Chick Lit?What exactly is this thing you call 'Chick Lit'?
We are baffled by this genre category that seems to be popping up everywhere.
Because we are reasonably certain that there is no literature published for infant chickens, we are left to surmise that the word "chick" actually refers the American vernacular for "female."
This would seem to imply that this is literature for women.
Now this in itself wouldn't be a problem. Except that it appears that many of the novels marketed as this new literature for women is, well....
Vapid.
There, I said it.
Not that there's anything wrong with vapid. A Reader's Respite can max out a Macy's card quicker than you can say Pulitzer. But does it need it's own genre?
We're suspecting the genre was actually first marketed by a man who wanted an easily identifiable way to warn other members of their gender.
Maybe we're wrong.
Maybe this whole hullabaloo is about gum.
Carry on.
Am I the only WOMAN out there that is slightly annoyed by this term? I find myself avoiding this genre, just for this reason. Occasionally, though I have picked up a book of this ilk and really had fun with it. No, it wasn't deep, but it is a good escape now and again!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I enjoy chick lit from time to time. One time I was talking to my mother about it and our conversation made no sense because she thought I was talking about gum, so your post made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is this: where is the dude lit? (or, as I prefer to call it, dick lit?)
ReplyDeleteSandy: Annoyed! I'm totally offended.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, vapid is good sometimes. I don't read many light novels, but I do like cozy mysteries. Is there much difference?
Rebecca: LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
You see! I don't think there is such a thing as dick lit! It is a double standard! Stephen King has referred to some books as "manfiction" (which by the way, THIS chick likes to read!) but it isn't a genre for crying out loud...
ReplyDeleteChick lit does refer to a certain style of book for women. Books written the same way for men have been called dick lit or lad lit, but they just aren't as popular as chick lit.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the term, maybe that makes me anti-feminist, but what I mind is that people act like it's all fluff. It's not, necessarily. And I also don't think there is anything wrong with it. I personally love it, but a pet peeve of mine is when someone refers to say, Debbie Macomber as chick lit. They just don't get it.
Sandy - no, you're not the only one. It bugs me that it's marketed that way and it really bothers me when a good piece of women's literature is labeled like that.
ReplyDeleteKathy - I'll read it, it's just the marketing that gets to me.
Rebecca - dick lit, LOL. Would that be Clancy?
Beth - it's just a marketing bugaboo of mine. I don't think there's much difference with a cozy mystery or even a romance. But geez...the label pisses me off.
Amy - Exactly. I don't have a problem with the content. Just the darned label. As if all women only read novels about shopping and makeup.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I love McComber's books set in the northwest...she uses real landmarks in her stories that are right where I live. Love that.
Sandy, you are not the only one! The thing that bugs me the most about "chick lit" is that it's sometimes used to describe just about any book written by a woman. Well, OK, and the fact that it totally sounds derogatory too!
ReplyDeleteAs for dick lit, I've heard Chuck Palahniuk's work referred to as such, but you're right it's not a term that has caught on the way chick lit has.
My personal rule of thumb that is if there's a shopping bag, martini glass, lipstick, or stiletto heel on the cover, then it's chicklit. For other woman-focused and woman-marketed books, I like the term a friend came up with: "ovarian fiction". :-)
ReplyDeleteDick Lit? Totally my new favorite term.
ReplyDeleteI for one am not much of a chick lit fan, but instead of calling it chick lit, I call it mind candy. :D
The term chick lit annoys me.
Ok...dick lit made me laugh! I think that men are just jealous because chick lit sounds better than dick lit! lol
ReplyDeleteToo bad about the dick lit not catching on as a phrase, really. It has charm. ha.
ReplyDeleteOvarian lit has it's merits. But would it hurt men to pick up a book in which nothing gets blown up?
Dick lit- I'll have to start using that term.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the genre that bothers me, it's the term -- which is wrong on so many levels. And, as others have pointed out, it is often misused.
ReplyDeleteI hate the implied insult. But I am more irritated when a great novel that just happens to be written by a woman or is about women is labeled "chick lit." It seems so dismissive.
Not expressing myself well today.
Beth - yes you are, I understand 100% what you mean. There are some great novels out there that are marketed as Chick Lit. They're not! And I blame the marketing/art departments for that. As mentioned, put a lipstick or stiletto heel on the cover and it wouldn't matter what's inside...it's labeled Chick Lit.
ReplyDeleteFrankly I'm surprised someone hasn't put Gone With the Wind in that category. Ticks me off.
You know, Michele, only on your blog does the discussion often roll down a slippery slope. I love it. It is like getting together for a beer with your girlfriends!
ReplyDeleteSandy - ha, YOU'RE a fine one to talk, LOL. You have the funniest string of comments going on at You've GOTTA Read This! You all crack me up over there!
ReplyDeleteI don't like the term...and I don't really like the genre. I realize there is an audience for it, but I am not part of that audience. But because there is an audience, they put that lipstick or stiletto heel on the cover...and it will help it sell to that audience.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I prefer King...do I suffer from fiction-gender-confusion? Oh no, what might the treatment be??
As to dick lit (I love the phrase!) I think it is less popular because men simply read fewer books than women.
Hilarious discussion. Tom Clancy and Stephen Hunter have to be considered kings of DL -- six-packs and six-shooters.
ReplyDeleteOne question: Which came first, chick lit or click flick?
Caite - agreed re: women likely read more than men. I'll be looking this one up.
ReplyDeleteDave - I would surmise that chick flick came first, only because that is a universal western (as in culture) male complaint: being dragged out to a girl-oriented movie (no, not THAT kind of girly movie). Girl-oriented books, on the other hand, didn't become Chick Lit until it became apparent that men needed an easily identifiable way to avoid accidentally picking one up. (The horror!)
I don't find the term offensive, but that's probably because I have a specific definition in my mind. It's light-hearted women's lit, maybe with a little romance but not necessarily with a happily-ever-after ending. Chick lit is not all vapid . . . but a lot of it is. Beth has a good point. A lot of mysteries have no substance at all. The quality is in the writing.
ReplyDeleteSee, I think of dick lit as stuff like Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and similar books about bad-boy exploits. Or Ben Mezrich's books about taking Vegas and getting chicks. Having male protagonists doesn't make something dick lit anymore than having a female protagonist makes it chick lit...It's more about the themes.
ReplyDeleteBookfool - I see it as more of a marketing to the masses thing. Publishers inadvertently discovered that a certain vapid storyline, usually involving shopping, men, makeup, fashion, appearance, etc, attracted more female readers than something along the lines of, say Olive Kitteridge would. There were a certain female demographic (I call it the Paris Hilton generation) that loved it. Now I tend to fall in the camp that says anything that gets people to read more is a good thing. I just started to take umbrage when really good literature that involved a female and no explosions/gunfights/spy stuff was immediately labeled Chick Lit. Not sure how that came about. Still wondering.
ReplyDeleteRebecca - yes, I think everyone has pre-defined notions in their head over what falls into what category, no doubt about that. I found myself wondering, though, if I were an author and wrote a piece of literature that had a female protagonist and was largely character driven with a love interest, would I be pissed if the marketing and art dept chose to call it Chick Lit to increase sales.
I guess when the royalty checks come in, it might not matter to me so much. Just random, meaningless thoughts floating thru my empty head today. ;)
Dick Lit is a term I've seen used by publishers. I've also just heard the phrase "Hick Lit" being thrown around to describe the survive-horrible-drunken-childhood kind of memoirs.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the problem with 'chick lit' is its dismissive tone as applied to any fiction written by or about women. I can see Virginia Woolf being called chick lit these days (and have heard Jane Austen referred to as such). Argh.
Melanie....well I am just acquiring quite the vocabulary today. Hick Lit. I loooooove it!
ReplyDeleteYou have a talent for finding subjects that make my head spin a little. I'd say it's too much food for thought, but I'm not sure that concept exists... Either way, I'm sort of with you on this subject, but I think it goes a lot deeper than just the term "chick lit"...
ReplyDeleteHilarious post and even funnier comments! Dick Lit...does Playboy fit in that genre?
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the term chick-lit. I consider myself feminist, but not so overboard as to worry about what they call girly novels. I like to think of it as a term used when a novel is too emotional intelligent for a man to understand. They know to not even bother...they won't get it.
Amy - I knew you'd have a better way to look at it. You rock!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you ... I think the term "Chick Lit" is a bit demeaning but then again, I do think of "classic" Chick Lit books as being a bit vapid. And I think it can be the kiss of death to be labeled as a Chick Lit book in some circles. It is a dumb label and should be abolished!
ReplyDeleteAmy - I was thinking the same thing about DL and the Playboy magazines! :) I was also thinking of fix-it and car mechanic books.
ReplyDeleteI guess I kind of see the chick-lit label as a warning of vapidness too, but I don't mind it so much. I like a light read now and then, and it's nice to know which ones are going to be like reading "junk food."
Now if a great book was misclassified as chick-lit that would be a problem. I haven't run across that before, but then again I don't read much chick-lit. Thus proving the point that I could be missing some good books because I've been warned off by the label.
Now if I could just separate the good chick lit from the books that make me feel like I am shaving points off of my IQ by reading them, that would be nice. I might actually give more of the good chick lit books a chance.
I have very fond memories of chicklets :)
ReplyDeleteI somehow don't like chicklits, I mean I love YA. I don't know whats with that.
Michele - I think you would enjoy this youTube video. It's a spoof about marketing yogurt toward women. My favorite roll-your-eyes theme is that often women in the yogurt commercials wear grey hoodies, like "I have a Master's, but then I got married". arrgh ... but true!
ReplyDeleteOh good grief...I just spent an hour watching that video and all their other Target Women videos...how did I miss out on those all this time? They are hysterical!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a cool blog you have! I like your fifties style very much.
ReplyDeleteChick lit? - well, haven´t thought much about it because I rarely read it. My ´light´ genre is whodunnits, and in Scandinavia crime fiction written by women is often called "femikrimi". Some people mean "feminist crime fiction" which can be positive, but a number of male reviewers clearly see it as "chicklit with a murder in it" which obviously offends some of the authors.
Dawn! OMG!! How did I miss these videos. Thank you for sharing the links. I haven't stopped laughing. I watched them all!!!
ReplyDeleteI see dick lit being advertised a lot these days, and I am pretty sure its an established genre by now, at least on the UK-scene and here in Denmark (I am a blogger from Denmark, and realize that it may not be the same in North America).
ReplyDeleteI've also read a lot of chick lit, but got fed up with the genre some years ago. Not so much because of the term of the genre, but because I got tired of following one cute-clumsy heroine after the other. Some of the books labelled chick lit does have an edge though and I have definitely enjoyed those books more than those which were just cute.
Any of you getting fed up with mommy-lit? Now that many chick lit'ers has gotten pregnant/had babies there seem to be an array of mommy-lit out there as well. Many of those books following in the same footsteps as the chick lit, but now the chick has a baby and is not getting enough sex from hubby and cannot fit into her stilettos any longer and YAAAWWWNNNN its boring!!!
Louise
http://louspages.blogspot.com
Louise: I somehow missed mommy-lit. Doesn't sound like my kind of thing. Light reading has it's place, but surely there's something a bit more interesting.
ReplyDeleteThese posts are great - I'm so glad I stumbled across you! I'm a bestselling author here in the UK - my 10th novel is about to be published (http://freyanorth.com/). I HATE the term chick lit and I'm lumbered with it ALL THE FRIKKIN' TIME...! If anyone called me a 'chick' to my face - I'd belt them!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was first published in 1996, it was the same time as Bridget Jones Diary - and back then, the ridiculous umbrella-term they foisted on us was "The Spinsterati".
Chick Lit is a ridiculous and also careless term which dumbs-down a genre in contemporary commercial fiction that is perennially popular and brings great enjoyment to vast numbers of the reading public.
I don't know any author who likes the term.
I always refer to my books as 'feisty romps'. From Jane Austen to Jilly Cooper, I've always enjoyed the classic romp, all I've done is update the traditional boy-meets-girl tale by adding a modern twist (ie: ripe swear-words and regular squelchy sex). In 2000, a group of us authors joined forces to publish an anthology of our short stories (the "Girls Night In" series) in aid of Warchild (we've since raised over £2million). The material was so incredibly varied, beautifully written - and our individual voices really sang out. Chick Lit as a term downgrades the fiction we work very hard to produce. Writing can be a lonely old job which requires great self-discipline, imagination and, dare I say, talent to write 120,000+ words of original fiction. Interestingly, it isn't only 'chicks' who buy my books...I have a healthy following amongst elderly gentlemen and school boys too! Anyway, look at me rambling on...must dash, I've a new novel to write... Freya x