Thinwashing
I just finished Gail Carriger's Soulless, the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series. It's not the most amazing or important book I'll read in my lifetime, but it's a lot of fun, and the main character, Alexia Tarabotti, is quite memorable.
And the cover bugs the crap out of me.
Y'all know I'm no "fat apologist". I do, however, like to draw a very clear line between a healthy weight for an individual body/body type and the frequently unhealthy and sometimes downright impossible body standards perpetuated by the American media.
I also, just for funsies, like the people on book covers to look like the characters they're supposed to depict.
The art department at Orbit clearly doesn't like the things I like.
A description of Alexia: Miss Tarabotti was no lightweight. She made no bones about enjoying food--on a fairly regular basis and generally of the toothsome variety....As a general rule, Lord Maccon appreciated a voluptuous woman....His voice, annoyed as always, belied the gentleness in his big hands as he took the excuse of removing Alexia's generous curves from his person to check for injuries.
Catch all that? "No lightweight". "Toothsome" food. "Voluptuous woman". "Generous curves".
Now to observe, please, the U.S. cover of Soulless.
Even allowing that "voluptuous" and "generous" in the Victorian era had different connotations (and poundages) than they do now, this cover image in no way reflects, for me, the reality of the book (And, seriously. What is up with that pose? Does she hope her enemies will laugh so hard at its ridiculousness that they will be unable to fight her?). This is not the Alexia I picture. It is not, in my opinion, the Alexia that Carriger describes. For goodness' sake, there's a scene where she can't see what's going on below her because her rack blocks the view!
I'm disappointed in Orbit for "thinwashing" the Parasol Protectorate covers. I'm equally disappointed that almost everyone, including Carriger, seems agog over the covers, and that no one seems to be pointing out the conflict. We have seen, and rightly so, a massive hue and cry over publishers whitewashing covers of books with PoC characters; where is the similar outcry over covers like this? Nowhere, of course. Because we've been convinced that skinnier always equals better, so way skinnier must equal way better, even if the skinny person in question is actually...um...not.
Look, publishers, if you have an ass-kicking main character with curves, own it. Flaunt it. Please don't insult us with supermodel-slouching stick figures.