Editing Chick lit (section)

==Writers and critics==
Controversy over chick lit focused at first on the literary value of books identified or promoted as part of the genre. Over time, controversy has focused more on the term itself, and whether the concept of a chick lit genre is inherently sexist.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

In 1998, reviewer [[Alex Kuczynski]], writing for ''[[The New York Times]]'', condemned Helen Fielding's ''Bridget Jones's Diary'', writing: "Bridget is such a sorry spectacle, wallowing in her man-crazed helplessness, that her foolishness cannot be excused."<ref>{{Cite web|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/14/style/view-dear-diary-get-real.html|title= Dear Diary: Get Real|last= Kuczynski|first= Alex|date= 14 June 1998|work= New York Times|access-date= 1 September 2016}}</ref> In 2001, writer [[Doris Lessing]] deemed the genre "instantly forgettable" while [[Beryl Bainbridge]] called chick lit "a froth sort of thing".<ref>{{Cite web|url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/23/bookerprize2001.bookerprize|title= Bainbridge Denounces Chick-Lit as 'Froth'|date= 22 August 2001|work= The Guardian|access-date= 1 September 2016}}</ref> Author [[Jenny Colgan]] immediately fired back at Lessing and Bainbridge, explaining why, for a new generation of women, chick lit was an important development:

{{Blockquote
|text=We really are the first generation who have grown up with education as a right; with financial independence; with living on our own and having far too many choices about getting married (while watching our baby boomer parents fall apart), having children (while watching our elder sisters run themselves ragged trying to do everything), and hauling ourselves up through the glass ceiling.

Who reflects this? Growing up in the 1980s all we had to read if we wanted commercial fiction, were thick, shiny, brick novels covered in gold foil, in which women with long blonde hair built up business empires from harsh beginnings using only their extraordinary beauty and occasionally some goldfish...

With BJD, for the first time, here we were. The first time I read it, it was an absolute revelation to see my life and confusion reflected in print.
|multiline=yes
|author=Jenny Colgan, 2001<ref name=Hula />}}

Two years later Colgan had turned strongly against the term chick lit, being the first to state what is now a mainstream position among writers of women's popular fiction: she rejected the term ''chick lit'' while defending the cultural value of her work. She observed, "Chick-lit is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn't be any more insulting."<ref name=rubbish>{{cite news | last=Gibbons | first=Fiachra | title=Stop rubbishing chick-lit, demands novelist | newspaper=The Guardian | date=21 August 2003 | url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/21/books.booksnews | access-date=3 August 2022}}</ref> Much of the debate at this time was between different generations of women writers: for example, [[Maureen Dowd]] (b.1952) described the younger women's work as "all chick and no lit,"<ref name= libraries /> while [[Jenny Colgan|Colgan]] (b.1972) derided the older, female critics of chick lit as "hairy-leggers."<ref name=rubbish /> There was a "troubling" lack of solidarity.<ref name=libraries>{{cite journal | last=Davis‐Kahl | first=Stephanie | title=The case for chick lit in academic libraries | journal=Collection Building | publisher=Emerald | volume=27 | issue=1 | date=18 January 2008 | issn=0160-4953 | doi=10.1108/01604950810846206 | page=4 |url=https://works.bepress.com/stephanie_davis_kahl/1/download/| url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In 2005, debate continued with the publication of editor [[Elizabeth Merrick]]'s anthology of women's fiction, ''This Is Not Chick Lit'' (2005), where Merrick argued in her introduction that "Chick lit's formula numbs our senses."<ref name=":1" /> In response, self-identifying chick-lit author Lauren Baratz-Logsted published her own anthology of stories ''This Is Chick Lit''<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title= This Is Chick Lit|last= Baratz-Logsted|first= Lauren|publisher= Benbella|year= 2006|pages= 1}}</ref> whose [[project]] was "born out of anger" and aimed to prove that chick lit was not all "[[Manolo Blahnik|Manolo]]s and [[Cosmopolitan (drink)|cosmos]], and cookie-cutter books about women juggling relationships and careers in the [[new millennium]]," but rather that the genre deals with "friendship and laughter, love and death - i.e. the stuff of life."<ref name=":2" />

In 2007, Diane Shipley<ref>{{Cite web|url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/mar/15/indefenceofchicklit|title= In Defence of Chick Lit|last= Shipley|first= Diane|date= 15 March 2007|work= The Guardian|access-date= 1 September 2016}}</ref> came to the genre's defence, arguing that chick lit books increasingly covered serious topics but, anyway, "I just don't see what's morally or intellectually wrong with reading a book you enjoy and relate to, that might not draw deep conclusions about the future of humanity but might cheer you up after a bad day, or see you through your own health problems."

However, in general through the late 2000s and 2010s writers of women's popular fiction increasingly distanced themselves from the term chick lit, while arguing that blanket critical dismissals of their work were rooted in sexism. For example, in a 2010 ''[[The Guardian|Guardian]]'' article, humor writer DJ Connell leads with changing her writing name from Diane to DJ to avoid the chick lit label.<ref name=DJ /> [[Sophie Kinsella]] and [[Marian Keyes]], two authors who have enjoyed huge success through and beyond the chick lit era, both now reject the term. Kinsella refers to her own work as "romantic comedy".<ref name=Aitkenhead /> Keyes said of the term in 2014,
{{Blockquote
|text=It's meant to be belittling. It's as if it's saying, "Oh you silly girls, with your pinkness and shoes, how will you ever run the world?" But as I've matured (haha) I've realised that I'm very proud of what I write about and I know that the books I write bring happiness and comfort to people.
|multiline=no
|author=Marian Keyes, 2014 <ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.chatelaine.com/living/chatelaine-book-club/qa-marian-keyes-tells-us-about-her-new-book/|last=Grassi|first=Laurie|title=Marian Keyes on her new book, sex scenes and the term chick lit|work=[[Chatelaine (magazine)|Chatelaine]]|date=4 November 2014|access-date=20 October 2017}}</ref>
}}