Chick Lit
Chick lit – a term formed from the English phrase chick lit, where chick is a colloquial and often dismissive word for a young woman, and lit is a shortened form of literature. This origin shows that the term initially carried a negative connotation, implying that “women’s” writing lacked genuine literary value.
Today, there are various subgenres of chick lit, including books devoted to the problems of overweight girls and women (Bigger Girl Lit), literature for career-oriented women (Career Chick Lit), books about single women living in large cities (Single City Girl Chick Lit), literature for women of pre-retirement and retirement age (Hen Chick Lit), books for shopaholics (Shopping Chick Lit), books for women with children (Kids Chick Lit), and others.
Contemporary “women’s literature” positions itself as a distinctive and independent cultural phenomenon that emphasizes women’s different approach to literary activity. As is well known, women’s true place in literature has always been contested. Women in contemporary progressive society, as representatives of postfeminist culture, seek to present and affirm their own model of seeing and understanding the world.
There is an opinion that chick lit is a form of pseudo-literature, a by-product of the literary process, because the heroines of works of “women’s literature” are allegedly primitive, so-called “glamorous fools” or “glossy empty shells,” while the plotlines are predictable. For this reason, chick lit has often been reduced to the status of “beach reads,” that is, literature suitable only for entertainment and supposedly excluding any serious reflection.
Compared with romance novels, whose plots and problems are often difficult to relate to the life and activity of contemporary society, works belonging to the chick lit genre are characterized by greater realism and closeness to contemporary life. While romance novels traditionally end with the happy union of lovers, chick lit offers the reader a more realistic view of romance and loneliness. In addition, the heroines of chick lit are usually endowed with the ability to laugh at themselves. The narrative form traditional for this genre is the first-person narrative, or the form of confession or friendly disclosure. This form of narration brings the female reader and the heroine even closer together (Vatchenko & Vladimirova, 2012).
Reference:
Vatchenko, S. A., & Vladimirova, M. S. (2012). Vedushchie poetikalnye kharakteristiki trivialnoi literatury i ee subformy [The leading poetical characteristics of trivial literature and its subform]. Nauka i obrazovanie bez granits [Science and Education without Borders]. Retrieved from http://www.rusnauka.com/35_OINBG_2012/Philologia/8_120907.doc.htm [in Russian].
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