From the issue dated June 6, 2003
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When a Book Cover Speaks VolumesBy STEPHANIE A. SHIELDSWhen I show friends the cover of my recent book, Speaking From the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion, I get one of two responses. The first is an enthusiastic "Cool! Did you get to choose the cover yourself?" The second is a restrained "Interesting." Pause. "Did you choose the cover yourself?" These exchanges take place before the questioner opens the book to the inside cover flaps, and finds the most, ahem, striking image: men in thongs. I have written many journal articles, but this is my first book. I wanted to write one that would not only satisfy scholars but also appeal to academics in other fields and people outside higher education. Fortunately, my publisher, Cambridge University Press, thought my ambitions were reasonable. When my students embark on honors theses or doctoral dissertations, I tell them to be prepared to learn masses of things totally unrelated to their main topic. My experience with this book confirmed that observation in a surprising way. I had spent years worrying about what was going on the pages, but naturally hadn't thought about what the book jacket should look like. But when my contract with the publisher stipulated that I should supply the cover idea, I figured I could quickly find an image that would convey some aspect of my theme. I soon learned how wrong I was. I originally wanted something by a feminist artist or illustrator. Searches through databases, books, and galleries revealed much artwork that I would love to own, but none that would sell a book. Art unhinges a settled worldview, challenges, provokes -- but I needed something that also would convey the book's contents. The cover for one friend's book about emotion and politics is a photograph of three empty wooden chairs. What do empty chairs have to do with emotion and politics? Nothing, it turns out, but the publisher said the image would make people curious enough to pick up the book. I had a breakthrough when I discovered a photo of "Summer Sunlight," painted by Beatrice Whitney Van Ness in the 1930s, in the bookstore at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It captures the tensions of gender, emotion, and status that are central themes of my book. A young woman in a broad-brimmed hat looks at, or possibly beyond, a young man who faces away from us. Her expression is enigmatic; the tension between the two is palpable, provocative. The glaring hot sunlight adds to the emotional charge of the scene. The image renders the pushes and pulls of emotional power in a striking, yet restrained, way. I e-mailed the image to my editors in England. They loved it. Unfortunately, however, the New York office, which had the major role in marketing the book, didn't agree. When they suggested I look at the cover of another new trade book on emotion -- a close-up photo of a face apparently screaming in ecstasy -- I saw what they meant. My editors in England and I were following the model of an academic or arty cover, but the New York office was cutting to the chase: If the book were to appeal to an audience beyond academe, the cover needed to have a strong, immediate appeal. I also found out that, for advertising purposes, an effective cover needs to look good on the Web, in black and white, and as a one-inch-by-two-inch image. As one of the marketing people patiently explained to me, just about the only place that the cover ever shows up in its actual size and color is on the book itself. And the book doesn't sell the book; advertising sells the book. When I look back at my accumulated e-mail correspondence to my editor, I'm reminded how hard I struggled to find the right cover image. Early on, I wrote: "I was thinking this image might work. ... " Later messages start with: "How about this?" Even later ones: "I have no preferences about the image. I have been searching and searching and am at the end of my tether!" As the clock ticked closer and closer to deadline I confessed to my editor that I would be happy simply with anything that did not portray gender wars, heterocentric romance, or the prevailing stereotypes of female emotionality. Finally, I visited my publisher's office in New York, where the staff asked why I had had no success with stock photos. Stock photos? I had searched numerous sites on the Internet but hadn't realized that companies actually had huge inventories of photos for commercial use that I could search. I quickly discovered the difference between "royalty-free" images and "rights-protected" images. Even better, I learned that the good people at Getty Images, Corbis, and other stock-photo houses will search their photo archives for you at no charge. Accustomed to the glacial time scale of academe, I was overjoyed at the thought of receiving search results in 24 hours or less. I figured I was home free. With the help of pros, I'd get this cover problem settled in no time. I explained that I was looking for an image that conveyed strong emotion (preferably happiness or excitement), showed ethnic diversity (or avoided depicting one particular ethnicity), and avoided romantic or gender stereotypes (such as a woman crying). Yes, yes, they assured me, no problem. Then the results came in. One diligent searcher wrote, "I've compiled a selection of nine related images for you. I didn't have much luck with this." Nine may seem like a lot, but not when the database contains hundreds of thousands of photos. In the meantime, I did searches myself. The search term "emotion" turned up about 3,000 photos on each of the larger databases, but virtually all were unusable. Most depicted images of heterosexual romance or emotional women. Family or other intergenerational photos were another dominant category, but the book was not about families. Crowd or group scenes were more likely to represent ethnic diversity, but there was a youthful, well-heeled, and partylike tone in those multicultural fests. And even the photos that might have worked looked like they belonged on the cover of any textbook that has "multicultural" in its title. What could communicate the emotional intensity, the "speaking from the heart" that gives the book its title? Dancing, maybe? The silhouette of a thin female dancer in a gauzy robe, sort of an Isadora Duncan without the scarf, captured the New York office's imagination. Upon reflection, however, I agreed more with the assessment of the editor's assistant in Cambridge, who pointed out that the image looked like it should be "advertising some sort of feminine hygiene product!" I am not sure from what recess of my brain the notion of "joyful jumping" emerged, but it did -- and it worked. The image that made it to the book's cover looks like a Hollywood publicity photo. Dated circa 1925, it shows three young, aspiring stars in swimsuits jumping rope together. They are smiling and seem genuinely happy to be doing what they are doing. The combination of two young women and a young man in the jump-rope game helps to dispel notions of romantic relationship. And even though they are not looking at one another or saying anything, the sheer fun of jumping rope shows the power of unrestrained emotion. And who is holding each end of the long rope through which the happy young people are jumping? Two smiling, muscular men in thongs. Fortunately, everyone in Cambridge likes the photograph, and everyone in New York likes it, too. It communicates honest pleasure without overly sexualizing any of the individuals or the relationships among them. In my long search for the appropriate cover photo, I discovered how extraordinarily difficult it is to come up with images that avoid stereotypes where gender and emotion is concerned. (In retrospect and upon reflection, of course, I now wonder how I could have expected anything else.) The photo of the men in thongs is a sendup of such stereotypes and, at the same time, illustrates power relationships. Who holds the ropes? Who defines the rules of the game? My men in thongs place the notion of "joyful jumping" squarely within the domain of emotional politics. They reflect the central theme of my book: who gets called "emotional" and the meaning of that label. I must confess I do love them. Stephanie A. Shields is a professor of psychology and women's studies at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. She is the author of Speaking From the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2002). http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 39, Page B5
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education