What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today:
• What the hell…? Bolshoi’s artistic director attacked with acid
• Fantastic! (Note the Evil Dead and Poltergeist II marquees.) Ah, the Howard Johnson in Times Square — I remember it fondly… NYC 1983 and 1986 original footage
• Because only horny straight guys (and maybe accidentally a few lesbians) buy tech… ‘Play with my V spot’
• See? If men look ridiculous in these poses, why don’t more people realize that women look ridiculous, too? The battle against ‘sexist’ sci-fi and fantasy book covers
(hat-tips for today’s links: @JillLawless, Ron Bel Bruno, GeekFeminism.org, Brenda)
Since I didn’t see the link posted in the article, here are previous pose-off’s with Jim C. Hines and John Scalzi: the original, and the Christmas edition. Enjoy!
so, here’s a strange thing: I read the book that Hines is mocking the cover of… and it’s
really aimed straight at women:
gorgeous, smart men, in armani clothes, all aliens (if that book isn’t DW fanfic made
manifest into “mainstream s/f” I’ll eat my DW scarf!). the woman, who is the main protagonist,
is far sharper, more instinctive and funnier, than most of the already smart funny men, and they all
love her, from the main love interest to the gay best friend, to … hell, the
janitorial staff. So, why? What is
the point of that cover?
Now that is bizarre.
I think a lot of cover artists are simply staggeringly unoriginal in their commercial work (whether because they can’t come up with anything more interesting or because they’re told to be, I don’t know), and just do yet another Frazetta clone. One term I’ve heard bandied about for this is “Escher girls”.
And as for the computer advertisement… sigh, thirty years ago a computer magazine tried blatantly sexualised covers (do an eBay search for “computing today 08/83”) and was nearly driven out of business as a result. On the other hand, if you’re trying to appeal to the mass market, you pretty much have to lower your advertising to their level.
I was working in mid-town Manhattan in both 1983 and 1986: I kept recognizing places I worked in or shopped in as I watched! I could conceivably be IN one of these shots. I should get my husband to watch it: he once stopped the Tivo during an episode of Nova and pointed me out in a street scene shot in Manhattan, walking past a few feet behind Neil Degrasse Tyson!
I collect James H. Schmitz paperbacks, books, and magazines his stories appeared in, and I love the metamorphosis of the character Telzey Amberdon on the covers of said paperbacks. Telzey was written as a bratty young genius–she’s 15 in her first story, Novice. I’m happy to say, she gets younger and way less sexy on the covers as time went on. She’s depicted as a curvaceous, pouty-lipped 20-something blonde wearing a wide ribbon that is barely wound around her in all the right places on the 50s paperback. Still pretty, wearing a skin-tight leotard/space suit, and looking like an 18-year-old, but more properly a brunette on the 60s paperback. By the time we hit late 70s/early 80s, she looks like a bratty little teen in a beret and a teeshirt. I think the people who published those later paperbacks (Baen Books) have a better idea about how to properly market classic Schmitz and they don’t feel they have to pander to the adolescent male market.