Wednesday, 26 September 2007

Full Frontal Nudity

In attempting to jam more books into my already crammed shelves, I came across a couple of books I'd forgotten about, both of which feauture full-frontal nudity on the cover. In both cases it's female nudity, and in both cases the books were published in Australia (the first by Picador, the second by Vintage).





Both books fall into the realms of both literary fiction and thrillers. Off-hand, I cannot think of any books of this sort that feature full-frontal male nudity. This may be because the male nude is a basically foolish-looking object, but given that women are by far the biggest consumers of both literary fiction and crime fiction, you'd think there might be a couple. Then again, perhaps the glimpses of female pubic hair are there to lure male readers into a purchase. And has full-frontal nudity of either kind appeared on a serious, non-art book outside of Australia? I can't think of any examples.

Far more common is the turned-away-boobs image. Examples? Here:





It's worth noting that, "prize-winning cult classic" though it may be, Hitomi Kanehara's book is also a load of balls.

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