I’ve never liked the expression (advice? cliché? saying?) “Never judge a book by its cover.”
I was led to believe that this bit of wisdom meant that you shouldn’t decide if you want to read a particular book based purely on the wrapping. But if you are wandering the stacks of your local library or bookstore searching for a new read, what else are you supposed to use to judge a book? You could ask the librarian or someone who works at the store. But unless you’ve built a rapport with this person, can you trust their taste?
In modern times, we have a plethora of sources for recommendations. This expression makes a tad more sense were it the tagline for GoodReads: “Don’t judge a book by its cover; use the reviews of thousands of people who have already read it!”
Of course you might judge a book based on recommendations from friends and family. Many of the books I read come from my father; some from my aunt. Others from friends who I have learned to trust. But in those cases, I’m not perusing the shelves. I’m seeking out a particular tome or having one handed to me with a “I think you’ll enjoy this one!”
That’s the Point of the Cover
Covers are specifically designed to be used as a basis for judgement! The art usually depicts a character, scene, or theme from the book. A tagline gives a taste of the plot. The title might hint at the story as well, or at least nod to the genre. The author’s name is clearly depicted on the cover and the spine.
Famous authors tend to have their names more prominently displayed on the cover because publishers know that recognition sells. I recall seeing the Sword of Shannara series on a shelf, and as you scanned across the 20 books, Terry Brooks’s name just kept getting bigger and the title kept getting smaller.
Most books have short blurbs on the back to capture attention. In fiction novels, these usually summarize the first quarter of the book so as not to give too much away. Positive reviews from critics and other authors will span the front and back. The more famous the person providing a quote, the more prominence the line gets.
There are entire teams who work on creating covers for books because that’s what we use to judge books.
Obviously I understand the underlying meaning of the phrase: Don’t take things at face value. Or to be very honest about the morale most people are trying to convey when they offer this “precious nugget of wisdom”: Don’t judge people based on how they look.
Why Are You Talking About Book Covers, Shane?
I’m glad you asked!
If you follow us on Twitter, you might have seen that I shared a recent blog post by Monogamish Marriage a couple times now. I really enjoyed this post, which describes an encounter Kate and Liam had with April and Scott from Naughty Gym (and a third couple who I don’t recognize).
This story hit on so many things that I like. First, Kate and Liam never fail to bring the sexy in their writing. Second, the story highlights the true, deep connections that people make in their lifestyle journey, and that’s always amazing to see.
Third, and this one is perhaps a little weirder (and I surely hope not on a creepy level). I’ve been a Naughty Gym member since, like, the third week it came out of beta. I’m in the community most days to watch the instructional videos from the coaches. I’ve been to a couple virtual meet-and-greets with other gym members (which led me to “meeting” J and Angie, the Average Swingers, and being invited on their podcast). I’m probably the most prolific poster in the community (shocking no one). All this is my way of saying, despite never having met April or Scott in person, I feel a certain friendship toward them and reading this story made me feel very happy for them to have had this experience.
An experience that almost might not have happened because Kate and Liam judged books by their covers.
Allow Me to Quote the Source
I hope this OK. Kate and Liam were cool with it the last time we pulled chunks of text from their blog into ours. Hopefully they’ll be OK with it this time. (Though, I encourage you to read the whole thing if you haven’t. And other blog posts of theirs. Honestly, you’re wasting time reading my dribble. And they just started their own podcast. It dropped yesterday, so I have yet to listen to it, but I’m sure it will be awesome.)
From Monogamish Marriage
HER: We had met them for the first time at Podcast-A-Palooza the month before. We said pleasant hellos, but, to be honest, I felt a rare case of nerves with them. I had the sense that they were too attractive or too cool for us. That’s a feeling I used to have all the time in the vanilla world but thought I had overcome in the lifestyle.
HIM: I would say I made a slightly different mistake, one that I find embarrassing to admit to here. I saw their magnificent physiques and jumped to the conclusion that they were all about fitness in a kind of one-dimensional way. Which is crazy, because fitness is a big part of my life, and I should have seen nothing more than a shared interest that we could build a rapport over. I guess I was just afraid there was nothing more than what was obvious to the eyes. I turned out to be spectacularly wrong.
HER: It’s funny. I think what happens when I meet certain people is that I get transported to my high school self, complete with all the insecurities and stereotypes that so define that age. With April & Scott, I thought there’s no way I’m cool enough to hang with that crowd. And I guess you just dismissed them as dumb jocks.
You See Where I’m Going With This?
For this metaphor, the library/book store is a lifestyle club/event/hotel takeover (specifically Podcast-A-Palooza in this case), and the stacks of books are all the other people there (one of them being a very beauteously covered April and the other a thick, brawny, weighty volume that is Scott). (Yes, I took that metaphor a little too far but that’s kind of my thing.)
Kate and Liam made some spot judgements—and very different ones from each other—based upon how they perceived April and Scott. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We exist in a vast world full of uniqueness. It’s far too much for our brains to process. We have to distill things down to paradigms and stereotypes.
We have to judge a book by its cover.
We cannot help that we do this. Upon meeting a person, I cannot stop my brain from picking up a hundred small details and, based upon my past experience with similar details, crafting an idea of what someone is like. This is useful for human survival. And it’s part of what makes nudism interesting—or so I’ve heard—because many of these cues come from how we dress ourselves.
Which is one of the reasons “Never judge a book by its cover” is stupid advice. We can’t help but make these assumptions.
Now be honest: Is that where you thought I was going to go with that?
An “Interesting” Aside
Psychedelics can also help remove these paradigms. I believe it was in How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen that I read that psychedelics regress the brain function to a more child-like state. A state that lacks so many paradigms and doesn’t conform to set ways of thinking. Back to when everything was new and potentially overwhelming.
This was made very clear to me during a couple of recent 2C-B experiences in which Erin and I were out in populated places while tripping. While watching the people around me, I was hyper focused on how different every human body was. The shape, the proportions, the gait, the breathing—every little detail was obvious to me, and people looked a bit weird because of it.
Normally in a crowd, I simply notice vaguely humanoid shaped people of different overall sizes, but I don’t notice the stark and absolute uniqueness of each person. My brain filters out information so as not to get overloaded. I miss small details like how that guy’s left leg is just a little bit longer than his right or how that woman leans back just a tad bit as she walks. My brain simply “normalizes” things into general symmetry.
When This Becomes an Issue
We cannot help but make these judgements. Stereotypes and paradigms are useful. However, we also build up biases because of how we emotionally react to certain details. You meet someone who kind of reminds of a boss who you disliked? That person is now starting from a negative position in your mind based upon nothing but that resemblance.
Unfair perhaps, but unavoidable. However, not unsurmountable.
This is what happened with Kate and Liam. On their first encounter with April and Scott, old biases rose to the surface, and they didn’t challenge these paradigms.
And there’s nothing wrong with that either. Other than a missed connection. Much of the lifestyle is based on some unknowable, enigmatic chemistry. At their first meeting, Kate and Liam’s biases blocked that chemistry. At a big event like Podcast-A-Palooza, that’s not surprising. There isn’t enough time to get to know everyone—or so I’ve heard. You have to decide where to focus your efforts, and to narrow down the option you have to judge a book by its covers.
I wouldn’t call that problematic behavior unless they went around bad-mouthing April and Scott or purposelessly dissing them or ignoring them. Which they did not.
As we shall now see, on their second meeting, Kate and Liam realized that April and Scott didn’t actually fit into those original paradigms.
Back to Stealing…Um…Quoting…Monogamish
Him: At some level, I knew I was wrong about them. But that’s the great thing about lifestyle vacations: you get to experience people in multiple dimensions over the course of many days and nights. You see their body language, share a greeting or two, and even over-hear snippets of their conversations with other people. It’s hard to hold on to prejudice when you get to observe individuals up close. After a few days, I started thinking that I really wanted to get to know these people. So I checked with you and, when we spotted them sitting alone at lunch the next day, we asked if we could take the two empty chairs at their table.
So…They Didn’t Judge a Book By Its Cover?
I’m saying they still did judge a book by its cover. The problem was upon their first meeting, they only looked at the cover art. Liam notes that they noticed other little details during the Antigua trip (a Room 77-hosted event) that made them want to know more. These are all still cover details like font, maybe a quote from another author or something.
It wasn’t until they sat down to lunch that they really started reading each other.
Yes, I’m still working in that book metaphor.
Another Thing About Covers
Remember how I said book covers are specifically designed to give us information about the contents of the book to entice us to read the story? We do the same thing ourselves. Our aesthetic and how we decide to present ourselves are our book covers. It’s how we present ourselves to welcome people to read us. Particularly in the lifestyle.
Commonly noted turn offs? Bad breath. Lack of hygiene. Not putting in the effort to look nice. Being crass, rude, or disrespectful. Not tipping well. These behaviors are all our covers, and we are putting them out there to be judged.
John “Roman” Romaniello is a fitness guru I’ve followed for years, though now he focuses more on writing and kink and polyamory than fitness. So I still follow him for all of that stuff. I recall that years ago he said that the most luck he ever had with girls at bars was when he wore his Gryffindor t-shirt because that broke expectations. He’s a big, muscular guy. People assume he’s a dumb, shallow meathead. And yet he’s wearing a nerdy Harry Potter shirt. The shirt removed half of the judgments that come from his physique.
Something to consider when you decide how to design your cover.
How Covers Are Judged Says More About the Judge
And remember when I talked about biases? These don’t come from the book cover. They come from the person examining the cover.
I used to play World of Warcraft. I was in a guild that started with a bunch of real-life friends, but over the years, it expanded into a large group from all across the world. Eventually, our guild leaders had a big in-person party. This would be the first time most of us ever saw each other despite having been chatting with one another most days for years. We all had a great time, and it became an annual thing (even if many of us no longer play the game) until COVID shut it down. I think 2020 would have been the 16th in-person party.
I bring this up because after that first party, one of my guildmates contacted me to apologize for any initial weirdness during our first meeting. He went on to say that, despite knowing me to be a generous, friendly, and nerdy person, when I first introduced myself, he was shocked because I resembled the asshole jocks who used to bully him throughout school. He never expected the friend behind the avatar to be a brawny weightlifting meathead-looking dude. It took him a little while to get over that shock and realign his paradigms.
All this to say: If you think blondes are stupid or that muscular men are shallow or thin people must have eating disorders or that fat people are lazy, that’s on you. None of those judgements are actually coming from the cover that’s presented. You are applying your biases to what you see. And if those biases go unchallenged, you could miss out on a lot of great stories.
Yes, I’m still working in that book metaphor!
What’s the Moral?
We humans cannot help but make snap judgments based on small points of information. It’s a survival mechanism. There’s nothing wrong with doing so. But I invite you to examine those initial judgments and explore the foundation of them. Is it some strange hang-up from high school, perhaps one you thought long since ditched, rising back to the surface?
If so, I urge you to follow Kate and Liam’s example and look beyond that judgment. Keep checking out the cover for more details. If the book starts looking like something you might enjoy, crack it open and read a chapter or two!
Not every muscled-up fitness nut is an uninteresting, shallow meat-head. Some of them are lovely, intelligent people.