There's Nothing Wrong With ChickLit ... or, Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

This whole kerfluffle over ChickLit this week has been completely and utterly ridiculous.

To recap ... writer DJ Connell wrote an article expressing her displeasure at the whole ChickLit label and saying that it does no favors for female humor writers. Also, she doesn't like the word "chick" and says that it diminishes women. Also, that ChickLit is light and unimportant, and therefore should not have the word "lit" attached to it.

Then, ChickLit writer Michele Gorman fired back, saying that she disagrees with "the implication that romantic comedy must be poorly written, that the chick-lit label should be cringeworthy and that, as 'light and unimportant' books, the genre isn't worthy of reading." She also brings up, and debunks, the criticism that the books don't deal with issues real women face. (As she cleverly points out, neither do a lot of other genres, including sci-fi, crime and mystery.)

To me, the whole thing is ridiculous. Everybody has genres they like and genres they dislike. I like fantasy, some sci-fi (mostly a more fantasy sci-fi and less of the hard science fiction), horror, some mystery and, yes, chick lit. There are other genres, such as westerns and Christian fiction that I haven't really touched. And I don't like every book in the genre either. Some are poorly written, and some just aren't my cup of tea. If you don't like ChickLit, that's fine - don't read ChickLit. But don't try to tell people that they shouldn't read ChickLit because it's light and breezy.

With my high pressure job and sometimes high pressure life, sometimes I want something that I can read that doesn't require me to do a lot of thinking. I read a variety of books, of course, but sometimes I want a fun little book like "Little Lady Agency" by Hester Browne or "Queen of Babble" by Meg Cabot rather than slogging through something more difficult, such as "Lord of the Rings" or something by Charles Dickens. It was hard for me at first, because reading something breezy seemed like a guilty pleasure. I was always so proud of being someone who read difficult books, and to read these books seemed like a step down. But what I quickly realized is that, a lot of the time, reading is about fun. Yes, you can read to try to better understand your world or learn new things, but sometimes reading is just purely about pleasure, and it's a good thing to read books that make you happy.

In other words, don't be a snob!

I do agree that there really needs to be a change in thinking and that women should not be relegated to purely writing chick lit. I don't think they entirely are, but as a reader and an aspiring writer, I don't want to be pigeonholed. I understand the temptation to use a pseudonym or some gender-ambiguous form of your name as a female author writing non-ChickLit, and I don't begrudge anyone who does. If it helps someone like J.K. Rowling get her stories out there, I'm all for it, because a world without Rowling's work is a dimmer world. But I also hope for a world where people would not be afraid to pick up a book by someone named Jo Rowling and read it without being scared away by the fact that the author is a female. And I hope that Rowling, and more women like her, are able to write great stories and get them published to help get people away from the idea that women can only write for women.