Chick Lit: Good, Bad, or Ugly for YA?

Chick Lit: Good, Bad, or Ugly for YA?

 

            After defining what Chick Lit is, I wanted to know whether it would be appropriate to have chick lit available for students in my classroom to read.  SO I was on a search through some book reviews and found a great article from The Hornbook Magazine in how adult chick lit has been passed down into teen lit and it might now be a good thing to have passed down…

            The article basically bashed chick lit for its “creepily photorealistic writing style” and “a value system in which meanness rules, parents check out, conformity is everything and stressed-out adult values are presumed to be meaningful to teenagers. . . . The rich are right and good simply by virtue of their wealth.” .  It drops the names of three very well known YV Chick Lit series: Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar, The A-List by Zoey Dean, and The Clique by Lisi Harrison.  In these books there are rich girls going through the ups and downs of relationships while trying to balance jobs, sports, and school.  The characters are manipulative, snotty, and down right mean.  The article gives some examples of how these books are bad for YA:

Detailed descriptions of clothes — which are named by designer and referred to as “outfits”;

Frequent mention of brand names — “so prominent you wonder if there are product placement deals,” says Wolf;

Spike heels — the higher the better;

Eyeball-rolling — as annoying in the literature as it is in real life;

Covers showing body parts but not faces — perhaps reflecting the overwhelming preoccupation with body image;

Cell phones, computers, iPods, and other electronic toys — usually to communicate the ongoing story to an absent best friend (and the reader);

Exclusive private schools — with such outré courses as “Indigenous Crafts” and a relaxed attitude toward grades and cutting classes;

Casual sex — often in semi-public places like the dressing rooms of fashionable stores;

Smoking as an indication of sophistication — an even more reprehensible model than the blow jobs, it seems to me;

Plentiful booze, but nothing so retro as beer — rather, stylish concoctions like chocolate martinis, which are not sipped but “swigged” or “gulped,” leading to

Lots of vomiting — usually on one another’s Prada bags or Gucci boots, and often in humiliatingly public circumstances;

The Party — at which there are no adults, but lots of alcohol and drugs and very loud music by named groups, and where the best scenes take place in

The ladies’ room — as a venue for malicious gossip, persecution of nerds, and sex; and, worst of all,

Clunky writing — with unbelievable situations, stereotyped characters, and awkward dialogue.

These make me want to ban YA Chick Lit from my classroom.  But as I kept reading, the article also noted that not all YA Chick Lit is like an episode of Sex & the City.  There are also many YA Chick Lit books out there that are very good for YA in that they talk about normal struggles of the average teen.  And how the ‘nerd’ wins.  I encourage everyone to read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and incorporate it into your classroom.  This is a great YA Chick Lit book that everyone should read.