What is this Chick Lit Thing Anyway?

In this month’s Writer’s Digest Melissa Bank, author of the very successful Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, was asked about her books being classified as “chick lit”. “The term ‘chick lit’ sounds more chick and less lit,” she responded. “It sounds derogatory to me–-that it’s not serious or substantial or wouldn’t be of interest to anybody who isn’t a ‘chick’.” I’m glad she said that. I haven’t read her book and, in truth, part of that is just because I kept hearing it described as Chick Lit. Not being a chick–-or at least an old chick–-I tended to pass it by. Not that I haven’t read a good deal of chick lit, but what I have read hasn’t seemed very substantive to me. It seems a sort of genre, like romance novels, that you read in quantity on the T or the beach and toss in a barrel before moving on to the next one. That’s too bad.

In the article Bank compared the public perception of chick lit to that of African-American or gay literature and she has a point. While some readers may not discriminate against such classifications there are a lot more who will. This has an interesting consequence, on the one hand readers not intrigued by that category my overlook it, on the other, there is an audience for these books and that audience is eager for the latest addition. It contributes to its success.

Having just finished The Mermaid’s Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, I can say that, like other books called chick lit, it was a bit of a disappointment. It is beautifully written and many of the ideas in it are delicious but I found the ending way too tidy. That’s a tough call sometimes. I like endings that are satisfying–-nothing makes me crazier than a book where the ending leaves me feeling like I wasted my time reading it. But something about The Mermaid’s Chair bothered me and I realized it is the same thing that has bothered me in other chick lit books–-it’s the men.

Maybe that’s what this whole chick lit thing is about, writing for women in a way that shows the inner life of the women at the center of the book but with men who are either one dimensional, pre-fabricated, or outright horrible. Perhaps this is a natural evolution in the post-feminist era. Women now have many of the legal protections and the lack of societal restraints that my generation had. Many of the women writing these books cannot even remember a time when when there were different rules of behavior for males and females.

When I was in college men and women lived in separate dorms and the only time you were allowed on the “other side” was from 1 to 3 on Sunday afternoons and room doors HAD to be kept open. Women had curfews, men did not. Women had to sign out to leave campus, men did not. Women were not allowed to keep cars on campus, men were. When I told this to my college-age nieces they thought I was joking. I mention this only as an example of how differently the experiences of a woman my age are from those of these young women writers who find such limitations unimaginable.

I admire this new strength in young women, sometimes I wish I had their self-assurance and expanded boundaries. And I understand the appeal of books filled with characters they can relate to and empathize with. But I’m a little surprised that all this new freedom and lack of constraints seems to have resulted in less interesting men–-at least in the books. I’m still trying to understand if this new trend, this chick lit consciousness, is so female-centric that it hasn’t made a lot of room for male character development or if that is truly how men are perceived by them. I guess that remains to be seen–-perhaps we can look forward to a second wave, this time of “guy lit”.

Thanks for reading.