I am so disappointed by this NPR story I just heard: Author’s Photograph Essential In Marking A Book. Come onnnnnnnnnnnnn………….. Isn’t it bad enough that you have to look like a super-model to be a singer? Sure, there is Adele, who is a beyond amazing singer… but how many Adele’s do we have compared to the number of Taylor Swift’s, Leona Lewis’, Rihanna’s, Britney Spears’, etc. As a teen, I used to wonder if only really thin and beautiful women could really sing, because it was all I ever saw on MTV or VH1. Is this now where we’re going with books? I sure hope not…
According to the radio show, attractive authors are more likely to have their books reviewed. This is surprising to me considering that as superficial as I have been in past years (and I have been wayyyyyyyyyyy superficial), I never chose a book based on an author picture that I can ever remember. What is going on with some of these book reviewers that they are basing their choices on author photos? Maybe, like the vast majority of our socity, they think if you look a certain way that you must have certain character qualities. Agh, that kinda thinking is soooo old! Get over it already, people!!
The good news and the bad news is that non-fiction readers put less stock into the author photos than fiction readers do. As I devour both fiction and non-fiction, this is a mixed bag for me.
In the radio article, someone mentioned that when you meet an author at a party that they often don’t look anything like their author photo. Maybe they had someone else take a photo for them… or maybe the photo used is really old or photoshopped a lot. You’d think this would teach the literary world that people that look all kinds of ways can write amazing books. Sadly, they apparently aren’t getting the point yet. Sigh… disappointing… very disappointing…
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Author photos don’t mean shit to me when I’m looking at a book, fiction or non-fiction. What matters most to me about a book is do the first few pages grab me by the eyeballs? The title and author run a close second, and the cover art is third. Most of the books I’ve read in my lifetime don’t have an author’s picture on the back of the book, so I’ve never used that as a criteria for judging whether a book is worth reading or not. About the only time I pay attention to author pics is when the author is not a thin woman. If she’s what looks like a size 14 or more, then I might give her book another look if the first look didn’t capture my interest right away.
And as for female singers, most of the time I don’t even listen to them. They all look alike and sound alike nowadays. Where are the Dolly Partons, Reba McIntyres, Joan Jetts, Stevie Nicks, and Pat Benatars? The Tina Turners and Chers? Female singers that, when they come on the radio, you immediately know who they are just by hearing their voices. Where are the singers like the Weather Girls, who were fat, black, talented, and awesomely fabulous? Seems like if a woman doesn’t fit that cookie-cutter mold of thin, toned, and gorgeous, she’s not going to get anywhere, either as a singer or an author. And then when she does meet that ideal, people say that she only made it on her looks, not her talent (which may or may not be true, but if those women all sound alike, how much talent do they really have?). Yeah, all the women I listed above are thin, but they all have distinctive voices, and a shitload of talent and not all of them are what is considered “conventionally beautiful” today.
You put it so well, Vesta.
It seems to me that I grew up listening to women who pretty much all sounded the same. So… when I first started hearing women who have REAL unique voices like that lead singer from the Dixie Chicks or Macy Gray that I thought they must have no talent at all if they cannot mimic the same voice like all the other women singers did.
I wonder how how many other women of my generation (gen X) and younger who still hear a unique voice and wonder what is wrong with that woman that she can’t sound like all the other willowy blondes….?
Now that you have brought up the subject of unique voices, I think Rihanna does have a very unique voice that I just can’t get enough of…. so I can’t say she doesn’t.
Vesta, have you ever listened to Adele or Amanda Palmer. They have unique voices and ways of singing that I just drool over.
I wanted to just comment on the Taylor Swift thing only because I saw a story about her on tv…like how she became a star. I was happy to see that she (as a child and a teen) was always that same size she is today. I think it’s refreshing to see ANYONE in the eye of the public who maintains their size throughout their famous-ness (meaning not like Jennifer Aniston who looked so pleasantly healthy in the first season of Friends and ended up looking like she was modeling instead of just being a “regular” person in NYC with her “friends”).
Just thought it was an interesting tidbit to throw out there…
I didn’t know that, Peg! Interesting stuff, indeed. I also like it when I see that fame doesn’t change every celebrity into a plastic, silicon monster. 😉
Hopefully, if Taylor gets curvy with age (as many women do), she will allow it to just happen and not try to starve her maturity off. Sometimes I think women who started their celebrity as younger girls have things worse… cuz they go from that “ideal” boyish shape of many young girls to a more curvy mature shape that Hollywood doesn’t find so acceptable.