Ellory Brossette
As a child, when I came across a book cover of a brooding shirtless man or a dramatically posed, partially dressed couple, I knew the novel was off limits for me. If you’ve browsed a bookstore in the past few years, you’ve likely noticed that romance covers aren’t so quick to reveal their content through their covers anymore—they’re vibrant, child-like, and typically contain a deceptively innocent cartoon image of a man and woman in the center. Of course, while most of these books are inviting and warm on the outside, a great number of them are filled with adult language, explicit sexual content, and various mature themes. While it seems obvious that promoting romance novels in this way might be harmful to children, drastically increasing the chance of inappropriate content landing in the hands of young audiences, the implications of these fun and vibrant cartoon covers go beyond simply being misleading.
In part, the shift away from the noticeably sultry cover to a more subtle, less revealing one, has likely been for reader comfort and ease of mind. Regardless of the types of content within a book, it seems fair to say that most readers don’t particularly enjoy private topics like sex or intimate relationships to gleam front and center on their shelves for their friends to see or on a plane for other passengers to gawk at. The trend of cartoon covers wasn’t the first shift from this type of promotion in the romance world, though. Following the booming success of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight, for instance, many romance and fantasy book designers took to a more simple, dark and moody approach with less overall suggestive atmospheres. Even the original cover of EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and many of the novels that followed in its footsteps were pointedly subtle and simple, lacking the overt sexual appeal of their Fabio-stamped predecessors.
So, after all this time, why did the world of romance fiction make the eventual leap from the steamy, erotic covers they once had, to the whimsical, cute ones they often have now? If I’m honest, there’s only one answer I’ll buy into with much faith: romance novels are primarily written and consumed by women.
For longer than I’ve been alive, the literature world has heard arguments about what types of books constitute “real” reading, and romance novels have undoubtedly received the brunt of it for quite some time. We’ve all heard the argument that romance books “don’t count” as real literature, and though I’ve never been a big reader of the genre myself, this sentiment has always confused me. The idea of love is one explored—whether it be platonic, familial, or even self-love— in nearly every novel I’ve read, but when a book explores romantic love as its main selling-point, it suddenly lacks substance and becomes unimportant in the eyes of many readers. For this reason, I find it hard to brush off the rise of these juvenile, easily digested cartoon covers being displayed over countless novels in the romance sections of bookstores. In truth, these covers reflect the way much of the reading and publishing world views romance and other female-dominated genres in general; they’re quick cash grabs, easy to sell, but never hold any real literary merit or long-lasting quality.
Of course, there’s always a separate conversation to be had over what constitutes a novel as praise-worthy (and never quite a conclusion to reach), but the reality is that the disdain for romance fiction has escaped personal preference and made its way to the very faces of the novels we browse and buy. While I don’t find anything particularly wrong with romance covers shifting from the obvious, almost parodic covers they once had, I do think the implications of this new, child-like style of book cover being pushed onto a genre that already faces a great amount of contempt goes beyond being dangerous for young readers. This type of promotion isn’t just trend-replicating and lighthearted—it’s infantilizing and belittling. It’s the publishing world looking at an audience made up primarily of women and saying: Here. Have your silly little romance books, girls.
And frankly, I’m offended on behalf of romance readers everywhere.