Show Your Face? (Sometimes a Pose Is Just a Pose Part 1)

So I came across an interesting article about book cover trends a little while back and read through it, and one of the points sort of surprised and actually disturbed me.

Now, one of the first things that attracts someone to a book usually is the cover. Does the cover look interesting? And of course we have a lot of covers with pictures of people on them. The Once Upon a Time YA novel series from Simon and Schuster actually revamped their covers from illustrated to photographic, rereleasing every book in the series so far except two (Scarlet Moon and Spirited) and I actually like these covers a lot better. They're beautiful. I'm a big fan of photographic covers.

But the point that was made by this article was that a certain trend in photographic covers is having a negative impact on feminine identity among teens. This trend is the image of a girl whose face is hidden in some way from the camera. You see this in the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie (Cassia is always looking away from the reader), in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (you see Cinder's foot, Scarlet's arm and part of her upper body but no face, Cress's back and her hair), The Mortal Instruments (hard to see any faces), and in a lot of other books. Then there are the books where only part of the face is revealed (Kiera Cass's The Selection, where part of America Singer's face is hidden by her arm).

According to this article, the trend of hiding a girl's face from view somehow takes away from her strength, from the strength of her identity as a strong character, and from her ability to be viewed as a role model by the reader. I find this interesting, since a lot of novels with strong female leads (The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) don't even have images of their stars on the cover at all.

This reminds me of something my sister once told me. Now, I'm biracial. My father is African-American, my mother is Caucasian. When I was little, I had this idea (not because of my parents) that I couldn’t do anything that a biracial person hadn’t done before. As an example, I would play A Little Princess with a friend of mine from down the street, and I was always Sara and she was always Becky, because I had lighter skin than she did and I thought that was how it was supposed to be (in the 1993 film, Sara is white and Becky is black). It wasn’t until I got older (say, eight or nine instead of four or five) that I realized that wasn’t necessarily the way things had to be, and I learned it was acceptable to put myself in the shoes of a character who didn’t necessarily look like me.

What does this have to do with this book cover trend?

A lot of readers will take in the text description of the main character when they first come across it, but then they'll push it aside and put themselves in the situation instead. It's one of the fun things about reading. This lack of facial imagery on the cover is actually rather conducive to doing that, since the reader isn't stuck with a fully realized image of what the main character is supposed to look like.

I know that when I'm reading a really good book, I have a hard time slowing down enough to visualize everything, so if I don't have an established picture in my head, the MC looks like me, even if she's black or Greek or blond or red-headed or a green Martian with no hair. It's just easier to insert yourself into that character because the physical characteristics are less prominent. Which is probably one of the reasons the publishing companies do it so often.

The other reason? It looks pretty. One of the most beautiful trio of book covers I've seen is for the Matched Trilogy and what the poses tell us about the state of mind of the main character. They're gorgeous. Sometimes a pose is just a pose. Sometimes it's purely aesthetic.

But I doubt the industry is trying to weaken the feminine identity of the female teen masses. At least not most of them. I'm not worried, and I hope that when I'm published, I can have a cover as beautiful as the ones I've listed here.

- LA Knight

What Are All My Books in My Background?

Here's a list of the books in my background. I've read (or written) all of them. From left to right, top to bottom all the way across:

1) Garnet - LA Knight
2) Goddess of the Night - Lynne Ewing
3) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
4) The Princess & the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison
5) Into the Land of the Unicorns - Bruce Coville
6) Radiant Darkness - Emily Whitman
7) Scarlet - Marissa Meyer
8) Pride and Prescience - Carrie Bebris
9) Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block
10) Alice in Zombieland - Gena Showalter
11) Heaven's Bones - Susan Henderson
12) Lady Friday - Garth Nix
13) The Goose Girl - Shannon Hale
14) Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey
15) Masque of the Red Death - Bethany Griffin
16) Violet Eyes - Debbie Viguie
17) Nevermore - Kelly Creagh
18) Stormbreaker - Anthony Horowitz
19) Black as Night - Regina Doman
20) East - Edith Pattou
21) A Company of Swans - Eva Ibbotson
22) Sisters Red - Jackson Pearce
23) Dearly, Departed - Lia Habel
24) Entwined - Heather Dixon
25) Matched - Ally Condie
26) Sweetblood - Pete Hautman
27) The Vicious Deep - Zoraida Cordova
28) Splintered - AG Howard
29) Daughter of the Forest - Juliet Marillier
30) Abhorsen - Garth Nix
31) Heir to the Shadows - Anne Bishop
32) A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
33) Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
34) Terrier - Tamora Pierce
35) In the Forests of the Night - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
36) Sabriel - Garth Nix
37) Deerskin - Robin McKinley
38) Remember Me - Christopher Pike
39) The Quantum Rose - Catherine Asaro
40) Dreadlocks - Neal Shusterman
41) Glass - LA Knight
42) Beauty - Robin McKinley
43) Ice - Sarah Beth Durst
44) The Looking Glass Wars - Frank Beddor
45) Sea of Shadows - Fuyumi Ono
46) Spindle's End - Robin McKinley
47) Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles
48) Eldest - Christopher Paolini
49) The Thirteenth Princess - Diane Zahler
50) Obsidian - LA Knight
51) Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
52) The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge
53) Fever - Lauren Destefano
54) Once Upon an Autumn Eve - Dennis McKiernan
55) A Countess Below Stairs - Eva Ibbotson
56) Crossed - Ally Condie
57) The Blue Mirror - Kathe Koja
58) The Wild Orchid - Cameron Dokey
59) Divergent - Veronica Roth
60) Firebirds - Anthology
61) Reached - Ally Condie
62) Obsidian - Jennifer L. Armentrout
63) Onyx - Jennifer L. Armentrout
64) Misty of Chincoteague - Marguarite Henry
65) Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
66) The Sleeping Beauty - Mercedes Lackey
67) Delirium - Lauren Oliver
68) Pandemonium - Lauren Oliver
69) Calling - LA Knight
70) The Gray King - Susan Cooper
71) First Test - Tamora Pierce
72) Sunlight & Shadow - Cameron Dokey
73) Psyche in a Dress - Francesca Lia Block
74) Violet & Claire - Francesca Lia Block
75) The Midnight Dancers - Regina Doman
76) Red as Blood - Tanith Lee
77) Cinder - Marissa Meyer
78) River Rats - Caroline Stevermer
79) Belle - Cameron Dokey
80) Lioness Rampatn - Tamora Pierce
81) Garnet - LA Knight
82) Goddess of the Night - Lynne Ewing
83) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
84) The Princess & the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison
85) Into the Land of the Unicorns - Bruce Coville
86) Radiant Darkness - Emily Whitman
87) Scarlet - Marissa Meyer
88) Pride and Prescience - Carrie Bebris
89) Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block
90) Alice in Zombieland - Gena Showalter