There's a running joke that all the books with only torsos (Shannon Hale, Libba Bray, etc.) found their heads on my covers. *g* This whole body thing is just weird...

"Body, come! Oh crap. Body, RUN!"

LOL indeed!!

Funny. Apparently foreheads are out.

Ellis has a new album out with a song dedicated to Annette. Its quite beautiful, you should check it out. Folk, just so you know. :) ~GoGo

It's always good to start the week with laugh!
*still giggling*
Krystn

mai forehead... let me not show u it.

Hey, having any portion of a face is an improvement these days. Over on SBTB, they've had several posts about the headless women of romance novels.

These kinds of covers mostly appear on a certain sort of urban fantasy, and that sort usually has a female protagonist. So it's going to skew female regardless -- but no, I don't think male heads get treated the same way.

The Locus 2007 cover art gallery has more female crops (and there's a fascinating phrase for the phenomenon), but I did see two cropped males over there. City of Bones and A Companion to Wolves.

Overall, I've noticed it a lot more often with females.

ETA: I don't have as much data on romance covers, but SBTB (linked above) is certainly worth reading.

Edited at 2008-02-25 04:04 pm (UTC)

The random body part school of cover art is more gender egalitarian overall; but the decapitated torso sub-school is very heavily female (and legs without bodies show up a lot in chick-lit, so that one gets skewed too). But none of the various random body parts are entirely exclusive to females. I suspect it's because more women end up on covers overall than men.

A couple of those could do with some eyes and a nose as well.

You have picked some mighty fine urban fantasy ladies there, though. Good job! ;)

Now you'll have to do a set with just asses. This is beautiful by the way. I am amused. I thank you.

Now I have to clean my monitor. ROFL!

Although I feel compelled to point out they're ahead of, say, most Laurell K. Hamilton cover figures...

Maybe cover artists these days are bad at drawing eyes...I remember an interview in a magazine about comic books from the mid-80s where X-Men artist John Byrne confessed he always tried to cover up characters' necks with hair/costumes/other things, or not show them, because he was no good at drawing them.

/snark

Initially, I had requested that we not see her face b/c I am intentionally vague abt physical traits (in an attempt to not anchor my image of a character in the reader's eyes). That said, when I picked the model she was so close to how I see Ash (the MC) that I relented & said "oooh, we could have a full face). I was lucky enough to see the proofs from the whole shoot (more than 1000 photos). Many had the face too, but the one Alison selected was this one. *shrug* There were others with her face that were gorgeous too.

BTW, my kids loved this. We're Lolcats fans here (& of course, fans of the loldogs site too). Thank you for the smile.

I've noticed this trend and wondered whether the purpose is to make the cover woman somehow generic. Not sure why that would be desirable--maybe to allow for future cover designs in the series by different artists?

It makes me think of masquerades. Hide the eyes, or the area around the eyes, and you can no longer identify the face.

My issue is that it also depersonalizes the figure. Not as much as the back shots where you see no face at all, just a butt, but it still sets off my critical radar -- objectification and all that.

Sadly, this is something of a trend in online personal ads, too. I've seen several guys with just torso shots on their ads, others with just an eye, or blurred/otherwise obscured pics. (From what I've seen, the torso or eye may be the best selling point of some of these guys -- it certainly isn't their personality.)

Hey, it's better to see a forehead-less front than the naked backs or tight-jeans-clad butts we've been seeing lately. *grin*

Now I'm envisioning naked goblin backs for the cover of a book... *grin*

Darn, you mean I haven't inspired the plot of the next novel? ;)

We can haz foreheads plz?—FTW!

First of all, this is awesome. Thanks for the great company. :-)

Second, in all seriousness, I prefer not to see full faces. As a reader I like the mystery it conveys, and I'd rather leave the appearance to my own imagination. As a writer, when my Luna covers had full faces (OK technically half a face with the first one, but it was one side instead of forehead cut off), it changed my image of the character as I wrote each successive book. Instead of picturing the woman I'd created in my head, I pictured the model.

And I've been adamant about *never pls pls* depicting the male characters on my covers. I need to stay attracted to them from book to book. :-)