"Chick lit" is a slightly uncomplimentary term used to denote popular fiction written for and marketed to young women, especially single young women in their 20s, working in the business world. It was spurred on (if not exactly created) in the mid-1990s by the appearance of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, Melissa Banks 's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing , and The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krause .
The genre tends to feature lonely young women in urban settings, often working in the publishing industry; it may also be considered a subdivision of the romance genre. The favored style is hip, stylish, bold, self-analytical, and slightly irreverent. Sexuality may be a primary or secondary theme but is always present, and often is presented as adventuresome, as in Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City and the television series it spawned.
Several publishing houses now have imprints or divisions dedicated to fostering and marketing works of this sort. "Chick lit" has also been claimed as a type of "postfeminist" fiction, perhaps in an attempt to rehabilitate its literary reputation.
Beyond the obvious source of the term ("chick" being slang for a young woman), it also includes a derivative reference to "Chiclet" brand chewing gum, with the implication that the reader is likely to be the sort of clichéd and nonintellectual female who chews gum and avoids serious literature.
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Last updated: 05-14-2005 06:46:51
