'The Bell Jar' Gets a Hideous Makeover

If Sylvia Plath hadn’t already killed herself, she probably would’ve if she saw the new cover of her only novel The Bell Jar. For a book all about a woman’s clinical depression that’s exacerbated by the suffocating gender stereotypes of which she’s expected to adhere and the limited life choices she has as a woman, it’s pretty fucking stupid to feature a low-rent retro wannabe pinup applying makeup. (Also, it’s ugly and the colors suck.) But redesigning feminist staples and classic literary ladies to be more appealing to the larger and more lucrative chick lit audience is apparently a common practice.

If feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland is supposed to be about a women-only society that reproduces asexually, why are there still drag queens? Also, I didn’t know you could repurpose a midtown eyelash extension salon’s brochure.

This three-in-one paperback set of Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of The Island that was published in November 2012 chooses to ignore that Anne had red hair—which was such an important part of the book. She had red fucking hair!

Ah, yes, Night and Day, the Virginia Woolf novel about how suffragettes in Edwardian London would parade their side boobs around town.

The kinds of women that claim to just loooove Breakfast at Tiffany’s (“Audrey Hepburn is the epitome of class and beauty!”) are the same idiots who would be shocked to learn that it’s about a hooker.