Mathilde Madden of Erotica Cover Watch, a sharply reasoned yet passionate blog I found out about only this week, says of yet another book of erotica for straight women with, what else, a naked woman on the cover said
This is one of those covers where I guess I have to say upfront, yes, it is a nice picture. Of course, I did think that most fairy tales had men in them – Prince Charming, etc. But instead of any glimpse of a prince we get another ‘instructional’ book cover. Look she’s reading a book. That’s how to read this book, women, it’s smut – hold your tits whilst reading.
Of course, as ever, men don’t need to be told visually how to enjoy porn books.
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How come in the ghettos where men’s bodies are served for female consumption it is always utterly crass? Why is female desire for manflesh only allowed to be at the seediest trashiest end of the sexual market. The equivalent of the men in flasher-macs kerb crawling. There we are next to them, drooling over some orange, over worked out bloke, with shaved pecs and a mullet.
So I can understand why a lot of people howled when we started this blog thinking that we were campaigning for more trashy Fabio style book covers to cross from the women only world of romance into the more generalised world of erotica. But we’re not asking for that. We’re campaigning for as wide and interesting a variety of images of sexualised men as there are of sexualised women.
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Really, there’s only one kind of female desire that can ever be thought of as grown up and sophisticated in the world of erotica book covers – and that is the desire for other women. Sapphic love is far nicer. And this gets prettier pictures.
Use erotic book covers as your guide and it almost seems like that as if lesbian desire is much more proper and grown up. Wanting men is immature and lazy (get thee to the romance section).
There’s not really anything I can add that Madden doesn’t say more clearly herself so I’ll repeat her Susie-Bright-inspired dig at the mostly-male “no-sex” class ideology in cover selection: “...instead of any glimpse of a prince we get another ‘instructional’ book cover. Look she’s reading a book. That’s how to read this book, women, it’s smut – hold your tits whilst reading.”
