Clothes and covers, and why sometimes, characters choose.: seanan

Clothes and covers, and why sometimes, characters choose.

I love Emma Frost.

I love her characterization, I love that she's never actually changed herself for the sake of the men in her life, I love that she will melt your brain out your ears if you annoy her, and I love that she is completely upfront about how much work it is to look the way she does. Plastic surgery, dieting, push-up bras, and hair dye: check. Painful shoes, fabric tape, and baby powder to avoid chafing: check. Emma is all about appearances, and she never pretends that it's easy.

I also love that she has flat-out said, several times, that she dresses the way she does for the effect it gets. This is a female comic book character who, possibly uniquely in the comic book world, is actually working the male gaze. She wants to be underestimated by opponents. She wants to be taken for a slutty slutty slut slut who can't possibly have earned a damn thing. And when people treat her badly because they don't like what she wears, she calls them on it.

Now, Emma is not always appropriate. Not going to pretend she is. But she's always Emma. Even on the occasions when she's fully clothed. She's a character who makes choices, and sometimes those choices require telekinesis to stay on.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the cover for Midnight Blue-Light Special, and why I love it so much, and why it's not a better portrayal of Verity. It's just a different one.

Verity Price is a professional ballroom dancer specializing in Latin styles of dance. This means she spends a lot of time wearing outfits that are, as her grandmother puts it, "more rumor than reality." I spent a lot of time hanging out with real ballroom dancers, figuring out how many knives you could conceal under a costume made entirely of fringe (the answer: a surprising number). She can fight in high heels because she can samba in high heels, and once you've done the one, the other comes naturally. This is who she is, as a character and as a person. It's just that she also fights monsters sometimes.

Verity also works as a waitress at a strip club, because something's got to pay for all those bullets. She's wearing her work clothes on the cover to book #1, because it made more sense to put her on the roof in work clothes than in a ballroom costume, and because for Verity, that moment was totally in-character and reasonable. She was, in short, dressed on the cover like she was dressed in the book.

Some people didn't like the cover; that's okay. Nothing is universally liked, not even ice cream and kittens. But some people also got mad on my behalf, because Verity had been "sexualized." And really, she hadn't been. She was presented accurately, as she appeared in the book. It was an accurate portrayal.

Jump forward to the cover for Midnight Blue-Light Special, which I love. Verity is dressed for her other job: monster-hunting. Sensible shoes, sensible trousers, sports bra under the shirt, and look! She's brought a friend! Sarah Zellaby, telepathic mathematician, who is wearing about eight layers of clothing and looks profoundly uncomfortable being even that exposed! Sarah is as de-sexualized on this cover as Verity was sexual on the previous, and again, it's because I asked for it; it's because that's what Sarah is like. She doesn't want you looking at her. She doesn't want to "show a little skin." Bless DAW and my cover artist, Aly Fell, but when I said "Sarah can't be sexy," they didn't try to make her. She's beautiful. She's supposed to be. She's also modest and shy.

Now here's the thing: both Veritys are correct. Both of them look like her. The next time she shows up on a book cover (for volume five, Professional Gore-eography), I'm going to be lobbying for a ballroom dance costume, and she'll probably be accompanied by her heavily-tattooed, cut-off-wearing grandmother (add a giant snake and we'll be able to play urban fantasy cliche bingo with that cover alone). And it will be accurate to the text. And if Sarah ever appears on a cover in a bikini, it'll be because it's somehow accurate to the text (although I can't imagine how).

Making characters like Toby or Sarah dress like Verity is not cool. Making Alice dress like Verity wouldn't be cool, either; she often wears skimpy clothes, but it's for reasons other than "I want to be hot so you'll tip me better." At the same time, assuming that any character who does dress like Verity is somehow being inaccurately represented doesn't seem quite fair to me.

Sometimes a girl just wants to get her Emma Frost on.

roseeyedangel

September 21 2012, 01:09:04 UTC 4 years ago

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the only reason i didn't like the cover for DA was beacuse her dress was pink and it is not pink in the book. but i think both covers are totally gorge and i love the diveresity they show of the characters.

seanan_mcguire

September 21 2012, 16:52:25 UTC 4 years ago

And I totally get that. I do like the pink for the way it "pops" on the shelf, though. That's a nice thing.

dornbeast

September 21 2012, 02:08:35 UTC 4 years ago

This is a female comic book character who, possibly uniquely in the comic book world, is actually working the male gaze.

As far as I know, she's the only one who is consistently written that way. (Power Girl was said to be doing it at one point, but they rebooted the universe not long after, so that doesn't really count.)

dewline

September 21 2012, 18:16:43 UTC 4 years ago

Was this last year's reboot?

4 years ago

amusingmuse

September 21 2012, 02:37:52 UTC 4 years ago

I've seen a perfect cartwheel done in three inch heels. Yes, my jaw dropped. Heck, back in my younger and thinner days I used to wear two inch heels and could run in them. (Never could cartwheel.) Therefore it boggles me the sudden antipathy towards heels and saying heels of any type are unrealistic. Uhm, there's a reason for those heels on riding and cowboy boots!

I know I read one book were ever female character hated skirts/dresses except for two and they were very highly sexualized characters. When I read something like that I feel sad. There's nothing like a skirt cut on a bias or those swinging fringes for pure swish delight. I love how the folds of fabric swing and sway. I did like Verity because she's one of the only urban fantasy heroines I've read who LIKES clothes.

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brightlotusmoon

September 21 2012, 02:51:38 UTC 4 years ago

*thumbs up*

I approve of this. A lot. You have said many things I have thought.

I have had friends comment nastily on other friends' skimpy outfits, and since those comments were obviously ending with question marks and desiring responses from me, my responses were almost always "So what? She/he can dress however she/he wants."
And often there is the inevitable "But what if someone tries to assault her/him because of that outfit?"
And I say "Then it is never her/his fault. It is always the fault of the attackers."
And then nobody knows what to say, because I have openly knocked their train of thought off the rail, into the forest, and to the bottom of a river to be gnawed at by fish.

September 21 2012, 18:19:21 UTC 4 years ago

Guppies, preferably. For the humiliation value.

Weaponized guppies.

maverick_weirdo

September 21 2012, 03:28:16 UTC 4 years ago

Since Sarah is cold-blooded, it is probably cool enough with the fog showing in the background, that showing skin would make Sarah lethargic

September 22 2012, 04:35:01 UTC 4 years ago

Good catch. ;)

thedragonweaver

September 21 2012, 04:03:01 UTC 4 years ago

I'm just happy and delighted that the characters on the front match the characters in the text. That's becoming more common (yay!) but it's really hard to delete an inaccurate cover from one's mind while reading the book.

The funny thing is how little I'm comfortable wearing on stage vs. off-stage "cover me up!" I'd go onstage in a leotard and tights, and only bitch a little if they wouldn't let me wear a compression band for my midriff. Come to think of it, I've been onstage in a corset and bloomers. Offstage, though, I want to be covered to my knees at least, and cleavage is Not My Thing. Context is key. Wear the appropriate outfit to the situation.

September 22 2012, 04:35:21 UTC 4 years ago

Absolutely.

September 21 2012, 18:28:26 UTC 4 years ago

The cover was revealed two posts back.

deborah_c

September 21 2012, 11:34:10 UTC 4 years ago

Somehow I can't help feeling that if Sarah in a bikini was faithful to the text, she'd be coming after you shortly afterwards...

September 22 2012, 04:35:48 UTC 4 years ago

Yeah, probably true.

fadedbluejeans

September 21 2012, 11:37:51 UTC 4 years ago

Personally, I love both covers, and if anyone wants to explain to me how Verity has been overly sexualised, then they can do so while I am skewering their foot with the heel of my red Mary Janes.

As a bookseller, I have seen the DA cover be a bit of a hard sell to a certain kind of UF reader, because we learn to avoid the UF Babe covers after a while, because so many of them are applied to derivitive genre slop. I find I can usually overcome the objection by explaining that no, that's not a cover artist playing UF bingo, that's Actually how Verity dresses for work.

Actually, the week DA came out, I handed it to one of my regulars. "It's all pink," she said. "That girl's half dressed," she said (to be fair, she had raised the same objection to a half-dressed guy on a different cover). I asked her to trust me, and she took the book home. A week later, she was back to yell at me for introducing her to the best series ever because how was she meant to wait a year for the second book. (So I sold her all the Toby books to make up for it.)

September 22 2012, 03:12:10 UTC 4 years ago

The first hit is always free.

kittikins

September 21 2012, 13:45:15 UTC 4 years ago

As someone who focuses on media and gender studies in academia, I find it refreshing that these conversations are happening and that people are thinking about things like the male gaze, sexualizing characters, etc. I think these discussions are vital to the continued growth of everyone's dialogue on the role of gender and gender expectations in our society. I definitely understand why the covers portray Verity the way that they do and they certainly aren't what I would consider inappropriate. That being said, because of who Verity is, I connect to her least of all the major characters in the McGuire/Grant universe mostly because I don't always understand why the character does what she does. The strip club lost me a bit, not because I have strong feelings about strip clubs per se, just because it added to an overall picture that made it difficult to resonate with the character. I spent those scenes pondering other ways she could work a crappy job in NY and barely make ends meet and most of them involved private dance lessons of the non-pervy variety. Of course, grandma and I will likely understand each other quite well, so, there's that. :) Anyway, mostly wanted to post because I really enjoy reading everyone's discussions on issues like this. I think it is important and I'm glad it is happening more than it used to!

ironed_orchid

September 21 2012, 14:32:32 UTC 4 years ago

As someone who has worked on a titty bar circuit, in the same sort of capacity as Verity, i.e. not a stripper, but a bar nad cocktail waitress who shows a lot of boob and thigh, I did it because I made three times more an hour than what I would make as a barmaid or waitress who got to keep her clothes on, and I made even more in tips.

This meant I only had to work two nights a week and could afford to study fulltime while living on my own. It's not the sort of choice everyone makes, but it's not that out of the ordinary either. A lot of the strippers I met were dance students who saw it as a way to pay for their training, because basically it's being up on a stage doing dance moves in a costume.

A couple of years later, I chose to be the sort of barperson who had a lower hourly rate and got to keep her clothes on, because my priorities had shifted.

wendyzski

September 21 2012, 14:21:26 UTC 4 years ago

When I saw the cover I pretty much thought "that is how Verity dresses when she's not working at a titty bar" and "OMG IT'S SARAH!!! LOOK IT'S SARAH"...

When I first saw the cover of Discount Armageddon I thought it looked more lolita than ballroom dance, but then I read the scene on the roof and I flipped back and looked at the cover and understood it.

September 22 2012, 04:37:32 UTC 4 years ago

Sarah is PERFECT, and I am SO HAPPY I COULD CRY.

Like, really.

huggebear

September 21 2012, 18:26:22 UTC 4 years ago Edited: September 21 2012, 18:32:57 UTC

The problem I have is not with sexy covers per say, but with covers on which a non-sexy character has been sexualized. In the urban fantasy genre, you often see covers in which a female heroine is dressed in skimpy, sexy clothes. Nine times out of ten, you read the book and the character herself does not dress like this at all. I've begun to feel a little jaded about it.

The Discount Armageddon cover *fit* Verity. That's a lot more than you can say about many UF covers!

September 22 2012, 04:37:49 UTC 4 years ago

That's basically where I stand on the issue, too.

drcpunk

September 22 2012, 04:38:00 UTC 4 years ago

One of the things I like about the new cover is that it's clearly the same Verity. So she changed clothes? Well, I do assume she owns more than one set of clothing! Okay, that's not always a safe assumption, but I didn't feel I was going out on a limb too far in this case.

September 23 2012, 18:02:09 UTC 4 years ago

You really weren't.

biteybatgirl

September 22 2012, 18:25:08 UTC 4 years ago

You know, I never thought about it that way, but I love that your characters are representative of themselves on the covers of the books. That is awesome.

September 23 2012, 18:02:20 UTC 4 years ago

Yeah, it really is. :)

azurelunatic

September 23 2012, 09:54:32 UTC 4 years ago

My train of thought upon seeing the cover:

"Gosh, another revealing outfit on an urban fantasy cover."
"Which is exactly how she dresses. Hooray!"
"Ooo, fully clothed and not happy about any of anything that is going on!"
"HAIL THE ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE COVER!"

September 23 2012, 11:36:49 UTC 4 years ago

HAIL

Sally Edwards

September 24 2012, 06:55:21 UTC 4 years ago

Well said! I never had a problem with the first cover. It was beautiful and accurate within context. People can get too precious too easily IMO.

I just pre-ordered Midnight Blue-Light Special today. I'm looking forward to it very much.

September 24 2012, 15:18:45 UTC 4 years ago

Yay!

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Clothes and covers, and why sometimes, characters choose.

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