(Graphic by jillianaudrey.blogspot.com)

Why The Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs To End (Racialicious)

Putting pretty white girls on all your book covers is the book equivalent of what all our fashion magazines do. An idealization of beauty that is unrealistic and dangerous to our youth. And it isn’t the right thing to do. Seeing a person of color grace the cover of a YA book is like spotting the Loch Ness Monster:  you wonder if you’ve truly seen it and if you’ll ever see it again. How sad is that? To say that only pretty white girls can sell YA books is not a business model that publishers should approve of. And it’s not true. We need look no further than the gender-neutral and iconic covers for The Hunger Games and Twilight series to see the truth.