Women buy a lot of books. This is something of a
generalisation, of course, but given that the majority of literary pop-culture
pantheons of the past few years have been written by and for women, it’s safe
to assume that there’s some truth behind that statement. The old way of
thinking, one that’s still sadly in practice in the world of entertainment,
particularly movies, is that women create stories for other women whilst men
create them for everyone. Not only this, but in order to be successful, your
story must have gender cross-over appeal, be it through a title change (Disney
going from “Rapunzel”, “The Snow Queen” & “A Princess of Mars” to “Tangled”,
“Frozen” and “John Carter”) or some plot and character rejigging. That changed
somewhat in the YA world thanks to the first “Twilight” movie, which showed
that not only will large and dedicated groups of women come out in droves for
something they enjoy, but they’ll pay handsomely to do so. Fast forward a few
years and the most successful series in recent publishing history is a female
written erotica for other women (let’s not discuss quality right now) with pretty
much no crossover appeal (another sloppy gender stereotype on my part, but the
figures speak for themselves). Indeed, romance and women centred entertainment
has been a nice cash cow for a while now, not to mention a forward thinking
industry. The romance publishers were the ones who jumped onto the e-book and
self-publishing wagon long before the rest of the industry caught wind of the
changes ahead, and these books are the ones that sell in the midst of a global
recession.
Yet it’s all still “chick-lit” to some.
I have mixed feelings about the term “chick-lit”. While I wholeheartedly
support reclaiming the term from the clutches of those who prefer to sneer at
it, that’s easier said than done. It’s primarily used in the media to denigrate
the books discussed, as if they’re all meaningless piles of fluff that should
be sniggered at instead of enjoyed. It’s also a term that’s flung around very
carelessly and without much thought. Often the term is slapped on an author’s
work solely because they’re female, which certainly doesn’t help women writers
in an industry that places far more praise and worthiness on the literary works
of men. After all, you never see Jonathan Franzen and John Updike categorised
as dick-lit, although I feel it would be more suited to their work than
chick-lit to Jodi Picoult.
The work itself can be as diverse as anything else the
publishing industry releases and yet it’s all categorised under one general heading
of chick-lit. Everyone from Stephenie Meyer to Jennifer Weiner to E.L. James to
Jackie Collins has been categorised as chick-lit. Some authors are more
accepting of the term than others but what does it actually mean?
According to that bastion of information, Wikipedia, the
term appeared as early as 1988 as a slang term for the “female literary
tradition”, while the page itself defines the term as “genre fiction whichaddresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and light-heartedly”. Even the definition seems unsure of itself – by that rule, is “Pride &
Prejudice” chick-lit? The Guardian’s chick-lit tag includes discussions of
works by Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran, Jodi Picoult, and even talks about the
Playboy Mansion. If journalists and authors can’t come to an agreement on what
chick-lit actually is, how can we, and more importantly, how can I?
So this will be a series of posts on the joys,
ridiculousness, pros, cons, covers, sexy-times, issues and future of chick-lit
in all its many forms and genre spanning variety. I will try to make this as
interactive as possible, and I’ll try to cover as much ground as I can, but there’s
a lot of books out there and I don’t have the time or resources to get to them
all. If there is a book out there that you feel I simply must read in order to
create as detailed a context of the genre as possible then feel free to leave
me a message here or on Twitter (@ceilidhann) and I’ll see what I can do. Since
this is also a YA site, I’ll be talking about books that fit the typical YA
chick-lit mould, and the discussions taking place on Buzzfeed and similar sitesabout YA being the new chick-lit.
I would like to note here that the authors I have put here do not all come
under what I would personally categorise as chick-lit, but have all been
described as such by other outlets, and the intention here is to explore
exactly what chick-lit is, if that which
we call chick-lit actually is so, and to generally stick two fingers up to
snobby men like Jonathan Franzen and jerks like Nicholas Sparks (who will be torn into multiple times
throughout this series!)
Topics:
The Grand Dames – The Big Names (Olivia Goldsmith, Helen
Fielding, Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes, Jennifer Weiner).
Fame, Fortune and Fabulous Sex – The Bonkbuster (Jackie
Collins, Louise & Tilly Bagshawe, Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran, etc).
“What would you do?” – The “women’s issues” books (Jodi
Picoult, Curtis Sittenfeld, Oprah’s Book Club).
What the Kids are Reading – YA Chick-Lit (Sarah Dessen, Meg
Cabot, Louise Rennison, Stephanie
Perkins, Megan McCafferty).
When is Chick-Lit Not Chick-Lit – The fine lines of the
romance genre.
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Shameless plug time but I was on BBC World Radio's "World Have Your Say" for a very brief time last night discussing the recent molehill-mountain that was made from Hilary Mantel's speech on royal bodies, which mentioned Kate Middleton, and you can listen to it here (about 10 minutes from the end). I'm the "blogger from Scotland", obviously.
