Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

LovelySalome was kind enough to forward me a rather scathing attack on the omnipresence of ChickLit courtesy of Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

Trouble is, all her columns are for Times Select readers, and as I am not one, I don’t have linkage abilities. And personally, I try not to circumvent subscription-only services by copying and pasting the content here for free, since, well, the Times? Kind of cranky about things like that.

Dowd is of the opinion that women who enjoy ChickLit are stupid fools who are blissfully and blithely ignorant of that’s wrong in the world as they indulge in pink-covered lipstick chronicles of fluffy nonsense. She found the ChickLit shelved with literature fiction and cries horror at the stupidification of women readers who pick up their Kinsella books shelved next to Kipling.

So what else is new? It’s a retread of every other accusation leveled at women-authored and women-marketed literature. I’m not personally a fan of chick lit, as I cannot suspend reality long enough to believe there are that many British women working in advertising and publishing who find husbands in the bottom of a cocktail glass.  But the article seemed so familiar in its condescension.

LovelySalome wrote in her email: “I would agree with her on certain points, if my knee-jerk antagonism toward her snootiness didn’t stifle genuine debate. I mean, we’re fostering the war on terror by indulging in chick lit? Do they even know that chick lit authors can’t sell their MSS because the genre is dying?”

One quote that I will excerpt, until the Times rattles a saber at me, is as follows:

Please do not confuse these books with the love-and-marriage of Jane Austen. These are more like multicultural Harlequin romances. They’re Cinderella bodice rippers, Manolo trippers, girls with long legs, long shiny hair and sparkling eyes stumbling through life, eating potato skins loaded with bacon bits and melted swiss, drinking cocktails, looking for the right man and dispensing nuggets of hard-won wisdom, like, “Any guy who can watch you hurl Cheez Doodles is a keeper,” and, “You can’t puke in wicker. It leaks.”

I wonder what Dowd would have to say about a survey of historical romance? Good thing our books are housed in their own special shelves. 

40 comments •
Categories: Ranty McRant

Tags: This entry has not been tagged yet.