Notice the peculiar pattern on the following book covers?
See the pattern? All of the women displayed are missing part of their face or head—and all of them are missing eyes. (Although I stopped after twenty-one, I could have selected dozens more.)
I started looking for examples after this phenomena was pointed out by A.G. Harmon at Image magazine:
[K]nowing there are platoons of marketers who focus group this kind of stuff—novel titles, and the color and texture of book jackets—I’m sure this fad is the most intentional of things. That is, it’s not why I myself would do it this way: because eyes are hard to draw. No. They must be on to something; this must be a good idea, sales-wise.
But how come? I decided that eyes give too much away; they’re too committal. These books all seem intended to reserve an air of mystery, of exoticism: “if you want to know me, you must pay twenty-five dollars for the hardcover, and still you’ll only scratch the surface.”
November 18th, 2009 | 11:09 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by First Things and Bárbara Santana, Virian . Virian said: RT @ROFTERS: What do book publishers have against women's eyes? http://bit.ly/4ArHDd [...]
November 18th, 2009 | 12:01 pm
I suspect it’s because people tend to have different ideas of what makes a beautiful face, so the designers leave it up to the imagination of the individual reader.
November 18th, 2009 | 12:57 pm
Um, is this really that difficult to figure out? Maybe a few of those covers are trying to convey some sort of air of mystery, but almost all of them are just focusing on the woman’s breasts.
November 18th, 2009 | 1:03 pm
Brian . . . almost all of them are just focusing on the woman’s breasts.
But all of these books are marketed to women. Do women really want to see other women’s breast more than their eyes?
November 18th, 2009 | 2:43 pm
Mr. Carter: Yes, women absolutely fixate on breasts. Just look at the covers of Cosmopolitan and other women’s magazines.
November 18th, 2009 | 7:55 pm
Mr. Carter, I side with you. And you inspired me,
http://jacksonville.typepad.com/patum_peperium/2009/11/the-lovers-eye.html
Thanks.
November 19th, 2009 | 3:21 am
My first reaction was to see it as (yet another) dehumanization. But really I’ve worked with advertisers and illustrators for a long time. It’s just that someone had an idea to do something a certain, um, interesting way. It’s copied again and again, then it goes out of fashion. There’s less here than meets the eye.
November 20th, 2009 | 10:04 am
This conversation has been going on in teen literature for years.
November 20th, 2009 | 12:36 pm
It’s not about the breasts, guys…a man would think of that. If you look closely, only 4 of the 21 covers actually shows any cleavage to speak of. My last two book covers have featured headless women, and that is one of the most frequent questions I get from readers: why did they cut her head off? Second most frequent: is that you?
I tend to agree with Mr. McCullough. It’s a fad, like the one a few years ago that involved seeing how many fonts, type sizes and colors you could get in one title.
November 20th, 2009 | 1:37 pm
Quite a few books with photo models cut off the face, so they can use a different model for later books in the series. Which then became the stylish thing to do.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the drawn/painted books are just copying the style, even though they don’t need to.
November 20th, 2009 | 2:16 pm
One more thing to note: many of the pictures are sections of paintings. Perhaps the costume, setting, and “feel” of an art work is desired for a book cover, but a face (especially the eyes) would limit the subject portrayed to a specific person.
Universalism is the aim. It becomes possible for a woman to place herself in the scene…
November 20th, 2009 | 3:58 pm
OMG – I work for a bookstore in Michigan and we are always laughing at these sorts of trends at publisher rep meetings. There’s the headless woman, the back woman (shot from behind, so no face), the bare feet covers, and the colorful boot covers. Sooo funny. Thanks for gathering these all together!
November 20th, 2009 | 3:59 pm
The reason we came up with is that if there’s no face, it’s easier for a female to picture herself as the character in the cover, creating an easy “every-woman” image. :)
November 20th, 2009 | 4:47 pm
Joe Carter:
I can assure you, as a woman, English scholar and avid reader, I definitely focus on women’s breasts. Cheers.
November 20th, 2009 | 9:18 pm
Over at Image, I wondered if one factor for the removal of the women’s faces or at least eyes was that the women who are the main market for these books have probably been exposed to innumerable fashion photos of models with that hard stare. Could it be that publishers think the reverse type of image might be more inviting?
Probably a half-baked idea.
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