Something to discuss another day
Jun. 20th, 2009 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesDoing the meme from the previous entry brought up something that I'll one day get around to doing a full blown post on, which is why I have a love/hate with so called "chick flicks" and "chick lit". I want to make it clear that I separate this from the romance genre as a whole, because I do not consider "The Devil Wears Prada" to be equivalent to, say, Harlequin Romances or classics of the genre.
Chick lit and chick flicks are their own category, though they borrow heavily from some bits of the romance genre.
I think some films and books that fit this genre are very smart. Some are surprising. But my problem with the genre, especially as it's portrayed on covers is the attachment to upper class and upper middle class materialism. Often, expensive brand names (for instance, Prada) are part of the selling point, and there is an attachment, superficially or thematically, to commercialization.
The obsession with connecting women's issues and women's lives with shopping and designer names, with this, "oh, it's so hard trying to be a fabulous appletini-drinking, Gucci-wearing single girl in the big city" attitude makes the blue-collar, coupon-clipping, penny-pinching Southerner in me cringe.
I have that same issue with many of paranormal romance and urban fantasy heroines I read about. I find the thought that somehow possessing a vagina makes me more interested in clothes and makeup and shopping and designer duds offensive and maddening. Especially when I'm not there for the high heels, I'm there for the vampires and, essentially, it's either Fangs or GTFO for me when I'm reading.
Yes, some women like shoes, shopping, fashion. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the best women I know are total clothes horses. And I won't deny there's something nice about occasionally getting prettied up for a special event.
But shopping? Clothes? Fashion? Leather pants? They do not factor into my life in the stereotypical fashion. I own exactly three pairs of shoes. One pair of sandals. One pair of tennis shoes. And one pair of oversized shiny black flats that I stuff tissue into the ends of because they're wide enough but too long. The newest pair of these were my tennis shoes and I bought those in July of last year. I probably purchase one new pair of shoes a year, and I have a hard time doing this. New shoes do not delight me. They scare me. I fear change.
I own exactly one dress. I do not wear high heels. The subject of shopping and clothing causes panic attacks in me. If you're a woman of size who was large as a child, especially in places where there were not a lot of clothes for overweight/obese children, you'll understand this.
I'm not trying to brag or somehow say that I am better because I don't tend to make much of my clothing and accessories other than to look clean, presentable, and at least reasonably clothed. It's not a virtue, it's just a choice.
Being interested in clothes, and having lots of shoes and dresses isn't somehow a sign of being a horrible, shallow person. So long as you're not spending beyond your means or putting your family into debt to buy a Kate Spade bag, your disposable cash is your business. No judgments from me.
But the women who are like me exist. And that is why I resent the term "chick lit", because it implies that such literature is the literature representative of all chicks, of all women. And it is not. More than that, I think it enforces this idea that women must be tied to material and socio-economic ideals that are inherently harmful to them.
I think women are not just a marketing group, but sometimes outright targets of advertisers who prey on the societal pressures and stereotypes women labor under to bilk dollars out of them, and I see that same predatory tendency in these books.
I feel utterly excluded from chick lit at moments. I imagine many women who are lower class, of color, queer, fat or otherwise different may feel the same.
And I think there are a lot of chicks who's stories and struggles aren't being talked about because they don't fit into the urban, wealthy, upwardly striving, college educated, white traditional chick-lit model. They don't wear Prada or Gucci. Hell, they don't even wear high heels.
For some "chicks", yeah, this literature is spot on. But for a lot of us? It isn't our literature. These aren't our stories. This isn't us.
Which, coincidentally, is another reason I separate it from romance. Romance, quite smartly, can divide off and tell the stories of many different types of women. There are lines of books specifically for women of color, and many romance novels I've read do center on women who are not fabulously rich, who are the kind of common-sense, thrifty, trying-to-get-by women with two kids, two jobs, and need for love that I actually know about. Of course, romance has it's problems, as all genres do. For instance: nobody in romance novels is ever fat", and that's a problem, but every genre has it's foibles. Ask me about SF/F and racism sometime.
There's an academic paper in here somewhere about the function of materialism in chick lit relative to the romance genre, but like I said. That's for another time.
I have very unchick-like writing to go do.
Chick lit and chick flicks are their own category, though they borrow heavily from some bits of the romance genre.
I think some films and books that fit this genre are very smart. Some are surprising. But my problem with the genre, especially as it's portrayed on covers is the attachment to upper class and upper middle class materialism. Often, expensive brand names (for instance, Prada) are part of the selling point, and there is an attachment, superficially or thematically, to commercialization.
The obsession with connecting women's issues and women's lives with shopping and designer names, with this, "oh, it's so hard trying to be a fabulous appletini-drinking, Gucci-wearing single girl in the big city" attitude makes the blue-collar, coupon-clipping, penny-pinching Southerner in me cringe.
I have that same issue with many of paranormal romance and urban fantasy heroines I read about. I find the thought that somehow possessing a vagina makes me more interested in clothes and makeup and shopping and designer duds offensive and maddening. Especially when I'm not there for the high heels, I'm there for the vampires and, essentially, it's either Fangs or GTFO for me when I'm reading.
Yes, some women like shoes, shopping, fashion. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the best women I know are total clothes horses. And I won't deny there's something nice about occasionally getting prettied up for a special event.
But shopping? Clothes? Fashion? Leather pants? They do not factor into my life in the stereotypical fashion. I own exactly three pairs of shoes. One pair of sandals. One pair of tennis shoes. And one pair of oversized shiny black flats that I stuff tissue into the ends of because they're wide enough but too long. The newest pair of these were my tennis shoes and I bought those in July of last year. I probably purchase one new pair of shoes a year, and I have a hard time doing this. New shoes do not delight me. They scare me. I fear change.
I own exactly one dress. I do not wear high heels. The subject of shopping and clothing causes panic attacks in me. If you're a woman of size who was large as a child, especially in places where there were not a lot of clothes for overweight/obese children, you'll understand this.
I'm not trying to brag or somehow say that I am better because I don't tend to make much of my clothing and accessories other than to look clean, presentable, and at least reasonably clothed. It's not a virtue, it's just a choice.
Being interested in clothes, and having lots of shoes and dresses isn't somehow a sign of being a horrible, shallow person. So long as you're not spending beyond your means or putting your family into debt to buy a Kate Spade bag, your disposable cash is your business. No judgments from me.
But the women who are like me exist. And that is why I resent the term "chick lit", because it implies that such literature is the literature representative of all chicks, of all women. And it is not. More than that, I think it enforces this idea that women must be tied to material and socio-economic ideals that are inherently harmful to them.
I think women are not just a marketing group, but sometimes outright targets of advertisers who prey on the societal pressures and stereotypes women labor under to bilk dollars out of them, and I see that same predatory tendency in these books.
I feel utterly excluded from chick lit at moments. I imagine many women who are lower class, of color, queer, fat or otherwise different may feel the same.
And I think there are a lot of chicks who's stories and struggles aren't being talked about because they don't fit into the urban, wealthy, upwardly striving, college educated, white traditional chick-lit model. They don't wear Prada or Gucci. Hell, they don't even wear high heels.
For some "chicks", yeah, this literature is spot on. But for a lot of us? It isn't our literature. These aren't our stories. This isn't us.
Which, coincidentally, is another reason I separate it from romance. Romance, quite smartly, can divide off and tell the stories of many different types of women. There are lines of books specifically for women of color, and many romance novels I've read do center on women who are not fabulously rich, who are the kind of common-sense, thrifty, trying-to-get-by women with two kids, two jobs, and need for love that I actually know about. Of course, romance has it's problems, as all genres do. For instance: nobody in romance novels is ever fat", and that's a problem, but every genre has it's foibles. Ask me about SF/F and racism sometime.
There's an academic paper in here somewhere about the function of materialism in chick lit relative to the romance genre, but like I said. That's for another time.
I have very unchick-like writing to go do.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-21 12:02 am (UTC)I cannot read those kind of books. I am also a heavy person, and wear glasses, and am Jewish, and the child of a brainiac family. Few if any romance characters share any of those characteristics. ANd they also do/think about such boring things.
I also cannot talk with most of my daughter's classmates' mothers - they find those books and those topics fascinating. This has bothered me a lot less since I started my LJ, and met other women with kids who read primarily SF&F, manga, and maybe mysteries and historical fiction (not historical romance). But it was really rough for a while.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 08:24 pm (UTC)I keep shoes until they fall apart. I've had some since middle school.
I'm always so thrilled to find size 12 shoes. :)
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