Beyond Heaving Bosoms

by Sarah Wendell

  What Is Poser and Why Do You Hate It?

  Poser is a 3D drawing and animation software program that is used for—wait for it—posing human figures. A computer version of the old wooden posing model used for sketch artists, Poser has spawned several niche communities—developers who craft Poser models, and artists who use those models for computer-generated art. Some of this art will knock your eyeballs out in wonderment and awe.

  Some of it, like those featured on more than a few romance-novel covers, will make you wish your eyeballs could check out on vacation for a while, at least until the memory fades.

  Where do these covers come from? The humid depths of Satan’s asscrack. No, we kid. That’s just bad Poser covers. No, the cover, specifically the clinch cover, has its roots, according to the oral history of romance, in the male gaze, but what good sexual image doesn’t? Here’s the funny thing about romance covers: the cover art originally was not about reaching the romance reader. Really, we’re not kidding. The sexy, clinch-laden covers with peri-orgasmic women with giant breasts, giant hair, and dresses that were one quick tug away from total nudity? Never meant to entice you as a reader. So why do the O-faced couples continue to haunt you as you shop for romance?

  According to Kate Duffy, Kensington editor, the clinch cover art became a self-fulfilling prophecy because of how and why it sold. It sold because it was clinch cover art, and it was clinch cover art because it sold. Chicken, egg, meet clinch cover. “As little as eight years ago there were over seven hundred different wholesalers and distributors,” Duffy says. “And your safest option in developing a romance cover was the clinch. It was never a discussion of what the consumer wanted, it was ‘What signal can we send to the distributor to get the book in front of the consumer?’” So the books themselves weren’t necessarily designed to attract, say, Sarah and her ten-dollar allowance, which was earmarked for nothing but romance. The cover designs, at least back then, according to Duffy, were created to catch the eye of the distributor and the wholesaler, who placed the orders ultimately to get the book to the consumer.

  These wholesalers and distributors? At the time, they were men. They liked the clinch cover, and that was what was ordered for and thus sold in bookstores. Hence: self-fulfilling prophecy. Duffy mentioned that there were variations, but always revolving around the clinch. For example, there were the years of Jude Deveraux’s covers wherein the heroine had impossibly long hair. The book buyers thought long hair was romantic, they bought more copies, and it boosted her sales. So the cover art is—or was—undeniably a factor in boosting a book’s sales, but the sales target was not the reader. The target was the person buying the book to put it on the shelf in front of the reader.

  Many a grocery store today still features a bookshelf laden with about-to-be-undressed women lined up like half-dressed Rockettes, and they sell. Even now, as book-cover designs have tried to shift away from the clinch, there’s still many a cover on the shelf nearest you featuring grasping, gasping women, and firm, equally buxom men. They sell like hotcakes made of gangbusters because the clinch cover has become an iconic image that’s shorthand for romance. If you see a beefy man with incredible pectoral muscles grabbing a flouncy tart,* it’s a romance. Most historical romances feature a clinch image somewhere, be it on the front cover, the back cover, or in a stepback, which is when the cover has a cardstock overlay that lifts to reveal a full-color piece of clinchtastic illustration beneath. Stepbacks are expensive, but lovely for hiding the half-naked sexing that may embarrass you as you read on the subway. Nothing says “This book has descriptive sex in it” like a cover featuring illustrations of people in Kama Sutra–worthy sexual positions.

  Ask a romance reader on the Internet for her opinion of clinch covers, and you’ll get an earful. Some women hate, hate, HAAATE them, find them offensive, and go to great creative lengths to cover their romance novels with fabric, brown paper bags, or a magazine.

  Some women are inured to them—Sarah falls into this camp—and are so accustomed to the art of passionate cover embrace that they don’t even see it anymore and look to the cover copy or the first fifteen pages to determine if the book is worth purchasing. Oddly, these are the readers who are so used to them that they use the images as the visual shorthand mentioned earlier: in a sea of paperbacks on a jumbo-jet-size bookshelf, the romances are easily spotted at thirty paces because of the colorful, nearly orgasmic, partially dressed uglibumpin’ going down on the cover.

  There are some readers who like the clinch covers, and who appreciate the art skill required to render the illustration in the first place. One artist, Pino, has painted illustrations for well over three thousand books, according to his personal Web site, and his style is so unique Sarah once identified a Pino painting for sale from across the rolling ballroom of a cruise ship on rough seas. His art, it is identifiable at fifty seasick paces. Fans of his art host image galleries online, some of which are so decorated with animated Java applications that they crash the nearest Web browser faster than you can say, “chest pillows.”

  Laura Kinsale’s The Prince of Midnight was one of the very first romance novels featuring only the hero on the cover. Of course, it was Fabio who graced the cover of her novel in 1990, but her book was the first diversion from the “clinch” cover, as she puts it, and the first image that neglected to position an “overendowed” female on the cover:

  The persistence of the clinch cover goes beyond market identification and the subconscious appeal of pornographic illustrations of females to male wholesale book buyers…. Everyone—publishers, art directors, and book buyers included—has been convinced that readers are identifying with the heroine; therefore the illustrated heroine should be gorgeous and well-endowed, because that is what all women wish to be, right?

  Wrong.

  At first, like everyone else, I attributed the enormous popularity of The Prince of Midnight’s hero-only cover to the fact that romance readers are sick and tired of illustrations that focus so heavily on something in which they have no interest whatsoever—big-breasted, lust-crazed women—and are ready and waiting for a cover that emphasizes something in which they are highly interested: a hunk.

  Since Fabio’s appearance on The Prince of Midnight, though, the hero-centered cover has grown to be nearly mainstream, as books by authors such as Marjorie M. Liu, Kresley Cole, Christine Feehan, Kalen Hughes, and others feature the man front, shirtless, and center. And the male models, they enjoy quite the eager following.

  Game Time! It’s Time for the Anatomy of a Truly Excellent Romance Cover (and by Excellent We Mean Eye-Searingly Bizarre or, Better Yet, Just Plain Awful) Treasure Hunt!

  Hie thee to thy nearest used bookstore, complete with musty book smell (almost as good as the bread-baking-at-Subway smell), and locate the romance-novel shelf. It’s time to play Find the Worst Possible Cover. If you find a cover with a high point score, please, send a scanned image or a link to that cover to covers@smart bitchestrashybooks.com—we need to know about it!

  Does the overall illustration appear as if there is Vaseline smeared on the book cover, on your eyeballs, or both? 2 pts

  Is the hero’s head bent at an impossible angle, suggesting a broken vertebrae or two? 1 pt

  Do the following colors appear on the cover?

  fuchsia: 1 pt

  lemon yellow: 2 pts

  lime green: 2 pts

  pink: 2 pts

  lavender: 1 pt

  more fuchsia: 1 pt

  sky blue: 1 pt

  pastel pink: 2 pts

  burgundy: 1 pt

  neon yellow: 3 pts

  All of the above: 10 pts

  Is the heroine grabbing her own bare leg like she’s in a Nair commercial? 2 pts

  Is the heroine posed in a bent position that seems at the least uncomfortable and at the most anatomically impossible? 3 pts

  Is the heroine’s neck bent back at an angle such that you suspect she is no longer alive? 3 pts

  Mullet? 5 pts
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br />   Mullet on the heroine? 10 pts

  Multiple depictions of the mullet from various angles? 9 pts

  Is the couple outside in the grass and flowers, rolling around on some sweeping hillside? 2 pts

  Is the couple inside? 5 pts

  Are they in bed? 2 pts

  Is the heroine’s hair contained in a cap, hat, or crown/coronet? 4 pts

  Is the heroine’s hair so enormously out of control in its volume and curl that you think you and she could both use it as a blanket? 4 pts

  Is the heroine’s eye shadow a color you’ve never before witnessed on a human? 4 pts

  Does the book take place in a time before it was socially acceptable for women to wear cosmetics? 5 pts

  Is the heroine blond? 1 pt

  Is the heroine a redhead? 1 pt

  Is the heroine’s hair a deep, solid black? 1 pt

  Is the heroine a (gasp) brunette? 5 pts

  Is the heroine (holy shit) wearing glasses? 10 pts

  Do the amorous couple appear to be on fire? 3 pts

  Do they appear to be glowing? 2 pts

  Do they appear to have a possibly contagious skin disease? 3 pts

  Does the hero have his shirt off? 3 pts

  Does the hero have his shirt unbuttoned but still tucked in? 1 pt

  Is the hero wearing a wide, wide belt, similar to the belts weight lifters wear to keep their kidneys from flying out their backs? 4 pts

  Is it possible that you might see a hint of cameltoe in the hero’s pants? 6 pts

  Is the hero completely naked? 3 pts

  Is the hero holding a sword or elongated weapon at such an angle that it seems to represent something, perhaps something large, turgid, throbbing, and phallic? 4 pts

  Is the heroine smoking a cigarette? 10 pts

  Does the hero have a big porny mustache? 4 pts

  Does he have his mouth open? 5 pts

  Does she have her mouth open? 0 pts*

  Is his man titty bigger than yours? 5 pts

  Are her bosoms bigger than yours? 6 pts

  Are her bosoms bigger than his? 4 pts

  Is there a rearing horse? 3 pts

  Does the rearing horse appear to emerge from someone’s ass? 5 pts

  Is there a swan? 3 pts

  Does the swan appear to be having some sort of conniption? 2 pts

  Is there another animal freaking the fuck out in the background? 3 pts

  Is it a recognizable species that you can visually identify? 4 pts

  Is the couple facing each other? 5 pts

  Is the heroine facing away from the hero, in a position we call “Invisible Buttsecks”? 10 pts

  Is there no possible way coitus could occur in the position they’re depicted in? 4 pts

  Does their position possibly indicate actual coitus? 8 pts

  Is there actual coitus that you can see? 100 pts

  THE ELEMENTS OF ROMANCE COVERS

  If you’re not choosing to partake in our Hunt for the Worst Cover Ever, or you’re not sure what we’re talking about, have a look in your nearest used-book store. The pastel and screaming neon color schemes, the purple sunsets and orange flowers, the big hair and the peri-orgasmic faces: the classic Old Skool clinch is a sight to behold.

  The two never-fail elements that seem to populate way too many romance covers, however, are the shirt and the hair. The hero’s shirt is almost always unbuttoned, but still tucked into his belt. Also, if you’re truly fortunate, that shirt will have wide, puffy sleeves, the likes of which no male of your acquaintance would ever wear unless he was heading right to the Ren Faire already in costume.

  The hair, however, is a two-pronged beast. The hero, unfortunately, for a long, long time, was pictured in that most unfortunate of hairstyles, the mullet. We’ve never actually read a romance wherein the hero was described as having a mullet, but four out of five dentists agree that four out of five romance covers feature a man with a mighty, majestic mullet. We do not know why, either.

  The heroine, on the other hand, has hair. Lots and lots of long, wavy, incredibly huge hair. Sometimes it’s spilling down her back, and sometimes it’s blowing in the stiff breeze (a breeze, by the way, that might be going in the opposite direction from the hero’s hair) but the heroine will have stunningly opulent lengths of hair, because long hair, instead of being something that paralyzes the woman when the hero rolls over on top of it, is effortlessly sexy. It’s never tangled, or in the way, or in their mouths.

  The clinch cover is still in use today—and we are so very grateful, for so many reasons—but that doesn’t mean it’s the only type of romance cover you’ll see. As the neon and pastel humptastic clinch gradually moved out of favor, and readers saw less of big hair, bigger boob, and biggest man titty, the Drippy Landscape and still-life art moved in. Around about the mid-1990s, most of the big names, from Julie Garwood to Jude Deveraux to Nora Roberts, had covers that depicted a still-life item, like a mask or a feather, a brooch on a ribbon, or a landscape captured in soft-focus pastels. Castles in the distance? Cottages in fervently green hills? Art that makes you think Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light™©®? All in your bookstore now. Go have a look.

  The rainy-focus landscapes are still in use, echoing the style of Monet and other Impressionist painters. You’ll see the Impressionist romance art influence on several of the newest cover types, particularly Loretta Chase’s latest novels, which feature a close-up of a woman’s back, with ethereal and Impressionist flowers in the background.

  And speaking of close-ups, that’s the other trend of note—one that is almost as tired and irritating as the pastels-and-neon clinch of O-face boobage: the Back and the Headless. The Back is just that—a woman’s back. The women were shown from behind, either close up or full length—Jane Feather’s covers, particularly The Widow’s Kiss, were among the first to show the silhouette of a woman from behind, with no facial features. Very attractive—Sarah picked up The Widow’s Kiss at least four times before remembering that it hadn’t passed her thirty-page test—i.e., Sarah’s interest wasn’t captured in the first thirty pages.

  The Headless is pretty self-explanatory, too. Headless men and headless women have appeared in various formats, at about the same time as covers featuring extraneous body parts, as if a model were hacked to pieces and sold off for parts. For a time there were arms holding swords, or male backsides wrapped in plaids or bum-hugging breeches.

  Everything I Know About Biology and Physics,

  I Learned from Romance-Novel Covers

  Wind direction: Winds must be generated directly under or facing individual model, with another source directly under skirts and shirts. Think, “The grass is exhaling. Forcefully.”

  Flexibility of human backs. The human vertebrae can bend in marvelously flexible directions to the point where three heroine spines can be braided with minimal effort.

  Freaked-out horses and other animals enhance any sexual experience, especially if they are within twenty-five feet of a booty call.

  Sex in a swamp = good for your health.

  Lurid sky = a sign of true love, not impending hurricane.

  Hairlessness everywhere except the top of one’s head is a sign of true feminine beauty and not of selective breeding.

  Plenitude of hair on head on a male is a sign of masculine strength. More specifically, mullets = sign of virility.

  Then came the glut of headless heroes (Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible, for example) and the headless heroines, such as those featured on Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s hardcover releases, which depict not only headless women but dancing, frolicking headless women. We can only presume the headless chop was designed to allow the reader to imagine whatever face and head they wanted on top of a very virile or buxom body, but it was still an alarming trend. Nothing said romance like “Extreme close-up—headless edition.”

  And then what happened? Same thing that happened with the clinch cover: oversaturation. Like an overplayed popular song, something that once caugh
t your eye and looked unique became tired and, well, overplayed, once the trend caught on. From the clinch cover to the nondescript, plain-yogurt landscape, overuse leads only to the overuse of the next big trend. And in one big circle of life, trends repeatedly become shorthand for subgenres.

  Witness the urban-fantasy tramp-stamp heroine. A tramp stamp is a tattoo on the sacrum, or the lower back, right at the hips. Take a look-see at the crop of urban-fantasy romances featuring one of our favorite new creations, the Kick-Ass Heroine, and you’ll see a bunch of ladies, illustrated from behind, wearing low-slung pants and cropped tops. Sometimes there’s a tattoo, or maybe a weapon of some kind, and sometimes there’s endless skin with the sultry promise of middle-aged muffin top in ten or so years, but the back of a woman’s midriff, weapon optional, has become shorthand for “Ass-Kicking Heroine in Urban Fantasy, ahoy!”

  The danger in shorthand is that once every publisher has piled on the bandwagon, readers can’t tell any of the books apart. Author Gennita Low explained on her Web site the danger of oversaturation of cover image perfectly: “I’d look at the cover and try to remember whether I’ve seen it or bought it, and then put the book back on the shelf because I wasn’t sure. And of course, when I’m home, I’d forget to check. Repeat vicious cycle.”