Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit [Paperback]

Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Litfocuses on the literary phenomenon popularly known as chick lit, and the way in which this genre interfaces with magazines, self-help books, romantic comedies, and domestic-advice publications. This recent trend in womens popular fiction, which began in 1996 with the publication of British author Helen Fieldings novel Bridget Joness Diary, uses first person narration to chronicle the romantic tribulations of its young, single, white, heterosexual, urban heroines. Critics of the genre have failed to fully appreciate chick lits complicated representations of women as both readers and consumers. In this study, Smith argues that chick lit questions the consume and achieve promise offered by advice manuals marketed toward women, subverting the consumer industry to which it is so closely linked and challenging cultural expectations of women as consumers, readers, and writers, and of popular fiction itself.

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: One Simple Step to Becoming a V.G. Consumer: Read Womens Magazines

Chapter Three: The Girls Guide to Breaking The Rules

Chapter Four: Down with Marriage: The Search for Romantic Alternatives

Chapter Five: Living the Life of a Domestic Goddess: Its a Good Thing

Chapter Six: Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Caroline J. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program at the George Washington University. She has been published in Womens Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal and Feminist Collections: A Quarterly Review of Womens Studies Resources. Her research interests include contemporary womens popular fiction and popular culture.