I don’t consider myself a particularly girly person. I play video games, my favourite genre is sci-fi/fantasy, I like camping, and I read comic books.
That said, I have a semi-obsession with the chick-lit genre.
It’s important to make the distinction between chick lit and romance novels. Chick-lit is completely different, and is the literary equivalent of a romantic comedy. Stereotypically, they’re generally light-hearted and predictable, but ultimately just fun, light reading.
Which I think is part of the reason why they get such a bad rap.
They’re seen as reading for dumb girls who aren’t advanced enough to read the classics or something. Even though I love Emily Giffin and Lauren Weisberger, I always leave them off when asked about my favourite authors, instead focusing on the more acceptable Douglas Coupland and Dashiell Hammett. I’m trying to be less guilty about those reading preferences, but it’s been an uphill battle.
Here’s the thing: I really don’t think that chick-lit is just good for those times when you want to escape or not think too hard about things. They sometimes actually cover themes that are deep and complex, but since those themes deal with emotions and relationships, it’s seen as less valid than other forms of literature — mainly because it supposedly appeals to women.
Take Emily Giffin, author of Something Borrowed. She’s firmly stuck in the chick-lit ghetto and marketed toward women, despite the fact that she is very good at writing real people with real problems and real emotions. Something Borrowed debates whether love or friendship should be more important, especially if that friend has never been a good friend, at all. The sequel, Something Blue, is about a woman’s growth from a shallow, terrible person into a more mellow, intelligent, and self-aware person. Love the One You’re With is about the nature of love and whether you ever have a choice in love. Baby Proof is about whether love can overcome a seeming deal-breaker. These shouldn’t just be woman-friendly books, precisely since these aren’t exclusively women’s issues: love, infidelity, relationship conflict, growing as a person — almost everybody can relate to those things.
My favourite chick-lit novel is The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. Everyone probably knows the story by now, but I’ll recap: Andy gets a job as an assistant to a fashion editor, who proceeds to terrorize her and take over her life. Since the first-person protagonist is a woman and it involves fashion, the book is viewed as being for women only. However, Andy has a snarky and sarcastic voice that I think would appeal to anybody — especially anybody who has ever had a bad job — and the themes, again are not female-centric. It’s partly about navigating the period of time between graduation and entering the adult world, and partly about navigating a situation that you are not even close to being equipped to deal with. These are universal problems, but since the main character is female, suddenly that alienates male readers — despite the fact that women are expected to read male-led books all the time.
I will admit that the biggest hurdle to chick-lit acceptance is the simple fact that there is just an overwhelming amount of crap out there. As a chick-lit aficionado, I’ve had to wade through a lot of bad books to find my favourite authors, and even then they’re not always reliable. For example, Lauren Weisberger’s quality steadily fell with her first three books, while the fourth marked a slight uptick in quality. Another favourite, Katherine Neville, only has one good book (The Eight) out of the three that I’ve read. It’s enough to discourage less dedicated chick-lit hunters. I realize this may undermine my argument that it’s a good genre, but consider this: I’m a fan of an urban fantasy series called the Dresden Files. Since I’m now caught up in the series, I’ve looked around for another urban fantasy series that is a) good, b) in first-person, and c) preferably features a sarcastic protagonist. I could live with just the first two. But you know what? I have never been able to find another good urban fantasy series. There is so much crap in that genre, too, but since it is mainly marketed to men, somehow it still manages to retain a legitimacy that chick-lit just can’t get.
At some point, the idea that things marketed to women are worse quality needs to go, because we’re doing a lot of authors a disservice. And if anyone has a recommendation for a good urban fantasy book series, I’m all ears.