Editing Chick lit (section)

{{Short description|Term for a type of popular young women's fiction}}
{{for|the film|ChickLit}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}}

"'''Chick lit'''" is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s,<ref name="googlewordcount" /> the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers,<ref name=Salon /> with numerous writers and critics rejecting it as inherently sexist.<ref name=Heike /> Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways.<ref name=Jessica /> Typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties:<ref name="libraryjournal1" /><ref name="Terry" /> the 1990s chick lit heroine represented an evolution of the traditional romantic heroine in her assertiveness, financial independence and enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption.<ref name=chen />

The format developed through the early 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic with books such as [[Terry McMillan]]'s ''[[Waiting to Exhale]]'' (1992, US) and [[Catherine Alliott]]'s ''The Old Girl Network'' (1994, UK). [[Helen Fielding]]'s ''[[Bridget Jones's Diary (novel)|Bridget Jones's Diary]]'' (1996, UK), wildly popular globally, is the "[[wikt:Special:Search/urtext|Ur-text]]" of chick lit, while [[Candace Bushnell]]'s (US) 1997 novel ''[[Sex and the City (book)|Sex and the City]]'', adapted to [[Sex and the City|a well-known television program]], has huge ongoing cultural influence.<ref name="bridget" /><ref name=":0" />

By the late 1990s, chick lit titles regularly topped bestseller lists, and many imprints were created devoted entirely to it. By the mid-2000s, commentators noted that its market was increasingly saturated,<ref name="pandemic" /> and by the early 2010s, publishers had largely abandoned the category. Nonetheless, the term "chick lit" persists as a popular category of fiction for both readers and amateur writers on the internet.

While the concept of "chick lit" has become outdated in developed-world English language literature,{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}} the term, and regional derivations of it, continue to be widely used to describe and analyse popular women's literature in other languages and other parts of the world.