Contemporary Romance Color of the Year: Are Those Flags?

2 weeks ago 8

Contemporary Romance Color of the Year with six swatches in green, peach, fuchsia, lavender, blue and yellow Ok, I have two or three more colors for this series, but I need to take a little side trip this week.

I noticed something that I just had to share with you while gathering covers over the past few months.

Now, if you’re just arriving here at the mayhem, welcome!

I’m taking really good look at the Contemporary Romance Colors that are most prevalent on covers this year and attempt to identify what is the CR-COTY, the Contemporary Romance Color of the Year.

We talked about Pink & Peach.

We talked about Green.

A collection of green contemporary covers on a background of green grass and trees

And as I mentioned in the first post about my color obsession, there are color schemes that are so closely tied to one genre, like Suspense is Blue and Gold.

An array of six thrillers all with covers featuring blue photographs of night skies with yellow windows and yellow text for the title and /or author. at the top it says Suspense is blue and yellow

This month?

FLAGS.

Flags?

Yup. Flags! This isn’t officially an entry into the Contemporary Romance Color of the Year because these covers are all more than one dominant color. But I noticed something as I was collecting covers (so many covers, Dropbox is nagging me to upgrade).

A lot of these covers incorporate the colors of some specific pride flags.

No, really – I swear I’m not making this up.

To be very clear: I am not saying these books are queer because the color scheme resembles a pride flag.

I AM saying that the covers incorporate the colors of pride flags and I couldn’t stop noticing it.

Let’s start with the lesbian flag.

Show Spoiler

a dude says LET'S GO LESBIANS while running down the street

So here’s the Lesbian Pride Flag:

Lesbian Pride Flag - red orange at the top making a gradient to white in the middle and purple on the bottom

Ready?

See what I mean? The gradient of orange to purple?

Again, I’m not saying these books feature lesbian couples; I’m saying that the colors are very reminiscent of the lesbian pride flag.

Ready for more? Bisexuals, it’s your turn!

Here’s the bisexual pride flag, in all it’s fuchsia glory:

a striped flag with a fuchsia stripe across the top, lavender in the middle, and blue at the bottom, mixing pink and blue

Bisexuals get a gif, too!

Look at that cute little ghost.

And here are all the covers in my, ‘Hang on, is that the Bi flag?’ folder:

The pink haired person on the cover of For One Night Only resembles Jem from Jem and the Holograms, too.

She's truly outrageous! Truly, truly truly outrageous!

Animation from the opening of Jem and the Holograms where she winks from the cover of a magazine. Jem has pink hair, bangs, and stars on her ears, with pink makeup like kiss over her eyes

I’ve got one more collection: Transgender and bigender pride!

Here is the trans pride flag:

A flag alternating between blue stripes, pink stripes, and white in the middle

And this is the bigender alternate flag:

trans ghost? Trans ghost!

And here are the covers – again, the story likely is not about trans people, but the covers are giving me all the flag vibes.

Here’s an overview that really shows the palette:

A view of my finder window with the covers lined up under the pride flags

Thanks for indulging me on this side trip of “Covers That Look Like Pride Flags,” a cumbersomely-titled subfield of study in my Contemporary Romance Color of the Year pursuit.

What do you think? Have you noticed any other covers that resembled flags?

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