick lit for fat women, check out Sue Ann Jaffarian.
I haven’t read a whole lot of chick lit, but I have noticed that just about any book by a woman and about a woman is labeled chick lit and given a stylish chick lit cover whether or not it’s appropriate to the story. It particularly bothers me when covers don’t match the stories inside; actually that’s what got me interested in art when I was a kid (I’m not an illustrator, but I do work as a graphic designer/artist). Inglorious featured a stock photos of a woman’s legs wearing a bright red coat, stylish shoes and skirt. The book repeatedly described the main character as having no style, and even described her entire very small wardrobe at one point (gray coat, peach pant suite, and one or two other articles of clothing). But it was by a woman and about a woman, therefore it needed to be marketed to women in the stereotypical way.
Both the article and this posting seem specious to me: So, let’s hear what WOULD be a good cover.
That would also sell books.
Pink sells. I don’t go into new bookstores often (grad student = used books and alibris consumer) but last time I did, I snatched up the first hot pink book I saw. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t expect it to be good, I was just drawn in by the siren song of hot pink.
I did flip through it before I bought it. Lucky for me, it was Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries. Hilarious graphic novel.
So I’m in the can’t-judge-a-book-by-its cover camp, but I still find Heller’s complaint compelling. I hate chick lit covers. I hate that they get ghettoized into displays at mainstream booksellers like a flock of cheap, brightly colored birds. I hate that I’ve never read Jennifer Weiner (who is from my city) but I assume that her books are empty and reify hetersexual myths of romance - because of those covers.
“It’s not just women’s books. If there’s a figure on the cover of any work of fiction it’s very, very rare to see their face. That’s because it’s been proven that audiences like to imagine the main character’s face for themselves. That’s probably, as you said, so they can project themselves onto that character, but the fact is that this rule of design has been in effect in the publishing industry for a long, long time. And, yes, it predates “chick lit” as we know it.
For once the media’s calling out sexism that isn’t there instead of ignoring what is.”
I (male) totally resemble this analysis. A (ever-lengthening, but so far, so good) series of fantasy/scifi (it’s still not clear which, but trending toward fantasy) books I’m reading have a series of bad, photorealistic covers that completely irk me every time I see them. I first picked them up based on a review I read and probably would have shunned them when browsing the library.
Here’s the first of the offending covers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451460413/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
Disappointing. Upon seeing the posting I thought this was by the author of “The Keep,” which kicked ass, but that’s Jennifer Egan.
As a graphic design student, I thought maybe I could offer some insight here: the covers of these books all look similar because, well, these publishing companies aren’t assigning the best cover designers to do them. The market has shown that (for some reason I won’t even try to divine) formulaic sells when it comes to chick lit, including the covers. Putting a designer who goes out of their way to find new, creative ways to solve problems onto the task of designing these covers is (the way publishers see it) a waste of money.
Yeah, maybe someday we’ll see a Chip Kidd cover on a “women’s novel”. But first, the publishing industry (and the market) are going to have to go through some MAJOR changes.
Louise - “Trollop Toes” would be a great name for a band. Or a character in a children’s book.
In my favorite series of books, the Nightside books by Simon R. Green, the covers never show the guys face either.
Mmm - the Ace Book editions tend to take scenes from the books, IIRC. “Nightingale’s Lament” has a picture of the singer on the front (have it in front of me), and “Agents of Light and Darkness” had a stylised angel on the cover, if I recall correctly from a couple of days ago.
But, yeah, the chick-lit covers are a deliberate genre-typing. I don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing, since it sends a clear message to the target audience. Consider, by way of comparison, the bodice-ripper genre.
I thought the original feminist complaint against visual dismemberment was that it reduced women to nothing but body parts for men to fetishise. This appears to be the opposite - giving women a faceless figure to project their own selves upon.
I long ago learned to steer clear of the shelves with a preponderance of the color pink.
Long-term Panda readers may remember a couple of rants about the tendency of retro “feminine” graphic and product design to become less ironic and more and more retrogressive, though of course the product doesn’t overdetermine the consumer.
Actually, Jennifer Weiner is usually way more into the relationships between female characters and the protagonist’s self-discovery than she is into boys. I’ve read both in her shoes and good in bed, and was pleased with both. And the protagonist in good in bed is plus-sized, and for the most part, remains that way.
Last thing I heard, it hadn’t been made into a movie because JW refused to let them slim-down her character. Rock on!
i have read the book, i think it is supposed to have a feminist message, about an overweight woman coming into sexual and emotional self-actualization. i don’t know that it’s virginia woolf, but there you go.
it has always disturbed me that the cover artist had to throw the cake in, like all us fatties just can’t get enough pastry down our pie-holes, even in bed. . .
I (male) totally resemble this analysis. A (ever-lengthening, but so far, so good) series of fantasy/scifi (it’s still not clear which, but trending toward fantasy) books I’m reading have a series of bad, photorealistic covers that completely irk me every time I see them. I first picked them up based on a review I read and probably would have shunned them when browsing the library.
Witless chum, it’s testament to the horror of those covers that I KNEW you were talking about SM Stirling’s series before I even realized you had posted a link too. Hah.
They are so awful that I almost feel embarrassed for the graphic artist who hodgepodged them together.
I’m with you, if I hadn’t sought out the books because I like the dystopian/faux medieval theme I would never even have given them a second glance at the store.
Distinctly cheesecake. (Strawberry shortcake is more of a biscuity kind of thing, no? Blech.)
Anyway it’s a terrific book, sharp and funny. A quick read, but — really — not a dumb read.
I didn’t love the cover because it sells the book short; the color scheme and content both sort of dumb it down.
Shah8 @11: I have to mention that the hardcover for Old Man’s War featured an Old Man, but it still supports your point, because when Tor released the paper back, they did so with the more generic John Harris space-scape. I myself preferred the Donato Giancola painting with the old guy and the black guy and the woman OMG! all on the cover, but apparently SF always sells better with a space ship on the cover, and Tor made the decision to remove the people for the paperback.
Curse of Chalion did have a landscape, but it’s sequel, Paladin of Souls, featuring the 40 something Ista did feature a woman who could be in her 40s. At least the cover I have does. Still, it’s by and large true that cover art still gets terribly normalised.
I write romance.
Cover Snark is an artform all its own and Heller fails.
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Karen Knows Best are the pros.
As for body parts and objectification:
http://angelsparrow.blogspot.com/2008/02/sexiest-cover-ever.html
total objectification,
I submit it happens in all genres and to both sexes. I have a publisher that very seldom puts a face on their covers. And when they do, one wishes they hadn’t. Case in point:
http://www.ellorascave.com/Series.asp?Category=Tricks%20and%20Treats
I was going to say that I don’t think Good in Bed was the best choice to illustrate this point (the books been out in paperback for 6 years (although now it has a new cover now). But as others have pointed out, the heroine is pretty non-traditional as far as chick lit heroines go (overweight, Jewish, unapologetic for her sexuality, etc.), and so this cover really underscores how the disembodied female bodies get used–to represent books that go against stereotype.
“Witless chum, it’s testament to the horror of those covers that I KNEW you were talking about SM Stirling’s series before I even realized you had posted a link too. Hah.”
Hilarity. His previous “Island in the Sea of Time” and sequels had pretty bad covers, too, but of a more conventional scifi type.
It seems like it would be easy to make a much more eye catching cover using the concept of ‘look medievelness is marching through Portland.’
I like the theme, too. I guess the setting of a destroyed U.S. really works for me because it makes the swords and very little sorcery stuff more real. I haven’t really read very much fantasy previously, so I think the setting serves as fantasy training wheels. Plus I grew up 20 miles from where Mike Havel is written as from. Stirling gets the place somewhat wrong.
To climb a bit back on topic, I think people on this thread have convinced me to read “Good in Bed” or at least suggest it to my wife and read it if she says it’s good.
These covers really irritate me because they always seem to be saying to women “We know what you are interested in - shoes, handbags, cake and champagne” The disembodied shots don’t bother me as much, because i get the whole projection thing, but you never see a cover with, say, some vinyl records spilling out, or an ipod or something that can’t be pegged as specifically “girly”. I think these covers often undermine the quality of the writing too, I’m thinking in particular of Marian Keyes, actually a great comic writer with a real flair for understanding the lack of confidence that affects so many women, she has dealt with alcoholism, death and domestic violence yet what is on the covers of her books? Bags, shoes, cake and champagne!
Wow, so if people actually still pick a book up off a shelf, even if they don’t like the cover, and look inside for recommendations, or buy it anyway because they like the author and try to do this for everything they read, because the cover art rarely has anything to do with the quality of the writing… they’re haughty and posturing? Nice, Amanda. You sound more haughty than the people you fallaciously criticize.
I don’t think anyone would accept the argument that you don’t care about the cover of a book if they know about the mini-controversy surrounding your previous cover design. And now with the latest issues with more “scary negro” art in your published book, I have no doubt you take the visual side of publishing quite seriously.
Not everyone can see the pictures on your site. Most days I read from work and can’t see pics or video. Maybe if I saw the pics at work my visits to your site would increase (though they’re pretty high already) but crazy me, I come for the writing….
Perhaps Komar & Melamid can help us…
Knowing nothing about the book, and certainly having never read it, my first thought when I saw the cover was, “uh oh! That’s a precarious place for a piece of cake!” I don’t know about y’all, but the last place I would leave a plate of cake is on the mattress, directly below my legs and out of my line of sight. I mean, unless I *wanted* frosting-covered thighs and sheets…which, now that I think of it, might be the point…
Cisslepants, please don’t let the cover stop you from reading Time Traveler’s Wife. It was absolutely brilliant and is totally worth reading.
Um, it’s cheesecake not shortcake.