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[...] Something Strange and Deadly is supposed to be a curvy gal–it concerns me that so many covers fail to portray the characters accurately. Why do you think this is? My only guess is marketing teams think more copies will sell if the girl [...]

Ironically, once you mentioned the piece in Tablet Sunday before last, things about size and covers and fiction have all collided coincidentally in my head. I remember reading Tucker Shaw’s Flavor of the Week, and sort of marveling in my head that it was the first book where the male character was outside of the cultural norm in size, and he was in love… but the cover copped out and showed a chocolate dipped strawberry, even though a great deal of the plot hinged on him being overweight.

I was – and have been, repeatedly, disappointed…

Oh my! That is good timing. I’m just mad with myself for not reading this before I wrote my own piece.

Check out the evolution of the cover for Paula Danziger’s THE CAT ATE MY GYMSUIT.

My own beloved copy from the 70s had the top cover seen here: http://jezebel.com/359726/the-cat-ate-my-gymsuit-a-pocket-full-of-orange-pits. The current cover, I believe, is a drawing of a cat.

Interestingly, this 2008 article explains that Danziger was opposed to having her MC on the cover: http://www.printmag.com/Article/Cover_Girls.

The really depressing part is that it seems like half the time the representative object in question is going to be food. Even when that food hasn’t got much to do with the story itself. It’s like someone skims through the book’s description and decide between “Oh well, let’s just put a skinny model on the cover anyway” or “Hmm, what can I use as cover art. Obviously since this character is overweight, the ONLY POSSIBLE OPTION is ice cream.” Either way it’s marginalizing.

Interesting topic! I love the cover that my YA novel, VINTAGE VERONICA, received when it came out last year (and which is the same on the about-to-be-released paperback edition), but it is definitely in the inanimate object camp (a drawing of a dress, based on the fact that the plus-sized heroine is obsessed with vintage clothing and draws pictures of her favorite pieces).

With the exception of HUGE by Sasha Paley (which now has a cover featuring the actress from the short-lived TV show), I can’t think of a book that has dared to break this particular taboo. Carolyn Mackler’s THE EARTH, MY BUTT AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS had the title embroidered on the back pocket of a decidedly petite pair of jeans (a good book and a cute cover, but still…).

Even Judy Blume’s BLUBBER, I seem to recall, has never featured a truly fat girl on it (feel free to tell me I’m wrong). The one I remember best had a round-faced girl at the blackboard in a loosefitting dress with her classmates laughing at her… the current cover has a tiny whale motif that looks like in belongs on a polo shirt.

HOLES pops to mind, too. Not just because the cover doesn’t show much of Stanley (only his head, on the hardcover), but because they didn’t even attempt to make Shia Labeouf appear heavier at the beginning of the movie! I feel like it’s key to Stanley’s character that digging the holes, and suffering for it, made him fit enough and determined enough to carry Zero up the mountain.

I’m a writer and a teacher, and I once read a draft of a story to a group of fourth and fifth grade girls. The protagonist in the story (which a friendship/mystery story; the character’s weight was not part of the plot) was described as being “a little bit fat and very pretty, with wide green eyes and wavy hair”. Though the girls loved the story, they told me that I should change the description, because nobody would want to read about a fat girl. One of the most outspoken of the readers was herself, “a little bit fat”. I was trying to write about someone who looked like her–but she was emphatic about not wanting to read about a fat girl.

Another time, after reading about about the Japanese pearl divers, I tried to explain that one of the reason why the deep sea divers of Japan were often women was because women had more body fat than men, and the extra fat helped them cope with the extreme cold of deep water. The children were visibly embarrassed, and one child told me I was being sexist, to say that women were fatter than men. It was clear to me that “fat” did not mean, “more flesh” or even “extra flesh” to them. It had powerful negative connotations–it meant ugly or even obscene.

I’m not saying that publishers are right to “correct” or obscure the figures of heavier protagonists. What they are doing is part of the problem. But the prejudice against fat in this country is all pervasive, and has grown much stronger during my lifetime. I have no doubt that publishers sell more books when they don’t put fat characters on the cover.

Nice post, Betsy. I think I told you I recently had an essay on fat kids in kidlit killed. I think whenever you say that anti-chunk bias is harmful to kids, you wind up freaking people out. The “fat is bad” meme is so ingrained that merely pointing out that fat kids experience a ton of bias puts you in perceived advocacy territory.

I’m going to rework it as a reported piece and try again to place it.

Thanks, Anonymous, for your experience from the trenches. I wish I were surprised at your students’ “no one wants to read about a fat girl” feelings. While there are positive portrayals of kids who are fat in YA (tho they’re rare) and cute images of chubby cartoony kids (and badgers, lemurs and infinite other cute visual stand-ins for kids) in picture books, middle grade books seem MUCH more likely to demonize fat kids. And when fat teenagers appear in YA, they DO often — not always, but often — wind up losing weight when they gain control over their lives or get happier. Real life doesn’t tend to work that way.

Erica, as a fat devotee of vintage, I’m very much looking forward to reading Vintage Veronica! I’ve had it for a year but since I always have to prioritize explicitly Jewish books for work, I haven’t gotten around to it. (I did just read When Life Gives You OJ with my kids — no fat, but lots of Jewy — and we all really enjoyed it!)

I’m somewhat torn about this, because I actually really hate covers with pictures of people on them. So I prefer the object covers to the people ones. But if there is going to be a person on my book, I want the person to look like they’re supposed to.

The title of your blog post will most likely be the words written on my tombstone