Editing Chick lit (section)

==Origins and derivations of the term==
[[File:Terry McMillan at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival.jpg|thumb|Author Terry McMillan, in 2008. McMillan's 1992 novel ''Waiting to Exhale'' predated the chick-lit label but, in its focus on the lives of a group of 30-something single women professionals, has been identified as a key precursor of the category]]
{{See also|Chick flick}} 
{{See also|Lad lit}} 
In 1992, ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' critic [[Carolyn See]] was probably the first to spot that a new style of popular women's fiction was emerging.<ref>{{Cite web |last=See |first=Carolyn |date=1992-06-22 |title=BOOK REVIEW : A Novel of Women Triumph, Revenge and Comradeship : WAITING TO EXHALE, by Terry McMillan, Viking, $19.95; 409 pages |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-06-22-vw-526-story.html |access-date=2023-09-22 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref> Though she didn't use the term chick lit, in a review of Terry McMillan's ''Waiting to Exhale'', the critic noted that McMillan's book was not "lofty" or "luminous" but was likely to be highly commercially successful. Carolyn See wrote, "McMillan's new work is part of another genre entirely, so new it doesn't really have a name yet. This genre has to do with women, triumph, revenge, comradeship."<ref name=See />

Chick lit did not become an established term for a style of novel until the second half of the 1990s. "Chick" is American slang for a young woman, and "lit" is a shortened form of the word "literature." There was probably no single origin of the term: [[Princeton University]] students were reported in 1988 to use chick lit as slang for a course on the Female Literary Tradition<ref name=Alma /><ref name=Showalter>Intriguingly, the course was created and taught by the prominent critic, [[Elaine Showalter]] who shortly afterwards strongly advocated for, and wrote about, ''lad lit'' as a critical term (see [[lad lit]]) Could Showalter actually have been the first to use "Chick lit?" {{cite web |website=Princeton University |title='At Home in the World': DiBattista and Nord reframe female literary tradition |url=https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/04/17/home-world-dibattista-and-nord-reframe-female-literary-tradition |access-date=18 August 2023}}</ref> and, in the UK, ''[[Oxford Reference]]'' report that the term arose as a "flippant counterpart" to the term "[[lad lit]]".<ref name="OxfordLads" /> The parallel term used for movies, [[chick flick]], enjoyed slightly earlier uptake.<ref name="googlewordcount" /> In what was probably one of its first major outings, the term chick lit was deployed ironically: ''Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction'' was a 1995 anthology of 22 short stories written in response to editors [[Cris Mazza]]'s and Jeffrey DeShell's call for "postfeminist writing."<ref name="Mazza" /> Early use of the term was heavily associated with journalism (both ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' and ''Sex in the City'' began as newspaper columns) and James Wolcott's 1996 article in ''The New Yorker'', "Hear Me Purr," co-opted the term chick lit to proscribe what he called the trend of "girlishness" evident in the writing of female newspaper columnists at that time.<ref name=purr />

In the early years, there was some variation on the exact term used: in 2000, the ''[[Sydney Morning Herald]]'' reported the birth of a "publishing phenomenon" that can be called "chick fiction."<ref name=SMH />

At the peak of the term's popularity, a slew of related sub-genres were proposed with similar names<ref name="routledge">{{Cite book |editor-last1=Ferris |editor-last2=Young |publisher=Routledge |via=Google Books |date=2006|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CacsBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22chick+fiction%22&pg=PA7 |title=Chick Lit The New Woman's Fiction |isbn=9781136092428 |language=en-US |access-date=30 July 2021}}</ref> chick lit jr (for young readers),<ref name="routledge" /> mommy lit,<ref name="routledge" /> and chick lit in corsets (historical fiction, and a term only found in one academic paper published in the [[Journal of Popular Romance Studies]]).<ref name=jprstudies.org /> The relationship with the term [[lad lit]] is more complicated: lad lit arose in the UK separately from, and possibly before, chick lit.<ref name="OxfordLads" /> Later, the term lad lit was adopted in the US for a male-oriented subgenre of chick lit (see [[lad lit]]). Of these parallel terms, mommy lit, and lad lit are the only terms to have enjoyed any significant uptake - and that a tiny fraction of the use of the primary term chick lit.<ref name="googlewordcount" />

Other derivations of the term chick lit have been used to describe varieties of popular women's literature in different regions, or targeted at specific ethnic communities. In the US this has included "Sistah lit"<ref name=routledge /> targeted at black readers and "Chica lit" for Latina readers.<ref name=Castro>{{Cite journal |title=RELAÇÕES TEXTUAIS NOS GÊNEROS CHICK E CHICA-LIT: VOZES FEMININAS NA LITERATURA EM LÍNGUA INGLESA CONTEMPORÂNEA E SUAS INSPIRAÇÕES |journal=Ipotesi |volume=26 |date=2022 |issn=1982-0836 |last1=Amorim de Castro |first1=Luiz |last2=Rodrigues Gonçalves |first2=Ana Beatriz |language=Portuguese}}</ref> In India the term "Ladki Lit" has been used (see below). In Turkey, ''{{wikt-lang|tk|çıtır}} literature'' is a category (''çıtır'' literally means 'crispy', but is colloquialy used to refer to attractive young women)<ref name=citir>{{cite journal |title=Türk Edebiyatında Postfeminist Bir Söylem: Chick-Literature (Çıtır Edebiyatı) |url=https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/atdd/issue/74756/1269016 |journal=Akademik Tarih ve Düşünce Dergisi |volume=9 |date=2022 |last=Bayram |first=Sibel |language=Turkish}}</ref>