Chick lit and my discontents

Interesting article about sex and chick lit in Nerve this week. Or rather the lack of stimulating, interesting or honest of the former in the ouevre of the latter. Here are two non-sex bits that stood out:

[The] message is chick lit to the core: dishonest, even dangerous. It tells women that the yearning in their soul can be filled by the love and acceptance of a man.

No literary movement before this one has ever made me angry. People's taste is none of my business. But this shit is being marketed to young girls, who are already getting weak enough ideas from other media about what being a girl means — why should the few who read be plowed under, too?

Last night Eli and I briefly discussed Disneyfied fairy tales and why I hate them so much. (Not the original Grimm fairy tales. Those are gory and terrifying enough to warrant my appreciation.) I ranted the enlightened party line, about how if the obedient pretty girl were patient enough with a situation thrust upon her by the powerful/empowered and thus evil mezzo-soprano (the witches, bitches and whores, for you non-opera aficionados) then a prince will arrive on the scene and rescue her from her plight, the end. Toss in some crappy ballads, a side-kick with frighteningly large eyes and a xenophobic subtext or two and you have yourself a Disney film. Historically, it sucks to be a princess. Princesses are merely pawns in the political marriage game, the glue in alliances between kingdoms, who dare not have any sense of self. Really, what an awful thing to thrust upon our daughters. And chick lit is the adult stop in this continuum of Disney-Sweet Valley High-Bridget Jones.

One could argue that most light-hearted Western comedy ends in a wedding masque or an impending engagement, perhaps chick-lit just develops from this trope. I would say that the journey is different, the characters' desires and actions more complex and the social context seeped with satire or insight. Rosalind is not just mooning over Orlando; she is fleeing the court of a mad bad duke and along the way meets a dreamy boy who she tests repeatedly before revealing herself as his beloved. Once the curtain closes, you know feisty Rosalind doesn't stop thinking and acting, Katherine is not "tamed" by Petruchio, Beatrice is just as witty as before -- they have found a match, but the yearning in their souls burns on.

Or let's take Jane Austen, who chick-lit marketers have tried to commandeer. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy both evolve over the course of the novel and both become better people because of the other -- she is not a princess being rescued, she is fully realized. (Although what I think of Fanny Price is another matter.) This is very different from the passive, slightly quirky but essentially middle-of-the-road, middle class, pretty-but-not-beautiful, in no way exceptional or enlightened or evolving heroines of chick lit. And, along the way, Ms Austen makes fun of every insipid woman in the novel.

Eli said, but what if this princess stuff makes little girls happy? (He's not completely indoctrinated yet.) Well, it's like rock candy. A little here or there in a balanced diet isn't going to ruin their chances of becoming a fully-realized person. But if your child craves sweets, why not turn her on to lemon tarts or homemade ice cream, something richer and full of intellectual and emotional calories? Same with chick-lit. If you're not up to reading Dostoevsky right now and want some summer reading, there are much better written, more interesting choices out there.