She is described as striking in appearance, tall, muscular, with an unmistakably handsome boyish face. She is intelligent, funny, vulnerable, all at once and she does not apologize for being who she is: a three-dimensional character who is a butch lesbian, when lesbians in literature were rarely mentioned (if only in pulp fiction), and butch ones only as one-dimensional villains. Bannon's characters became archetypes in the lesbian community when there were no role models. As displayed in "", images of butch women were slightly less feminine than other women on pulp fiction covers. Indeed, the image on the 1962 Gold Medal Books cover of "Beebo Brinker", which Bannon describes as "god-awful," illustrates how the titillating cover art was designed more for men, and with no design for accuracy.