My controversial, nipple-baring Dirty Girls book cover

I had no idea that the book cover for Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women (which will be out in April, but has its very own blog!), which I've been drooling over since I first saw it, would be so controversial. But apparently it is, as it's been singled out by erotica author Mathilde Madden over at Lust Bites:

And, look, while we’re celebrating male beauty can I just say, what the fuck is up with the book covers of erotica books for women that they have naked chicks on the covers? This book cover baffles me. There, are more like this, of course - girlie covers of erotica books - but this one seems so very FHM. Could they not find a picture of someone the gender the majority of women fantasise about the majority of the time?...

I mean god forbid a women's erotica book should be sold by *gasp* objectifying men. I know some women are into women. And sure women are pretty (though not as pretty as men.) But we know this isn't what this is about. In fact, whenever I see a cover like that I feel damn certain the book isn't really aimed at women at all. And it's not as if the world is short of pretty pictures of women - for those who like looking at pretty pictures of women.

I could let this go, and it’s not that I’m personally offended, because I didn’t pick the cover (though I do love it). But I think there’s a bigger point that needs to be made: when you read erotica, you can read it in numerous ways, and two of the varying ways are as either party in the story. Let’s say there’s a man and a woman in a given erotica story (and TRUST ME, in Dirty Girls there’s plenty of sex that involves more than two people, and not all of them heterosexual). I like the fact that I can identify with, for example, my own protagonist in “Icy Hot,” who seduces a stranger on a boiling hot day in a bodega, all over a bag of ice. But I could also, even though he’s really the object and not the subject of the story, identify with the guy who has this woman practically jumping on him and following him home so he can tease her with ice cubes all over her body. As readers, we get to identify with either, or both, of those people.

I’ve plenty of submissive types tell me they loved He’s on Top and/or She’s on Top, because even though the stories were told from the tops’ POVs, they also encompassed the bottoms’ needs and desires. I read both ways, depending on the story, but I have to say, I personally tend to be drawn to images of women, even though I’m attracted to both men and women.

Also, the book’s subtitle is “erotica for women,” and the stories are written by women, and it’s being published by a feminist press, so if you ask me, putting a man on the cover would’ve been totally antithetical to what the book is ostensibly about. I actually would probably feel really uncomfortable having a man on my book cover…unless my book’s main character was a guy.

This reminds me over another crazy-hot cover, Violet Blue’s Best Women’s Erotica 2008, (pictured below) for which I broke my self-imposed no-reading-erotica-on-the-subway, and it was so worth it. I’ll post more about it when I’m done, but buy it and treasure it for Violet’s intro, which is worth the price of the book alone, it’s that hot but also heartfelt. Anyway, I was studying the cover because I think it’s incredibly hot. Book covers have tough jobs; they have to grab the reader, they have to encapsulate what an entire book is about with a single (usually) image. It’s a tough balance, especially with erotica, because clearly, if someone is turned off from that image, if the model is too ____ for their taste, they may walk away from a book whose insides would make them rush off to get their hands down their pants (or up their skirts) ASAP.



I don’t think it’s a conspiracy to keep hot, shirtless men off book covers, but more a business decisionæthat women want to see women. Now, I’m not saying there can’t be a sexist angle to this. I was talking about something related to this subject recently, though can’t recall exactly what it was, and someone said, “Well, women are just hotter, right?” I think that’s insulting to everyone; there are, of course, standards of beauty, but I think there are multiple standards. It’s why the whole CWILF/FLILF thing kinda irks me, because basically what’s being put out there is that nobody on earth would ever want to fuck/fantasize about these men. Well, news flash, somebody does. But I think what book covers are trying to tap into is a fantasy of someone we’d like to be, or get to know.

When I see the Dirty Girls cover, I see a woman who’s bold and daring enough to stare right back at the camera, even with her clothes off. To claim her nudity, her sexuality, to defy that dreadful phrase I had to read ad nauseam as a women’s studies major, “the male gaze.” I say that not because that gaze doesn’t exist, but because I think that in some circles, feminist/women’s studies almost privileges it too much. We are in an era where we all get to gaze, and this woman is gazing right back at whoever’s looking at her. She’s sexualized and sexual.

One of the women I asked to blurb the book (I’m waiting for her blurb right now!) is Burning Angel superstar Joanna Angel, because I think she embodies that particular form of out-there exhibitionism. It’s a pretty bold, in-your-face, unapologetic, horny, yet also soulful and sensual way of being. Or, as I write in the introduction to Dirty Girls, which you can read in its entirety here:

The women writing here don’t apologize for being dirty. They know who and what they want and they go after the objects of their affection in all kinds of different ways. Reading this collection_whether from start to finish or skipping around to your favorite authors or the most eye-catching titles_will give you a glimpse into what makes women wet, what makes us feel and act dirty, what makes us slick our lips and spread our legs. Maybe, just maybe, their stories attempt to answer Freud’s infamously infuriating query: “What do women want?” To judge by the twenty-seven tales you hold in your hand, they want to be worshiped, they want to be ordered around, they want to be sent spinning into ecstasy and then come crashing back down. They want strangers bearing ice cubes on a hot day, and to be a party favor passed around among guests. They want hot vacation sex, visits to peep shows, and a man who’ll lick stinky cheese off their boots. They want power, and they want to give up power. They want sex at the office and in the great outdoors and on trains and airplanes. They want sex with the whole United States of America (or, at least, part of it). They want to be wooed, seduced, flirted with, taken. They want men, women, and sometimes both at the same time.

And hey, while we’re on the topic of hot book covers, I must throw in one more, for Rubber Sex, out in May, cause I’m seeing it for the very first time:



See also Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books, on book covers.

I’d love to hear what you think (here or at rachelkb at gmail.com) about this topic, what your favorite erotica book covers are, and what makes you pick up (or put own) a given erotica book. And whatever you like about a book cover, I wish you happy reading once you get to what's inside.