Sounds to me like she sold her soul to the Devil and now she's moaning about what a lousy deal she got.

Get a helmet.

Best
Sion

I'm interested in why chick lit is a pejorative term?

How many serious female writers (or women wanting to be taken seriously in any profession, for that matter) would choose to refer to themselves as "chicks"?

Quite a few, evidently.

The original premise of chick lit was that it was fun - a bit fluffy, a lighthearted take on serious things - love, relationships - and I guess 'chick' was meant in that spirit: ironically, by analogy with 'chick flick'. Like so many pejorative terms for women, it can be used ironically or straight. But it's not a word I've ever used of myself.

Emma

I don't accept the premise that it's pejorative, to be honest. And I think it's a bit of a sweeping statement, to imply that girls calling themselves chicks are in someway demeaning themselves, or even more ludicrous, won't be taken seriously in whatever profession.

And in a thread where the word stereotype is being bandied about, I think it's just a complete stereotype to suggest that chick lit is simply a product of some devious publisher or editor. Considering we have a chick lit group on here too, with many of its members acheiving success, it's also quite insulting and, to be blunt, clearly a complete load of tripe.

Earlier this year I read Marian Keyes' 'The Other Side of the Story'. It's a story set in the world of publishing, and along the way Keyes has several interesting things to say about the way non-literary fiction by women is regarded in some quarters. For example, there's this Amazon crit one of her characters gets:

Crystal Clear is not a good book and I'm at a loss as to what to compare it to. It is almost (although obviously not quite!) as bad as chick-lit. It deserves only one star but I have decided to give it two simply for not being chick-lit!

The novels are written by writers. The label and associated marketing is a publisher's invention - and a clever one, or it would never have caught on - for a kind of novel which has always existed, but which, once crystallised by Bridget Jones, could be sold as a particular kind of story, rather than a particular kind of commercial-women's-fiction.

And I think it's a bit of a sweeping statement, to imply that girls calling themselves chicks are in someway demeaning themselves, or even more ludicrous, won't be taken seriously in whatever profession.

If girls are calling themselves chicks, fine. When it gets applied to women, in a context where no man would be called a... well I don't think there is an equivalent male term for infantile and fluffy, is there? At least, not one my bank manager's supposed to accept my using of him.

Emma

And here's Keyes inside the head of one of her characters, a publisher considering a manuscript written by a woman:

Sure, the critics wouldn't even acknowledge it; books like this - 'women's fluff' - flew beneath the radar. Occasionally, to make an example to the others, they wheeled one out and 'reviewed' it - although the review had been written before they'd actually read the book - and they poured scorn with the ugly superiority of Ku Klux Klan laughing at bound black boys.
Different, of course, if it had been written by a man...Suddenly there would be talk of 'courageous tenderness' and 'fearless exploration and exposition of emotion'. And women who normally made fun of 'women's fiction' would read it with pride in public places.

Sorry, my last was following Davey.

Marian Keyes is the writer most often held up as proving chick lit's more interesting and profound aspects. I wonder if that quote is a take on some of her own reviews. Either way, it illustrates the messiness of talking about genre. On one hand, genre labels simply tell us roughly what the form and subject matter of a book will be - a body and finding out the murderer, losing love and finding it - with no value judgement about how good a book it is. On the other hand, genre labels can be incredibly reductive - 'a whodunnit', 'a romance'. For that reviewer 'chick lit' automatically implies lowest common denominator quality, it seems. (And yes, I agree that 'female' genres generally seem to be lower down the pecking order than 'male' ones - I had a little trouble coming up with a sufficiently pejorative 'male' genre label in the previous sentence.)

Emma

And then she didn't like the direction she was forced into... But it's not surprising, because she'd set off down the road she didn't want herself, and then found she was pushed further down it.

But isn't part of the point she's making that people are not allowed to write commercial fiction that is diverse and interesting? She says literary fiction is well-catered for and strict genre fiction, but what about good readable popular fiction that presents different views of the world? Why is it okay for a commercial writer to be told to change her endings and not be allowed to explore the genre to put across her world view? What's wrong with a commercial novel about a female detective that still puts across the writer's view of the world? I would like to read that.

I don't know if she is right on this, but what she seems to be implying is that women commercial fiction writers want to write more broadly, and aren't allowed to. If what she says is true, is this not patronising and detrimental to women and their view of themselves?

I think men would need something other than "fluffy" to describe them, when they get infantile!

My original posting on this was just drawing a parallel between what Scarlett Thomas said and my own misgivings concerning the term chick lit. (Concerning the term, not the books themselves, mind. I've never read anything that I was aware of being chick lit, so I can't comment on the style [I'll use that word rather than genre] itself.)

I've also been present when men are discussing women in the absence of women, and there are some seriously childish and myopic views out there in male-ego-land. Most such views, just like their female counterparts, rely on selective observation to exist, but exist they undoubtedly do.

I can quite believe that a marketing executive came up with the term chick lit intending it to be a light-hearted subversion of the word chick. The trouble with doing that is that, as soon as someone else involved in the literary world takes it seriously, terms like that do quickly become pejorative.

Alex

(It's a general, and perhaps overly negative comment but it's worth remembering that almost all terms of abuse for women began as neutral terms or even terms of affection. This seems to be what happens in English.)

Chicklit also means men feel they can't read it. I heard one of the book programmes on Radio Four and they got several reviewers to read Marian Keyes - several were male and swore they would never read such a thing. They all came back saying how they had enjoyed it and even related to it. With some surprise, I might add.

Yes, that's true about the covers. I Don't Know How She Does It (Mum lit, really, and I loved it!) first came out in pink, but then had a blue incarnation, so that it could be bought by men too. Which it must have been - a monster seller, it was.

Emma

“girls are calling themselves chicks, fine. When it gets applied to women, in a context where no man would be called a...”

So what you’re saying is that it’s okay if a girl uses it, but not a man, because that immediately implies they are being pejorative? So if the girl says I’m a Chick Lit author, they are demeaning themselves at the hands of the male editor? Or is it okay if a female editor came up with it? And men have a direct equivalent in lad culture, Trainspotting, Loaded, Oasis, beer drinking, etc etc all culminating in the terrible dribblings of Tony Parsons, the worst writer in the world. IMHO. Look at Nick Hornby. It’s there and to try and say that Chick lit demeans women or the authors who are proud to say they wrote chick lit only write it because the industry wants to market them, seems a bit wrong. Bridget Jones succeeded because it hit a wave and resonated with people, and the story is basically not much different from the old Literary fiction written in the 19th century. Jane Eyre is a chick lit story, in that sense, because it deals with the same issues, only written for a contemporary audience. If people think that somehow because it’s written over a hundred years ago, in wordy language, that makes the story less archetypal, then I disagree. Helen Fielding perhaps is doing far more for modern writing, revisiting the age old problems of love in a fresher way, than rehashing a story based in the 19th century just because that somehow makes it “Literary”. That would just be pretentious. I’d even suggest that literary fiction is the one that really needs to be questioned, not genre fiction.

“... well I don't think there is an equivalent male term for infantile and fluffy, is there?”

Yeah but that’s not what a girl who calls herself a chick means in terms of chick lit, or in life really, is it? Charlotte Church had a song called Crazy Chick, so are you saying that was in some way subversive? What’s written by Alex is so unqualified, and Emma, you are saying that it’s sexist, which yeah it is if you take the fact that our society is misogynous in nature, but then so is pretty much everything, so a girl who says I’m a chick is maybe doing some good by claiming that word, and that’s even if it was insulting, or pejorative, which seems to have been decided upon here. Even if all that is true, which is debatable, that doesn’t mean what Alex implies, that girls who call themselves chicks, or chick lit writers are demeaning themselves in some way. I mean how?

Davy, you've missed the first part of my point, which is that I said girls - i.e., pre-pubertal females - not women. As far as I'm concerned, anyone past the menarche is a woman, and to use a term for a baby animal for them is potentially insulting. Of course we all do it casually, just as we talk of a 'boys'' night out, and that's fine by me. But I don't call my solicitor or my tutor a boy, say, and I wouldn't expect to be called a girl in any professional context.

I'm interested that the use of the term 'girl' when people mean 'woman' is so universal that you didn't even notice the distinction I was making.

Is the male equivalent of a 'chick' perhaps a 'cub'. Must try it next time I'm down the pub on a Saturday night, and see what happens.

Emma