Feature: Chicklit is Growing Up

By Elizabeth Milo

Perhaps that title should have a question mark at the end: chicklit is growing up? You can almost hear the incredulity in the inflection required for that question. The idea that chicklit ever could grow up seems like a long shot. How can a genre based around the ideas of perpetual youth and indulgence mature? Chicklit series don’t grow with their readers, their readers grow out of them.

This truth which we hold to be self-evident has now been challenged by a new wave of chicklit novels that are becoming increasingly popular. When chicklit first rose to stardom in the 90s, every book revolved around the same unbearably simple plotline of girl-meets-boy, girl-meets-road-block, girl-gets-boy-in-the-end. Since their rise in readership, scholars have argued that chicklit novels represent an important facet of the sociological and psychological lives of modern women and the effects the demands of society have on them… or something like that. Editors Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young compiled sixteen essays that argue both for and against chicklit material in their 2005 book Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. Fifteen of those sixteen were in favor of appreciating and further studying the importance of chicklits based on their sociological merit and context within the literary history of feminist works. These books are supposed to be feminist books because the women totter around New York in really high heels and have sex with lots of men? Okay, maybe. But if the only thing oppressing them is which Yankee to date, that doesn’t sound like much of a struggle for suffrage to me.

As with most good, or at least absurdly popular, things in our culture, the chicklit fad originated in England. Just like The Beatles, scones, and Trading Spaces, chicklit started with the phenomenal success of authors such as Helen Fielding, whose novel Bridget Jones’s Diary was an international phenomenon. After Colin Firth’s revival of his idolized portrayal of Mr. Darcy for the film adaptation of Bridget Jones, most of the world is now familiar with Fielding’s somewhat degrading twist on Austen’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. (Ironically, though written 200 years later and after women have gained almost an equal footing in society, Bridget Jones manages to be less supportive of women than P&P. But I digress.) Once the British fad jumped the Atlantic, American authors took no time in turning out chicklit of their own, such as Candice Bushnell’s Sex and the City, which went on to become a behemoth of a cultural icon. I don’t think somebody squirreled away in a hovel could have avoided learning what Sex and the City is by now.

Most chicklit in America has continued to follow the trend of Sex and the City, focusing mostly on city women living their upper-middle-class lives, dealing with issues about husbands, boyfriends, children, jobs, and most importantly, sex. In 2009, Doree Shafrir wrote an article for Publisher’s Weekly entitled “Women's Lit: Chick Lit Gets an Update,” in which she argues that chicklit has grown up. Why does she think that? Because three new books are about women in New York who struggle with issues in their jobs, marriages, and sex life. Gee,that sounds familiar. Her main point is that these characters are women, not girls, who are dealing with real life issues. In Amy Sohn's Prospect Park West, the opening scene showcases one of these “real life issues,” which is so relatable, in fact, that if I had a nickel for every time I had to take the batteries out of my baby’s mobile and risked waking the baby up in order to replace the batteries in my vibrator so I could orgasm...I would have absolutely no money. Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus hit the nail on the head in their wickedly funny portrayal of rich New York woman in their novel The Nanny Diaries: the only thing missing from the lives of these women is a sharp smack upside the head.

Clearly America has failed to grow in the chicklit department, but you can bet on those trusty Brits to pull through. While “growing-up” in the States has taken on a much too literal interpretation of simply looking at older women, UK authors have started to look at older—and more serious—issues. In her latest novel, This Charming Man, Marian Keyes faces the issue of domestic abuse head-on in a not-so-nice way. In fact, when you get halfway through the book, you might feel as if you’ve been tricked into reading a story about abuse, because she allows her darker themes to lie low at the beginning. By the ending, however, if you’re a normal human being with a beating heart, you’ll feel like you should start a shelter for battered women and scourge the earth of evil. Her novel deals with abuse, depression, alcoholism, and of course marriage and sex, in a direct but sensitive way that will not allow the reader to disengage.

Perhaps British author Anna Maxted started the trend way back in 2001 with her hit novel Running in Heels. The story begins prosaically predictable with the “falling apart” of a skinny twenty-something’s life. She’s in self-destruct mode, and the audience is just waiting for prince charming to come along. When he does show up, though, so does another unwelcome guest: anorexia. This skinny-chic-twenty-something is too skinny, and the reader follows along as she goes through all the levels of denial, pain, bulimia, and hair loss until she confronts the rage inside of her that’s put her on this path.

Abuse, rape, and eating disorders aren’t the sort of things that spring to mind when you think of chicklit. And when you unsuspectingly pick up one of these heavy-hitting books, you will find no traces of the darker issues inside on the cover or the back. Authors are starting to sneak your vegetables in on you by wrapping them in chiffon dresses and London flats. But perhaps what chicklit readers need is to have these ugly truths spoon-fed to them. Of course there’s still romance, fashion, and the-best-sex-she’s-ever-had in these brightly colored novels, but there’s a realness, too, that makes these fairy tales a worthwhile read. Chicklits may never be feminist manifestos, but they are starting to grow up.