GCC: Stephanie Lehmann and The Art of Chick Lit

Today, we shall be talking about Stephanie Lehmann’s latest release: You Could Do Better. Those of you who want to discuss the genre known as chick lit, keep reading after the GCC info. Those of you who recently indicated that they are uninterested in commentary and just want heads-up on blogs, keep reading anyway.

This is what it’s about:

The author of The Art of Undressing makes her highly anticipated return with an irresistible new novel about a woman trying to choose between the man of her dreams — and her fiance.

Daphne Wells is way too busy watching television to start planning her wedding. She tells herself that being glued to the boob tube counts as research for her job at the Museum of Television and Radio. But the truth is, as much as she’s looking forward to a future with her fiancé, Charlie, their sex life just isn’t ready for prime time.

Then Daphne meets sexy, successful writer/producer Jonathan Hill when he comes to the museum for inspiration. Daphne spends a weekend in the Hamptons at Jonathan’s beach house—on business, of course—but the picture comes in loud and clear: This man can turn her on as if he’s a remote control. She’s more confused than ever about marrying Charlie. What if she can do better?

This is Stephanie’s website: http://stephanielehmann.com
This is Stephanie’s blog: http://historyoftelevision.blogspot.com

So, as a girl who can’t imagine being uninterested in planning my own wedding and who doesn’t even own a television set that gets network reception, let alone cable (look, if there is anything really good on, I’ll get it on DVD, as evinced by the recent arrival of Veronica Mars, season two in my Netflix shipment), I can’t say that I’m going to have a lot in common with Daphne. But that’s all right. I don’t smoke and am not overweight, a’la Bridget, I’ve never, thank goodness, been in the type of horrific debt so often enjoyed by Becky Bloomwood, and not once in my whole 27 years on earth have I ever been attacked by a rove of rampaging vampires and woken up in a coffin in a tacky Chanel suit and ill-fitting shoes, as Betsy Taylor has been wont to do.

Doesn’t matter. I doubt the people who ‘ve been feeling Cinderella’s pain for the last millenium ever got a chance to wear blown-glass shoes, either. These chicks speak to me. They have problems to overcome, lives to get on track, friends to keep or lose, sex to enjoy or regret (or, you know, both), and they want to laugh while they do it.

Lehmann writes books about women who are dealing with sexual dysfunction. You can’t tell me this isn’t an issue that speaks to a whole host of women who have been conditioned by Meg Ryan and romance novels and Herbal Essences. And maybe, just maybe, that instead of reading some dry as dust tome telling women to just relax or better yet, lie back and think of England, they want a girlfriend to sit beside them and tell them a funny story that says, “Sister, I’ve been there.” And you can go ahead and laugh, and relax, and think about it because it’s safe. It’s not real. It’s just something funny. It’s just fluff, right?

There’s a well-known theory in the science fiction community about how science fiction is free to break all these boundaries because people don’t think of it as “real” enough to get upset over. Star Trek has the first interracial kiss on American television, stuff like that. I hear that Battlestar Gallactica is having a full out exploration of the abortion debate (it hasn’t made it all the way up my Netflix queue) that is shocking everyone, becuase, heck, it’s science fiction, and they can do it, because it’s not real.

And meanwhile, chick lit, they say, is setting back feminism. It’s reaffirming all the worst stereotypes about women: that they are shallow fashion hounds who just want to find a rich Mr. Right before the cat fight starts. After all, the covers are pink. And they employ the term chick. Seriously, most of the arguments I’ve seen against chick lit use those as their main, if not only, complaints. “The covers are pastel and the word “chick” is demeaning.”

Let’s start making a list of words that were once considered demeaning until the people to whom those terms referred decided to claim it as their own. I’ll go first: Yankee.

I’m not saying that all chick lit is good. Some of it is bad. Some science fiction, in the midst of all that breaking of boundaries and interracial kissing, was little more than an excuse for oversexed, adolescent ship captains to go chasing after mylar miniskirt-clad spacebabes. But some chick lit is making statements. Real statements, that in years to come, will be remembered as turning points in modern feminism. We now have a huge body of fiction, popular fiction, genre fiction, about the range of choices women have now, and how complicated our lives are because of it.

Take for example Emily Giffin’s recent release, Baby Proof, which is about a woman whose husband wants a baby, and she doesn’t. Giffin herself says that she chose that premise becuase the alternative, that the woman’s clock is ticking and the husband is all hands off, seemed like the traditional, expected situation. Isn’t that the joke? It’s the woman whose clock ticks? Apparently, Giffin received nasty notes and Amazon reviews (the actual review is gone from the site now, though the responses remain) saying that a woman should have children, and that it’s selfish of her not to want them. Other Amazon reviewers title their reviews “real issues — not so much chick lit,” which is in keeping with my position that people call chick lit that transcends their prejudices something else, rather than calling it chick lit that transcends their prejudices. As I once heard an agent say, “if it’s got aliens and ray guns, don’t tell me it’s not science fiction.”

Meanwhile, Booklist says of Baby Proof: “By avoiding easy answers, Giffin once again proves she’s one of the best chick-lit writers in this thoughtful, layered, and wholly original story of a woman facing a major choice in her life.”

Chick lit does not, as some have claimed, present “one very narrow representation of women’s lives.” It allows for the full spectrum of options available to the modern women. Education, career, Mr. Wrong, Mr. Right, marriage, baby… or not any of those things at all. There are chick lit novels about young widows, about grieving mothers, about sisters whose paths in life are so wildly divergent that you wonder how they splashed out of the same genetic pool. There are some that you’ll read and never think about again, some that bash you over the head with their issues, and some that have you falling out of your seat laughing until you begin to cry because you realize that’s you the author is talking about. She nailed you. What scares you, what worries you, what angers you, what frustrates you, and most of all, what entertains you.

Chick lit: it’s funny because it’s true.

Have you read a chick lit book that touched you? Tell me about it. Post a comment.