Chick Lit : The Dilemma of Gendering Literature

What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘chick lit’? Romance, fashion, and sparkly book covers dominate the popular image of chick lit, casting it as a genre that is distinct from ‘serious’ literature. As a genre of fiction targeted at young women, the term has been claimed, contested, and criticised since its conception. While some defend chick lit as a valuable representation of women’s experiences, others have rejected the term for its potentially sexist implications. 

History of Chick Lit

The origins of ‘chick lit’ go back to the 1980s, when it was used as a slang term referring to Princeton University’s Female Literary Tradition course. American novelist Cris Mazza unintentionally popularised the use of the term as a genre descriptor when she co-edited a 1995 anthology titled “Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction”(Lu, 2014). In a 2000 journal article, Mazza claimed that the term ‘chick Lit’ started as a joke between her and her co-editor Jeffrey Deshell, and ‘post-feminist’ was a word she took from a conference she passed by without knowing what it meant, or caring to define it. Her goal for the anthology was to discover new women talents in alternative fiction, whose work could “stretch… the boundaries of what has been considered “women’s writing”, something that might simply be called ‘writing’ without defining it by gender.” The focus on women talents specifically was justified by Mazza as a reaction to a long tradition of male dominance in the literary world. Years later, she felt the need to clarify the ‘funky beginnings’ of the anthology before she got labeled the ‘godmother…of any new movement’ (Mazza, 2000). 

Nevertheless, this new movement continued unabated. The term ‘chick lit’ was quickly picked up by publishers, authors, and reviewers to define an emerging genre of fiction thought to be best represented by Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series. Novels categorised as ‘Chick lit’ usually revolve around young professional women and are characterised by a focus on love, female friendships and struggles in the workplace. In contrast to traditional romance novels, the female protagonists of chick lit often date multiple men and are financially independent. 

As chick lit grew in popularity, it expanded to include several sub-genres including mom lit, which appealed to an older female demographic, ‘chick lit in corsets’ which transports relatable romance plots to historical settings, and mystery chick lit, in which a female protagonist solves crimes. Chick lit depicting the lives of non-white women also started to appear. Saudi author Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh, Anita Heiss’s novels featuring Australian Aboriginal women and the sub-genre of sistah lit, which targets black women, are examples of chick lit evolving beyond the paradigm of the white, middle-class female voice. 

While chick lit has been derided by critics, some have come to its defense, framing chick lit as an honest depiction of real women, with all their foibles and insecurities. In an interview for The Guardian, Sophie Kinsella explained that her heroines are often ‘ditzy’ as she believes that women can be intelligent and klutzy at the same time. She argued that it is more realistic to represent all facets of a woman rather than hold her to an ‘unfair ideal’ (Aikenhead, 2012).

Over time, chick lit expanded to include works with heavier themes. Australian novelist Anita Heiss portrays aboriginal women as career-driven, cosmopolitan individuals, challenging stereotypes of indigenous people. While Heiss’s novels follow the common chick lit trope of a single woman in a big city trying to find Mr. Right, they are notable for using the heroine’s love story to highlight inequality between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Loretta Hill’s The Girl in the Steel Capped Boots confronts sexism through the protagonist Lena’s experiences as a female engineer who is moved to a male-dominated worksite. She is pursued by male coworkers despite rejecting their advances, and even her love interest, Dan, initially treats her in a patronising manner (O’Mahoney, 2015). Authors like Heiss and Hill weave political themes into accessible love stories, blurring the boundaries between chick lit and ‘serious’ literature. 

Despite the diversification of chick lit, the genre label remains stigmatised. Several notable women authors have rejected the term for its pigeonholing tendency, as it encourages generalisations about women authors and readers. Moreover, the term threatens to devalue the work of women authors through its enduring association with frivolity and fluff. 

Veteran author Lucinda Rosenfeld (2017) expressed her ambivalence at being labelled a ‘lit chick’ in a New York Times review of her latest work, Class, a satire on race, class and liberal hypocrisy. She admitted that, “being accused of writing in a category best associated with fluffy escapism, having just completed my most ambitious book to date, did not fill me with joy.” Likewise, novelist Jenny Colgan disparaged authors and critics who look down on works labeled as ‘chick lit’, arguing that the label itself “is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn’t be any more insulting” (Gibbons, 2003). At the Edinburgh Book Festival, Marian Keyes (2020) rejected the term ‘chick lit’, pointing out the fact that popular fiction written by men is not described as “dick lit”.

My Thoughts

The term ‘chick lit’ has always struck me as more strange than belittling. It seems to assume that there is a distinct and ready-made audience of young women or ‘chicks’ who share similar tastes. What the proliferation of sub-genres as well as the vague and ever-shifting boundaries of ‘chick lit’ suggest is that ‘women’ cannot be conceived as a unified whole, let alone have normative interests assigned to them. 

While there is some truth to the stereotype that women enjoy romance fiction (more than 80% of romance book buyers in the US are women, according to a 2015 survey), it is not clear if women who read novels classified as ‘romance’ are representative of all women readers. The classification of novels as ‘romance’ vs ‘non-romance’ is also suspect as plenty of novels have romantic themes even if they do not form the main focus of the plot, making the existence of gray areas inevitable. Thus, even if ‘chick lit’ is equated with ‘romance’ novels, the link between ‘chick lit’ and women readers is not as concrete as it seems. 

The fact that some accomplished women authors have rejected the term ‘chick lit’ is unsurprising. After all, if ‘chick lit’ is understood as escapist romance fiction and only that, then it comes across as a very limited genre. Marian Keyes’ comment about the lack of an equivalent genre of ‘dick lit’ brings up an interesting point. Why is it that the work of women pop fiction authors deserves a separate category, whereas the work of similar male authors are assumed to be universal in their appeal? 

Charlotte Brontë, one of the most renowned English authors of the 19th century, published a biographical notice in 1850 after the deaths of her sisters, Emily and Anne, titled, “Biographical Notice of Acton and Ellis Bell”. In this text, she explained why she and her sisters adopted the androgynous pseudonyms of Curer, Ellis and Acton Bell. 

“Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because — without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ — we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.”

172 years later, her words echo somewhat uncomfortably for women authors and readers alike. Despite advances in women’s rights, certain modes of writing and thinking are still designated as ‘feminine’ and cleanly separated from the ‘non-feminine’ with labels like ‘chick lit’ and ‘women’s literature’. If these ‘feminine’ modes of thinking are looked down upon, then it is no wonder that ‘chick lit’ is commonly thought of as trivial and of low literary merit. Frankly, I find it difficult to come to a neat conclusion on whether continued use of the term ‘chick lit’ is appropriate. Instead, I will end by sharing a quote from Anne Brontë, 

“In my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.”

References

Aitkenhead, D. (2012, February 12). Sophie Kinsella: ‘You can be highly intelligent – and also ditzy and klutzy’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/12/sophie-kinsella-highly-intelligent-ditzy-klutzy

Gibbons, F. (2003, August 21). Stop rubbishing chick-lit, demands novelist. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/21/books.booksnews

Keyes, M. (2020). Marian Keyes: Family Matters. Edinburgh International Book Festival. https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/marian-keyes-family-matters

Lu, Y.R. (2014). Chick Lit: Themes and Studies. Comparative Literature: East & West, 21:1, 103-112, DOI: 10.1080/25723618.2014.12015464

Mazza, C. (2000). Editing Postfeminist Fiction: Finding the Chic in Lit. Symplokē, 8(1/2), 101–112. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40550477

Nielson. (2015). Literary Liaisons: Who’s Reading Romance Books? https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2015/literary-liaisons-whos-reading-romance-books/

O’Mahoney, L.K. (2015). In Search of Feminist Romance in Chick Lit [Doctoral thesis, Murdoch University]. Murdoch University Research Repository. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/25543/1/In_Search_of_Feminist_Romance_in____Australian_Chick_lit_PhD_Thesis_O%27Mahony.pdf

Rosenfeld, L. (2017, January 3). What Was Chick Lit? A Brief History From The Inside. Literary Hub. 

https://lithub.com/what-was-chick-lit-a-brief-history-from-the-inside/

By: Joyce