In Defense of … What?

Guest blogger, Catherine McKenzie

When my publicist told me that an ezine was looking for someone to write a defense of chick lit I have to admit my first reaction was to cringe. Why would I want to defend a genre that it irks me to belong to? But then I thought, as I have before, why does it irk me? Why are these two words so annoying when applied to my book, or to books in general? And why does this genre, or any genre, for that matter, need defending?

I wasn’t sure, so I did what any self-respecting author does these days when they have a question. I turned to Twitter. And what were the results of my very scientific Twitter poll? (Question posed: Does chick lit need defending? & What the hell is it anyway?) Well, if the responses I received are any indication of how the masses feel (and not just the small subset who follows this author) the answer is: Yes, it does need defending. Mostly against the pejorative connotation that has attached to this term. Chick lit is good, they tell me. It’s funny, it’s smart, and sometimes it even makes them think.

How did this happen? How did a bunch of funny, smart books written (mostly) by women for women get so demonized, so we-can-look-down-our-noses-at-it-because-it-can’t-be-very-hard-to-do? The same thing that’s happened to a bunch of other genres I think. A little something I like to call Genre Saturation Induced Lack Of Quality Control. You see, while publishing is not quite the blindfolded roulette wheel that many seem to think it is, it does fall too easily into the chase-after-whatever-was-last-popular phenomenon. Which means that when Bridget Jones’ Diary came out in the mid-1990s and took the publishing world by storm, agents and editors were suddenly bombarded with books describing themselves as the next BJD. And a bunch of books that probably shouldn’t have got published because they had that BJD checklist: wacky main character, group of zany BFF’s including the requisite gay man, fashion, big city, perfect leading man who is initially hated but wins over wacky girl’s heart. And by publishing these books, the genre suddenly became what the name implied. Or the name began to reflect the genre. Chicken. Egg.

So what am I saying? Don’t call my book chick lit. No, seriously. Don’t. OK, OK. What I’m really saying is: quality never has to be defended. And that’s what people should care about. Not pink covers.

Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University and McGill Law School, Catherine practices law in addition to being the author of the national bestseller, Spin (HarperCollins Canada, January 2010.) Follow Catherine on Twitter at @CEMcKenzie1. Visit her Web site at www.catherinemckenzie.com.