Book Meets Girl: The Legend of Chick Lit
By Gigi Lamm
Look in the window of any bookstore. Look at the fiction and literature shelves. Look at the new arrivals table. They're there. They're everywhere: whimsical book covers with urbane line drawings of women in fabulous clothes, drinking enchanting cocktails, and pursuing glorious careers; pastel colored books adorned with comedic takes on wedding cakes and dresses, moves to the suburbs, mothers-to-be, and life after divorce. If you spend any time looking at books, you have seen the predominance of chick lit. You have seen its prevalence in our culture and its presence in the zeitgeist.
I was not a likely candidate for falling in love with chic lit. I have a degree in English literature from Barnard. I studied creative writing with Mary Gordon. I wrote my senior thesis on Philip Roth. I generally inhale literary fiction. I drool over Jane Hamilton, go weak-kneed for Michael Chabon, swoon over Annie Proulx, and delight in Jeffery Eugenides. I generally dislike genre fiction. Mysteries? Rarely touch them. Science fiction? Usually uninterested. Romance? Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole and protective gloves.
But once upon a time, in 1996, long before chick lit was anything but a homonym for a bizarrely square-shaped gum, a book was published in jolly olde England that was to change my obsessively habitual literary habits forever.Me And Mrs., Mrs. Jones
The first American edition of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary was published in 1998 (Viking Books). Reviews unanimously lauded the book's hilarious and accurate depiction of the modern woman's plight. I had been working in book publishing for several years and when the industry's bible Publishers Weekly gave Diary a starred review saying, "It's hard to imagine a funnier book appearing anywhere this year." It's hard to imagine I didn't run right out and read it. But there was something about glut of press and the seeming fabrication of a cultural phenomenon that turned me off. I didn't want to read something that everyone seemed to love, that had a mound of hype so high I would need climbing gear to scale it, and that purported to illustrate the very life I and many other twenty-something women were living.
Eventually, however, curiosity killed me. As in every good fairy tale, amidst the frenzy, book met girl. And with Diary's every mention of oversized underwear, carrot sticks and candy bars, unlaundered stockings, and questionable sexual encounters, book and girl fell in love.
At the same time that Bridget Jones's Diary was released in paperback, Melissa Bank's The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing was published (Viking Books, 1999). Touted as the next Diary, Bank's collection of linked stories was distinctly different than Fielding's collection of diary entries, but became the second layer of white powder that accumulated around a literary snowball poised to gain incredible speed and momentum due to a convergence of books and television.
In 1998, the first episode of Sex and the City, based on the book of the same name by Candace Bushnell, aired on HBO. After six seasons, almost everyone in the country knew Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte. It seemed that no one could get enough of the foursome's emotionally-charged, sex-laden, date-riddled, career-driven, wise-cracking, friend-filled, anecdote-crammed lives. With the combined success of TV's Sex and the City, and the novels Bridget Jones Diary and The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, few book-buying females, including me, could resist their attraction to relatable stories about contemporary women. And thus, chick lit was born.
The Literary Pizza Party
So what exactly is chick lit? Wikipedia's definition reads, "Chick lit features hip, stylish female protagonists, usually in their twenties or early thirties, in urban settings, and follows their love lives and struggles in business (often the publishing or advertising industries). The books usually feature an irreverent tone and frank sexual themes." Misha Stone, fiction librarian for the Seattle Public Library, comments on her own definition as well as the popularity of the genre, "Chick lit, books about single girls looking for love and self-satisfaction, are very popular at my urban branch. Chick lit seems to have staying power for its wit, tart dialogue and tricky situations, and for the female empowerment angle most of the stories share."
For those very reasons, I can't seem to get enough of the fun and hope to be had in watching someone bumble through life the same way I seem to and—joy of joys—still get something out of it. And the lightness of chick lit's prose, as opposed to the weight of literary fiction's style, has became a pleasure to read. I love a gourmet meal, but oh, I do love pizza and ice cream on a regular basis.
"They are the perfect books for readers looking for something fun and frothy to lose themselves in," Stone continues. "Not that every chick lit novel is a fairy-tale; while the girl may not always get the guy or the perfect job, they often come away with a better understanding of themselves and how to get it right next time."
Right along with me, seeing their own experiences in print, women have made chick lit popular at breakneck speed. Publishers spew out chick lit faster than the networks vomit up new ideas for reality TV. Chick lit is so ubiquitous and voluminous that it has been rapidly broken down into sub genres. Chicklitbooks.com, a site that catalogs and reviews chick lit titles, lists fourteen categories including: Bigger Girl, Mom, Multi-Cultural, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Single City, UK Chick, Wedding, and Working Girl.
Publishers have created imprints exclusively for chick lit. Simon & Schuster gave birth to Downtown Press, Kensington Publishing spawned Strapless, and renowned romance publisher Harlequin moved into the chick lit market with Red Dress Ink. Many of these imprints‚ titles find themselves on best-seller lists for weeks and months at a time. According to librarian Stone, "Our chick lit booklist and our displays still go like hotcakes, and the books look ragged from use within months of arrival."
A recent New York Times essay, "The Chick-Lit Pandemic" by Rachel Donadio (published March 19, 2006) explored burgeoning chick lit around the world, citing the cultural difference—and fundamental similarities—in the chick lit output of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, Indonesia and beyond. As Helen Fielding observed in the article, "I think [the growth of international chick lit has] far more to do with zeitgeist than imitation."
As part of the American literary zeitgeist, Novelist Darcy Cosper's Wedding Season (Three Rivers Press, 2004), about a woman who is opposed to marriage but forced to attend seventeen weddings in six months, has sold remarkably well as chick lit. Cosper says that as a result of chick lit's popularity, "More women are being published, getting paid for their writing, being encouraged to develop their voices, getting the message that what they have to say is valuable, that their experiences are notable. That's fantastic."
Enter The Evil Step-Sister
However, despite the genre's success, all is not well in its kingdom. If there is an evil step-sister in this tale, it is the problem that arises from ghettoizing a type of literature, especially one written by and for women. Women's writing has been segregated since the beginning of book publishing, and needless to say, a label that relegates the work of women to its own category where it seems it may linger in a feminine vacuum, ignored by men and likely unable to exist within the context of all literary fiction, can only propagate existing gender barriers.
Cosper herself has mixed emotions. On the one hand she admits, "[My] book sold very well, it's being published in a number of other languages, it's being developed as a film. What author wouldn't be thrilled about that?" On the other hand, Cosper actually wrote Wedding Season as a way to parody and subvert a genre she feels espouses "very traditional romance narratives that perpetuate very conventional—and to my mind—limited and limiting goals and values: the paramount significance of physical beauty, the privileging of romantic relationships over everything else, marriage and procreation as a woman's loftiest goal and her only genuinely important accomplishments."
Other authors, like Jennifer Weiner, are more direct and willing contributors. Since her debut novel Good in Bed (Washington Square Press, 2002), Weiner has become the reigning queen of chick lit and its strongest advocate, promoting its most intelligent contributions and proving with her four wildly successful books that there is nothing wrong with depicting women‚s lives smartly, comically, touchingly, and with a literary sensibility. Some, however, are disturbed by the rift between the genre and the label.
In an interview in Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, Cosper asserted that her issue with chick lit wasn't as much for the genre, but for, "what the label has come to signify, and for how writing that's been identified as such gets treated." Cosper feels that other genres like thriller and science fiction "aren't thought of, spoken of, with the sort of condescension directed at authors like Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes." Cosper believes that writers of all books should be judged on the quality of the novel, rather than "a reductive term that demeans both the people who write it and the people who read it."
If that is so, then chick lit's wicked step-mother is the strong reaction the category provokes in women who bristle at reading something that is meant to depict their lives in a way that they feel is too stereotypically feminine. Cosper states, "I think [the] conflict mirrors a larger cultural one: how women feel about their current place in society and the struggle of contemporary feminism to reincorporate some of the things that got rejected by second wave feminists." Cosper asks, "How do we reappropriate the rituals, accoutrements, influence, and privilege of traditional femininity as options for women, rather than mandates?"
Bring On The Pink Covers
Is this genre then, with readers who simultaneously adore and deride it, to be criticized and condemned for its adherence to clichés, stereotypes, and labels, or is it to be praised and commended for its lighthearted and sometimes poignant look at what women's lives might actually be like—whether right or wrong, good or bad, sexist or feminist? Chick lit reader Liza Burell, 35, offers an interesting perspective, "Whatever reason women may give for scoffing at chick lit, I think much of it has to do with its airing our dirty laundry. At some point, most women have obsessed about weight, dating, work, parenting, etc. We all know it, but if we see it in print, then everyone will know it. I think many women don't want to publicly acknowledge that this is what we do."
For me, upon first reading Bridget Jones's Diary, all I could think was that it was the first time anyone had written my life. Not only did I happen to have the burgeoning publishing career, but I too knew I would end up on a date in my bad underwear, that I would promise to lose weight but eat fifty cookies on that very same day, that I would sit by the phone imagining all the rational and irrational reasons why it hasn't rung. It's archaic. It's silly. It's against every feminist thing I learned at Barnard. But it's my life. And it's not just mine.
Chick lit critic turned enthusiast Crissy Shropshire, 35, confesses, "Having been an English major in college, I always thought of the chick-lit genre as being beneath my intelligence. I equated it with the kind of book that had Fabio on the cover, chest bared, embracing a damsel in distress. Then on vacation last year, my aunt gave me a copy of The Nanny Diaries. Well I'm not at all ashamed to say, I'm hooked. I finished that one and headed to the library for the next and the next and the next. I need my fix now. I need to be transported to a place where the heroine is not the best looking gal in the room, not the most popular but often the wittiest, gutsiest one with an attitude that says, 'I will not wind up the loser.'"
Perhaps someday, chick lit will be a label as benign and explanatory as mystery and science fiction. Perhaps we can come to appreciate the literature purely because it is enjoyable, because it tells us stories we want to hear, because some if it is just good. Perhaps once we kiss enough frogs, chick lit can live happily ever after. At the rate it's going, it will certainly live forever.
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Here is a round-up of ten books and authors that are important to be familiar with because of their contributions to the castle that chick lit built:
1. Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996), Four Blondes (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000), Trading Up (Hyperion, 2003), and Lipstick Jungle (Hyperion, 2005)
It's hard to say where chick lit would be without Sex and the City.
2. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (Viking Books, 1998; 1st American ed.)
The mother of them all.
3. The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank (Viking Books, 1999)
Thought to be the daughter of the mother of them all. This technically isn't chick lit, but it did give the genre its second push.
4. Marian Keyes, author of eleven novels including Rachel's Holiday (William Morrow, 2000), Angels (William Morrow, 2002), Sushi for Beginners (William Morrow, 2003), and The Other Side of the Story (William Morrow, 2004)
One of the most popular UK chick lit authors. Her second book was published at the same time as Bridget Jones's Diary.
5. The Nanny Diaries, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (St. Martin's Press, 2002)
Written by two former NY nannies, this was the first book out of the chick lit gate to take the main focus away from dating.
6. The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger (Doubleday, 2003)
Written by the former assistant to Vogue's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, this took the definition of the "job from hell" to a new level.
7. Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series including Confessions of a Shopaholic (Dial Press, 2001), Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (Dial Press 2002), Shopaholic Ties the Knot (Dial Press 2003), and Shopaholic & Sister (Dial Press, 2005)
Another significant British chick lit authors whose first book in her series dealt significantly with financial and career issues.
8. Jennifer Weiner author of Good in Bed (Washington Square Press, 2002), In Her Shoes (Washington Square Press, 2003), Little Earthquakes (Atria, 2004), and Goodnight Nobody (Atria, 2005)
This was the beginning of chick lit for larger women, but Weiner's books are much more than that. Weiner has become so popular that not only was her second novel made into a movie with an A-list cast, but the New York Times has interviewed her about her choice in mini-vans and she has become the spokesperson for a new white wine company. Authors rarely cross over into the non-book world quite this much.
9. The Dirty Girls Social Club, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (St. Martin's Press, 2003)
One of the first multicultural chick lit novels. This book took off when it was chosen as a Today Show Book Club book.
10. Bergdorf Blondes, Plum Sykes (Hyperion, 2004)
The gals at chicklitbooks.com forgot one of the more recent sub genres: socialites. A take on the lives of the likes of Paris and Nicky couldn't have been too far behind.
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