If a picture is worth a thousand words . . . .

. . . then we're nearing a novel's worth of argument here.

A while back, jimhines posted shots of himself posing like women on the covers of books. ocelott followed up with a compare-and-contrast of men's poses vs. women's, again with attempted reproduction.

Well, now Jim has done the other side of the equation, posing like some male cover models (from romance as well as fantasy). As he points out, not only are the poses less uncomfortable, their mode of objectification conveys power rather than sexualization. And those are really, really not the same thing.

And, for an encore, there's Emily Asher-Perrin's article on Tor.com, "Hey, Everyone — Stop Taking This Picture! (No, I Mean It.)" And, um, yeah. Quit it with the butt shots already.

If you can look at those things and still not think there's a problematic pattern . . . oof. I think the kindest interpretation I can put on that is "willful stupidity."