Stud Fiction. Never Touch the Stuff.

On a flight, Gloria Steinem overheard a passenger claim that he never watched chick flicks. I’m weighing in on her proposal that we label his kind of films “prick flicks." Her discerning post is at once a defense of chick flicks and chick lit, and an effort to challenge the labels.

“Think about it: If Anna K arenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll's House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal? Suppose Shakespeare had really been The Dark Lady some people supposed. I bet most of her plays and all of her sonnets would have been dismissed as some Elizabethan version of ye olde "chick lit," only to be resurrected centuries later by stubborn feminist scholars."

At Time Goes By, you can read a discussion of matron lit, hen lit, and lady lit for 49 to 69 year old women readers presumably fascinated by hot flashes, aging parents, and widowhood. Along with “granny lit,” what’s next? “Roaster lit?” The terms are increasingly degrading. Steinem’s solution? We need labels for everything that’s not women’s fiction or film.

The time I was shot down by a publisher to whom I’d tossed a just-for-practice pitch of my not-ready-for-prime-time novel, my writing group gleefully coined a phrase for the high stakes novels he preferred: “Stud Lit.” Then a friend came up with “dick flicks.” Now Steinem’s proposing “prick flicks.”

And the point? Folks, it’s a really important one, and Steinem makes it well:

"Just as there are ‘novelists’ and then ‘women novelists,’ there are ‘movies’and then chick flicks.’ Whoever is in power takes over the noun – and the norm – while the less powerful get an adjective. Thus, we read about ‘African American doctors’ but not ‘European American doctors,’ ‘Hispanic leaders’ but not ‘Anglo leaders,’ ‘gay soldiers’ but not ‘heterosexual soldiers,’ and so on.”

Steinem reminds us that if the chick flick label helps men know what to avoid, why is there no label to guide women to the ones we’d like to avoid? Furthermore, we don’t want viewers of glory-war and chainsaw-sadism and pain-seeking-babes feeling short changed. These folks need a label so they can locate their preferred flicks in reviews and catalogs.

As a writing-group buddy points out, writers of “women’s fiction” can’t find a graceful way to include the phrase in a query. It’s not a noun, so “...my 80,000-word women’s fiction...” doesn’t work, and making it an adjective as in “...my 80,000-word women’s fiction novel...” isn’t as elegant as “...my 80,000-word novel” or even“...my 80,000-word traditional mystery....”

Anybody out there have clout in the publishing industry? If so, while we’re at it, could we convince folks to ditch the word “cozy?”

– Lois