Clearly No Women Were Consulted In The Design Of This Book Cover And Twitter's Laughing

Is “The Man Who Was Thursday” a new euphemism for that time of the month?

Penguin Books has a pretty cool project in the works right now; the publishing company commissioned almost two dozen artists to recreate the covers of 100 classics with modern, patterned prints. Most of the covers are beautiful works of art. But one of them has the women of Twitter doing double takes.

UK journalist Georgina Lee tweeted a photo of the reimagined cover of The Man Who Was Thursday, and, well, just take a look. If you’re a woman, you’ll likely see what the problem is right away.

“Guys, you could have avoided this mishap if just one woman had been consulted in the design process,” Lee wrote alongside a photo of the cover, which features a repeating pattern of red and white sticks of dynamite. Only they don’t look like dynamite. Writing “TNT” on the side of each one didn’t make them look any more like dynamite. All together now, ladies: Those are definitely tampons.

Honestly, how did no one catch this before it went to print? Someone had to have noticed, because the whole internet is now noticing.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/986554581369798657

And pointing out other instances of unfortunate mishaps like this one.

And offering some helpful, poignant advice.

Words to live by, TBH.

Ironically, though the artist who designed this specific cover hasn’t been named, the entire cover project has been overseen by a woman, Coralie Bickford-Smith, one of Penguin’s in-house designers.

How this managed to slip by her is anyone’s guess. Or, better theory: She saw this cover, laughed as hard as we all did, and decided women need something to cackle over together in this patriarchal world, so she let it go to print. We’re just going to stick with that theory.