Nipples and Tits and Ass - Oh MY!
I've been following with some interest the discussions in the topics of Jim Hines and Nick Mamatus regarding blatantly sexist artwork in the sf and fantasy fields. After all, I've had my share of really prepostrous "big tits" artwork on the covers of some of my own books. The cover of NIGHT'S ANGEL, for instance, was a 14-year old boy's wet dream. "There go the library sales," I muttered as soon as I saw it.
And then there were the British covers for my BROTHERS OF THE DRAGON series, each executed by famed artist Achilios. If I were writing this from my other laptop, I'd post them, but only if you hid the eyes of your children. "This is a popular trend in Britain!" I was told when I protested to the editor. "Achillios is a VERY hot author! You're lucky to have him!" Whatever.
I do remember the rather vast sense of relief I felt when the absolutely gorgeous cover for my first novel, FROST, showed up from Pocket/Timescape. No chain-mail bikini there. Rather, armor that might actually have been functional, while still attractive. What a rarity that was in a time when all women were drawn with Frazetta/Vallejo proportions. And that was 25 or so years ago. So it's with a certain sense of amusement -- sympathy, but yes, also amusement -- that I read the comments about such sexist images from a younger generation of writers still fighting the good fight. Not to mention the comments from art directors still trying to justify such images.
With that debate in mind, I dredged up some images from a similar argument I followed years ago in the comics industry. "If male superheroes were drawn like women...." The artwork is jaw-dropping. Both funny -and- horrific - and pointed. The artist of these images wasn't credited in any of the posts I could find. I'm going to share them anyway with a massive "thank you" to whoever that artist may have been. These are images of comic book superheroes, mind. But let's see a few brawny barbarians and wizards on the covers of our genre magazines or paperbacks that look like this!
If the majority of the reading public are women these days, surely these kinds of cover images would be just as effective as yet another female in a chain-mail bikini or another bare-breasted mermaid or another space heroine in a skin-tight, nipple-revealing, body-painted space suit.
Maybe the best that writers can ask for is not an end to hyper-sexualized images of women on their covers - but parity. And no - broad chests of the genre romance variety don't count. That Green Lantern is pretty hot, eh?