At last, I have a thought

Wow, it's been a while since I even tried to post here.  Reasons?  Lots of reasons.  A whole long autumn, winter, and spring of self doubt and little to no writing.  Lots of reading, which is good.  Lots of thinking about writing and talking about writing and even writing (journal style) about writing, but no actual fiction spilling out.  A couple of short stabs, an abortive attempt or two.

That's yesterday, ok?  I'm gonna work on today for now.

In any case, I re opened my Twitter account and things are happening there.  Among the things happening is a little thought provocation.  I caught a tweet from @Rob_Thurman -- Rob Thurman is the author of the Cal Leandros series (I own the first two but have yet to read more than the opening pages because I'm lame and also because I have SO many books sometimes I can't pick one).  Anyway, I've followed Thurman for a while on Twitter because she's smart and interesting.  Her tweet was about "genderwashing" -- similar to "white washing" of book covers (You can Google "whitewashing in YA books" to read several commentaries).  In Genderwashing, a book with a male protagonist is given a cover depicting a female, often buxon, who may or may not be based on a major character in the book.  It is possible that no female character of importance is in the book and none are main characters, yet the male protagonists are not depicted (This can also work in reverse).

My first thought when I read her definition was that marketing was trying to either attract male readers with a promise of boobs and sex, or trying to attract female readers with the promise of a female leading character.  Boobs sell, I guess, is the logic.  No matter, though, it is deceptive.  It's insulting, too, both to the author and to the reader.  Of course, the average reader doesn't know how very little control over such things as cover design an author has, so they could conceivably blame the author if they felt deceived.  And it shows a certain lack of faith in the author's story when the publisher's marketing department feels people have to be tricked into reading it.