Reviewed by Gary Meyer
(6/28/00)

The window is barred. Beneath it, a close-cropped brunette in a drab institutional frock reclines propped up on pillows. Expressionless, she waits. The lanky, long-haired blond at her side has pulled her dress down below her knees, revealing a pink bra and matching tap pants fringed with lace. Hungrily, she gazes.
--Cover of Reformatory Girls, Avon, 1960.

The brunette is pouring from a pitcher into a martini glass. Her wispy blue harem pants start halfway down her hips, the gauzy fabric revealing the white swell of her bottom. The blond's PJ's have big red polka dots matching her scarlet lips. Her unfastened waistband has fallen far below her navel. She's opening her top, exposing the firm curves of her cleavage. Her eyes don't ask; they demand.
--Cover of Pajama Party, Midwood, 1963.

The short-bobbed redhead's blouse is unbuttoned to the waist. A pink patterned bra peaks out. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes demurely downcast. Her left hand rests on the head of an elfin brunette who's lounging languidly, self-absorbed, smoking a cigarette, one hand thrust between her legs, clutching closed her frilly peignoir. Her nipples are barely concealed.
--Cover of The Other Side of Love, Beacon Signal, 1963.

In a labor of love, art director/book designer/obsessive collector Jaye Zimet has reproduced two hundred vintage paperback lesbiana covers for our delectation. These books served a dual audience. For straight men, they were porno (though the sex was seldom explicit); for lesbians, they were survival literature. They were popular. Women Without Men was one of the top ten best-selling paperbacks of 1957. An online genre bibliography lists 1,134 titles, including Honeysuckle , Lust Be A Lady Tonite , Miss Behave , French Dressing , and Swing Low Sweet Lesbian

Vin Packer's Spring Fire started the flood in 1952. Fawcett's Gold Medal imprint's paperback originals followed up on its success with lesbiana actually written by lesbians. Other publishers jumped on board, employing male writers using female or indeterminate pen names. Vin Packer received hundreds of fan letters from women for whom these books were the only literary affirmation of their sexuality.

Congressional pornography investigations and McCarthy-era homophobia prompted publishers to castigate their own product with titles over which authors had little control. Some typical titular adjectives: forbidden, warped, depraved, damned, bitter, degraded, wayward, odd, dangerous, strange, troubled, twisted, sinful, abnormal, deviate. The novels usually concluded with their "third sex" protagonists going straight, going insane or committing suicide. "Otherwise, the post office might seize the books as obscene," explained Fawcett editor Dick Carroll.

Aside from the improbable undergarments (most women of the era wore plain white cotton briefs), suggestive situations, lurid makeup, and passionate eye contact, something about all these attractive, perky, young cover girls rang a bell for me. Where had I just seen an identical bunch of American beauties? Of course, the Lands' End catalog swimsuit section! Down to their short, action haircuts, today's Lands' End swimsuit models would fit right in on the covers of Warped Desire , Sex in the Shadows and Her Raging Needs .

Who's missing? There's hardly a butch in the bunch; men's shirts, short dark hair, and cigarettes notwithstanding. Butches wouldn't have appealed to the guys who bought most of the books. In her Foreword, veteran pulp author Ann Bannon recalls her horror at the artistic rendition of her thoroughly butch heroine Beebo Brinker as a shrinking violet. Brinker was described as "…proud of her size, proud of her strength, even proud of her oddly boyish face." ( Beebo Brinker can now be found on college syllabi.) Bannon acknowledges the existence of glamorous "lipstick lesbians," but laments, "It was the presence of those wonderful dykes with broad shoulders that we missed."

As stereotypical and unrelated to the books' characters as these ultra-feminine cover girls were, they nonetheless served as coded signals to isolated lesbian readers, avidly seeking out stories to convince themselves that they were not alone. If the cover featured a long-haired blond and a short-cropped brunette exchanging a meaningful glance, they knew they'd hit paydirt. Then came the excruciating ordeal of buying the book from the leering, male drugstore cashier and, once home, the search for a hiding place.

Strange Sisters is an affectionate tribute to the travesties of erotica marketing and the camp appeal of its verbal as well as visual cliches. The cover blurbage is priceless:

"Outside, so white and pure…inside, so depraved!"
--Nurses' Quarters

"A modern Isle of Lesbos, a sun-drenched Sodom just an hour from Manhattan."
--Libido Beach

"Helpless wretches-stripped by strange emotions of all restraint and decency-would they ever again know real love?"
--Warped Women

Zimet mixes in delicious snippets of purple prose and serves as a wise-cracking gallery guide: "He gives us breast cleavage and rear cleavage in the same pose!" She divides the covers into categories based on visual and thematic tropes. In addition to Cleavage, there's Longing Looks, Bi, Bi Love, Cliterature and Psychobabble--pseudo-scientific exploitation inspired by the Kinsey Report. Alternate covers from different editions of the same novel, appearing side-by-side, make for fascinating comparisons, but Zimet's most striking design concept is the grainy enlargements of the cover characters. They emphasize the artwork's melodramatic power and pull you in. You're up close and personal with the strange sisters, the warped women, the odd girls out who're looking for nothing more or less than love.