Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

er… what’s a mullet? I thought I knew, but now I’m a wondering.

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<style, a hot, hot tres sexy coif we call ‘Zee Hasselhoff.’ Zee bitches, zey will do ze swoon, non?

Can’t… breathe… laughter… pee… pants…

Worst thing? I have this book. And I ripped the front cover off because I could NOT stand to look at it.

Personally, I’m quite impressed that you were both able to (mostly) contain your comments on the Intrigued cover to the hair. 

Because, my God, that’s one squick-inducing picture.  The way the heroine is shoving her butt into the hero with the posture of a cat in heat, the unnatural pose of the heroine in general with her neck back and twisted, her left arm in a death grip and yet posed like a ballerina in getting ready for a leap, the fact that, I’m sorry, that dude is one unattractive guy - he looks like the kind of substitute teacher that kids take one look at and decide to disrespect for the remainder of the day, and the dress - was she stitched into the damned thing? - granted my home ec class was decades ago now, but I still recall that when you see wrinkles like that it’s time to take out the seams a skosh. 

And to get back onto the topic of hair, yeah that’s one bad ‘do on that man.  It’s GOT to be a put on for the picture because can you imagine seeing that while walking down the street in real life?  My mind is pushing itself into the farthest reaches of my cranium just contemplating the thought.

I do have some thoughts on hair length and sexual attractiveness (like, have you noticed, that most successful big-name Hollywood actresses have long hair?), but I’m still shuddering over the Intrigued cover and can’t get them to line up nicely for presentation to the public just yet.

what’s a mullet?

It’s that look Billy Ray Cyrus perfected of hair short on the sides and long in back.

That guy on the Dark Gold cover looks like every Preppie Asshole Boyfriend from every early-90’s movie. *shudder*

I’m worried about Dark Gold man. It’s gonna hurt like heck when that cape chain rips his chest hair out…

And Just Beyond Tomorrow? Note the location of the quiver. She’s probably got arrows stuck in that wild mane from three battles ago.

>>It’s gonna hurt like heck when that cape chain rips his chest hair out… <<

Oh, OUCH!  You gave me the heebie jeebies with that one.

I have visited Mullets Galore. I must now go wash my eyes with bleach while screaming “Gods Damn You, Billy Ray Cyrus!”

Be back in a bit.

Long hair in the olden days? Concerns me. Because those people didn’t wash their hair like everyday, right? Plus it’s not like they had lice shampoo or anything. So lice galore? Like in elementary school? When I was in the first grade, I had a bowl cut, but this dirty kid gave everyone lice and my mom wanted to shave my head. Thankfully, my grandmother intervened.

The Memory of Love man looks like he got a little carried away with the blusher.  Either that or he has scarlet fever.

Maybe the Intrigued dude has a ponytail (or perhaps “queue” is the more historically accurate term) and it’s just tucked away and not visible in the picture.  Not that a ponytail or queue is any better in my opinion.  Coz’ that is otherwise a seriously bad wig and the cover stylist needs to rethink his or her profession.

OMG, the first one. In my twenties, I had hair almost as long as that lass, but it never flew around my like a glorious (and unnatural) aureole. In fact, I kept it braided most of the time, and finally grew so tired of washing, drying and combing the mess that I had it cut down to shoulder length.

Way more practical. And it makes an aureole

And if she uses that bow, she should wear a leather protection over her boobs.

As should most of the men on those covers.  :-P

The hairiest cover art I’ve ever seen was on the stepback of A Well Pleasured Lady by Christina Dodd.  Damn, the heroine looked like a red-headed Cousin It.

Unfortunately my Google Image searching has turned up negative.  Trust me though - the stepback is really hairy scary.

Perhaps our website should come with one of these emergency eyewash stations.

I remember seeing one of those for the first time as a kid in a shop class and wondering what it was for.  Now that I presume everyone’s wearing goggles and there isn’t much need for them in schools any more, I think the emergency eye wash manufacturing industry will be damn happy for the business.  (Or perhaps you can set up a virtual station there on the sidebar with a counter for the number of times it gets used—so we’ll have even more ways to amuse ourselves here at SB when we should be working.)

Sweet merciful gods, Candy. That edit was just genetic hysteria inducing nasty.

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OMG that edit is priceless. Screw the “graphical standards” about nudity, we should start campaigning against mullets and Russian Mob hair on covers.

*shivers, looking back at picture* Oh, uck! That’s like a Muppet on steroids, man. And not even a good Henson Muppet- a cheap knockoff Muppet on cheap knockoff steroids.

I’m pretty new here, but what is it with the head-thrown-back thing? Is it like the bitch-wolf exposing her neck to the dominate male as a sign of submission? Gives me muscle spasms just looking at it.

Maybe it’s just me, ‘cause I’m grown up and like grown up men who look like men, not girly-boys, but will we ever see a cover with a sexy guy with a

high forehead?  You know, where the hair is kinda waaaay back there?  Where’s Jean-Luc Picard when we need him?

Maybe she got her locks of love tangled in something and the gentlemen are helping her to free them by pulling on her arm?

“Neck of Ecstacyâ„¢.”

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Sarah, got another no way in hell job for you. A friend of mine was a product tester for toilet paper. Each little square was numbered, and she doled it out to research subjects. They had to RETURN EVERY SHEET after using it. And she had to count them.  :ahhh:

>>but will we ever see a cover with a sexy guy with a

high forehead?<<

Mmm. Liam Neeson. Of course, the cover artist would add some ridiculous mane of flowing hair and then it would just be Michael Bolton in a poofy shirt.

Sweet Mother of God!  The mullets!  The mullets!  Oh, I shouldn’t have clicked the link…

curls into fetal position beneath desk, rocking, whimpering, rocking…

Shoot, I’m just kinda wowed by the fact that a cover model has actual hair on his chest.  At least, it looks like actual hair.

Incidental Pointless Side Note:
I sat by Christine Feehan at the booksigning at RT in April, and she has got to be one of the warmest, nicest women I’ve ever met.  Her daughter was helping her, and as soon as she and Christine discovered it was my first booksigning, they both began handing me autograph stickers.  They bought my book - that was humbling and kinda cool!  She was gracious and attentive to every single fan who stood in a long line to get one of her books.

I came home and bought three of her Carpathian books and read them all within 2 days.  Bought more, but haven’t read them yet.  I’m not sure I’d ever read a vampire novel before that.  But I don’t recall that my cover had any hairy mantitty.  Bummer that.

Stef, the ramblin’ rose tonight…

You have given me a good laugh early this morning.  I have always looked at these pictures and wondered why they put these half naked people outside in the middle of nowhere.  Where are they anyway?  But it seems that the publishers have heard your complaints because they are now chopping off the heads.

They may just be shaking out the gunk rather than the lice. Medieval haircare included rubbing it with a mix of honey, oil, alum and quicksilver. Reckon any self-respecting louse would move out of that mess rather sharpish. Probably onto the tidier head of some guy sporting the trendy “reverse mullet”. That’s short on the top, longer at the sides and puffed over the ears. Oh hold me back.

There is the historical association: male long hair = virility. From Samson to those wacky Merovingian reges criniti (“Cut my head off, but no, don’t take the hair!!!”) to Fabio, the legend continues. Which begs the question, do flowing locks counteract the girly aspects of man-titty, or enhance it? Or are they subliminally evoking the unbridled passion one is guaranteed to find beneath these covers?

As for those of us with a fancy for the follically-challenged, I think Suzanne Brockman once wrote a hero with a receding hairline, but he never made it onto the cover (sniff).

Ah, so much to say….

The mullet link sent my virus checker into apoplexy - you have been warned.

When you don’t wash long hair, its greasiness balances - if you don’t wash it, you don’t have to wash it.  Eventually.  But as soon as hair powder comes into the equation *ickyickyicky*

The neck?  I am paying my physiotherapist good money to prevent my EVER doing that much damage to my vertebrae again…

The archer flaming hair bint?  The first time she fires that bow she’d be bald….  breasts you can avoid, flying locks are a ticket to whiplash.

Have you ever checked out the UK covers for the Feehan books?  Interesting comparisons…

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Did she form part of that cavalcade of feisty heroines with flaming locks of auburn hair (pace Dolly) and violet eyes which hit in the eighties? Some freaky genetics there. In any case, the unfeasibly billowy hair reminds me of She-Ra, He-Man’s separated-at-birth-twin-sister (but wasn’t she a blonde??).

Anna Lucia, you’re right about the UK covers for Feehan books. Although some of the ones I picked up seem to be ex-pats. Who can explain the mysteries of marketing? Am just so glad I don’t have to buy German or French editions.

She-Ra totally taped her bosom together with duct tape. Old beauty-pageant trick. She-Ra also kicked He-Man’s ass, long hair or not.

I, too, know more about She-Ra than I should. And don’t get me started on the ThunderCats!

Oh, man—She-Ra totally fits the Samson-big-hair-manly-strength model. When she’s just weenie ol’ Adora, her hair is quite tamed and sleek, and just at her shoulders—but the second she calls on the honor of Greyskull, and gets all kind of strength and power, her tresses become all wild and flowy, and down to her ass.

I think she kept that bustier up by borrowing Wonder Woman’s WonderBra.

It just occurred to me that He-Man wore ‘nowt but a pair of furry underpants and booties to battle evil. Yes, She-Ra kicked He-Man’s butt, but you gotta admire the boy’s unshakeable confidence in his own masculinity.

“Unshakeable confidence in his own masculinity” is not what I’d describe as He-Man’s attitude. More like, “compensating with a big sword and a bitch of a cat.” Wasn’t the cat a total coward until He-Man pulled out his big sword? *snark*

Though I have to admit the underpants and booties do outweight the big-sword thing. Hmm. How would one relatively weight the chutzpah necessary to battle evil in thy Underoos against the compensatory factor of big sword for little weiner?

Sounds like a complicated equation…

Yet another childhood sacred cow, slaughtered by ours truly. Sigh.

ewwww, squick…

must go wash ears out with bleach as well as eyes…

She-Ra’s horse didn’t just turn into Pegasus, but a unicorn—he grew a big freaking horn from the middle of his head, thanks to her white stuff.

Although, her white stuff didn’t shoot out of the end of her sword, but from the jewel on the front, like it was a big nipple squirting magic man-making juice at her stallion.

Are you imagining just the most goofy voice for Battlecat as he howls out “Ahhh! And I have the power too”?

Yes…and dying of laughter. Thanks for that link.

Hey, it’s good to share.

If She-Ra could kick He-Man’s ass, it’s only because he was too busy working silkening serum into his oh-so-macho sleek blond bob.

And Jana of the Jungle could have taken them both.

Can we go and see if we can find that Thundercats audio bloopers thing, can we, can we, can we?

And didn’t a red orb in the middle of She-Ra’s sword change her horse, Spirit, into a pegasus?

Weird, I responded to this, kind of, but somehow conflated the red-orbness with the Thundercats instead of thinking of She-Ra.

Because Lion-O had that growing sword, didn’t he? When he used it, it went from a little itty-bitty short sword to a big, Thundercat-signal long sword. Which was kind of disturbing, since Lion-O was a twelve-year-old in the body of a much older man.

Dude, the ThunderCats were like the Smurfs: the male to female ratio was ALL wacked out; not to mention the weird comradely LOTR gay action.

Who knew? Then again, I grew up with Bugs Bunny cross-dressing, so I s’pose cartoons are just naturally, ah, shall we say sexually fluid?

PS: “Christ on a cracker”? I am so totally using that line.

...reaching full-size as he yelled out that prolonged “Ho!”

Oh, man—and it was with that he called all his friends to him, right? I *knew* Cheetarah was a slut! Hmm, I wonder if there is any Lion-O/Cheetarah fanfiction?

I can’t stop laughing over that She-Ra sequence.

Oh noooo…. I can never watch these shows again.

Not that I watched them.  No.  That would be sad.

*whistling*

Oh Meljean, I will bet you anything that not only is there fanfic and explicit fan-art involving Lion-O and Cheetarah, but any and all pairings, from Lion-O and Tigra (talk about gay! What’s up with that powder-blue leotard?) to Lion-O and Panthro to twincest featuring Wilykit and Wilykat, to bukkake-fests on everyone’s favorite bitch, Snarf (who’s even more annoying than Scrappy-Doo).

Not that I’ve looked, or anything.

My kingdom for broadband…

I just looked. LOTS of it. *g*

Candy, I’m surprised you haven’t commented on the obvious gayness of Adora’s best friend, Bow. Freddie Mercury mustache and a big freaking pink heart on his chest? Not even a hint of action even though he was surrounded by beautiful, bosomy women? You know he was gay.

I think the heroine on the Intrigued cover looks like a mannequin. I can just envision someone telling the hero, “Bend her at the waist. No, not that much. Now, twist her just a little away from you. Great. Now bring her arm back. It won’t stay? You’ll just have to hold it, then.”

Another idea, far more disturbing, is that he’s drugged and posed her.

As for his hair? Oh yeah, definitely a wig.