Fiction that focuses on women's emotional lives could also empower readers if authors embraced the fourth wave of feminism
Commentators say we are experiencing a fourth wave of feminism, and many of these same commentators cite No More Page 3, the campaign I founded, as playing a part in this. But I also write romantic comedy novels, or chick lit, as it's called, because I'm a woman.
As a feminist, I feel that the term is a demeaning one; it's hard to imagine "puppy lit" or similar being used to describe books written by men about life and love, authors such as Nick Hornby and David Nicholls. But while it's an arguably sexist term, coined in the 1990s, it's so annoyingly pithy that we're stuck with it. It's hard to imagine Twitter or the mighty Everyday Sexism Project letting anyone introduce the term now.
Initiatives such as #readwomen2014 are championing women writers, persuading readers to look beyond the pastel covers. While this should be celebrated, it inadvertently raises the issue of the cover designs of women's fiction. Having sat in meetings with a team of women who loved the book we were discussing, then being presented with a cover that none of us would pick up, it felt frustrating to say the least.
Whether chick lit is a demeaning term or not, I am unapologetic in my love for this genre. We all like to escape with books for different reasons. Some prefer murder mysteries, others science fiction or misery memoirs. I wouldn't knock any of these genres – sometimes I venture into those territories myself. However, I'm not going to apologise for enjoying books that focus on women's careers, families and love lives, as romantic comedy often does. As a woman – as a person – discovering what I love to do, feeling empowered to do it and falling in love have been pretty seismic events in my life, ones I can identify with far more than discovering a murdered body in a disused car park.
For me, romantic comedy has always united generations in a way that no other genre has. I read the first Bridget Jones book simultaneously with my mum and my sister. We exercised our hereditary dirty laughs for the duration of a long-haul flight, punctuated with the odd snort from my mother. Part of my love for Bridget Jones is that Helen Fielding shone a comedy light on much of the angst I was feeling as a young woman. Angst that calories consumed my thoughts, that being attractive to and not making a fool of myself in front of the opposite sex was something that I hoped for.
Was the chick lit of the 1990s good for women? Did it help us achieve equality of the sexes? Very possibly not. But it certainly felt good to laugh. And while Bridget Jones didn't make me feel particularly empowered as a woman, except in a "look at us we're all disempowered together" kind of way, I fell in love with her and in turn accepted my own foibles more.
We've moved on from the 1990s, and now that we've lived through decades of women hating their bodies, it isn't quite so funny and not something most of us would wish on the girls growing up after us. In my last two books I was adamant that I didn't want to include body neurosis; my characters were – and are – more interested in their mental health, work-life balance and navigating patriarchal structures in relationships, which reflects what I feel personally and hear in my own life from young women.
While this new social media-powered form of feminism is exploding into the mainstream, and being covered by nearly all women's magazines and websites, I believe chick lit, too, could play an exciting role in communicating this fourth wave of feminism and female empowerment to readers, and in turn reinvigorate the genre for the next generation.
What would embracing this new wave of feminism look like in fiction? Well, for a start I would say allowing writers to deviate into some underexplored themes. I wanted to write about a woman who had an abortion (as one in three women do) but was told it was a no-go area by numerous publishers. It left me feeling that the female experience was far more interesting and complicated than I was being allowed to explore.
Women have had enough of sexism and are speaking out. It's an exciting time and chick lit should be brave and reflect this. Let's lose the cupcake covers and embrace fourth-wave feminism.
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