ENG 400

Dr. Erin Hurt

Chick and Chica Lit: The Representations of Men, Maleness, and Masculinity

The chick or women’s literature1 genre is difficult to define, although in Chicklit and

Postfeminism, Stephanie Harzewski attempts to explain, in great detail, the chick lit formula.

The term chick lit has come to describe novels largely written by women, for women, depicting

the life, loves, trials, and tribulations of women (Gormley 1). According to Harzewski, the plot

in a chick lit novel usually contains a quest for “Mr. Right” though a happily ever after is not a

requirement for the novel’s resolution (28). Furthermore, “…Mr. Right turns out to be Mr.

Wrong or Mr. Maybe. Sometimes a novel chronicles a succession of Mr. Not-Rights”

(Harzewski 28). Chick lit heroines are generally in their 20s or 30s, “white, middle- or upper-

middle-class, never married, childless, Anglo or American, urban, college-educated heterosexual

career women engaged in a seriocomic romantic quest or dating spree” (29). Moreover the

women in the novels are apt to be varied characters, described as having fallible and often

“quirky” characteristics (29). “The typical chick-lit protagonist is, as a result, not perfect but

flawed…deploy[ing] self-deprecating humor…. [that] leads readers to believe they are fallible—

like them” (Ferris and Young 4). But the type of protagonists featured in chick lit novels has

begun to expand, even if the formula has not changed. The genre now features women of varied

ethnic backgrounds, including an increasingly popular subgenre of chick lit that predominantly

features Latina and Chicana women. As a result, this genre has garnered its own term: chica lit

(Ferris and Young 5-6).

However, chick lit’s most significant divergence from its predecessors in popular

romance fiction lies in its “representation of men” (33). According to Harzewski, “Men serve

1
Chick or women’s literature will hereafter be referred to by its more common and contemporary name:
chick lit.
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various functions, and while men are sometimes love objects…chick lit…virtually jettison[s] the

figure of the heterosexual hero, with Manolo Blahniks upstaging men” (33). Suzanne Ferriss and

Mallory Young echo this sentiment in Chick Lit The New Woman’s Fiction, stating that chick lit

discards the “heterosexual hero to offer a more realist portrait of single life, dating, and the

dissolution of romantic ideals” (3). The man or hero in a chick lit novel is generally a

silhouetted or background character, and is usurped as a confidant by the protagonist’s male gay

best friend (Harzewski 33). And given these unbecoming or unfavorable representations of

masculinity, it is not unexpected that there are few occurrences of genuine eroticism between

men and women in chick lit. Additionally, men are rarely valued as individuals as much as a

means to an end, usually a “lifestyle, wedding, or in some cases beauty boost” (33).

The representations of men, maleness, and masculinity in chick lit are marked by the

changes occurring in our society with regard to the termination of clearly defined gender

divisions. Men and society in general used to have distinct and clear-cut views of the male role

in Western culture. But with the emergence of the metro sexual male and as women became

more independent and self-sufficient, the traditional male role was diminished or reduced.

According to Hoyer and MacInnis, masculinity is traditionally associated with assertiveness,

success, and competition (425). Men have frequently been associated with concepts and traits

such as aggression, dominance, and strength. But now men are presented as “disadvantaged in a

new gender order that benefits women” (Gormley 7). Chick lit narratives, more often than not,

feature one-dimensional and/or shallow male characters. The men are used as props or

accessories, easily substituted for material goods. Frequently they are painted as villains, forced

into roles that subjugate them, or simply act as negative stand-ins representative of the entire

male population. Analysis of the male characters will stem primarily from what is commonly
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deemed chick lit’s origin novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and what is referred to as the first chica

lit novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, with other texts as secondary sources.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is the fictional diary account of a year in the life of Bridget Jones,

a 30-something “Singleton” living in London. The novel follows Bridget on a permanent and

doomed quest for self-improvement that includes losing weight, quitting smoking, and spending

less money. But her quest is primarily about meeting “Mr. Right.” Bridget wants to form an

ideal relationship with a “responsible adult.” Helen Fielding’s admittedly self-aware and

humorous novel launched a genre and became a cultural icon, making the novel-turned-movie

exceedingly important given its enormous influence on contemporary pop culture. Bridget Jones

“became an icon, a recognizable emblem of a particular kind of femininity, a constructed point

of identification for women…important not only for founding or inspiring a new fictional style

but also because it articulated a distinctively postfeminist sensibility” (Gill and Herdieckerhoff).

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s novel The Dirty Girls Social Club is a formulaic chica lit novel

featuring predominantly Latina characters. This undeniably highly educated and advantaged

section of Latinas is as heterogeneous a group of women as the term “Latina” is meant to

represent. The desire to celebrate their shared uniqueness in being Latina is what initially draws

these otherwise too dissimilar six women together. Las sucias’ (which is how the characters

refer to themselves) ability to succeed within some of the most powerful mainstream white

society occupations—newspaper and magazine publishing (Lauren and Rebecca), television

(Elizabeth), music (Amber), public relations (Usnavys), and domestic goddess (Sara)—can be

viewed as the postfeminist, pro-Latina, female empowerment narrative that the chick lit genre

was originally founded upon.

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Critics, including Suzanne Harris and Stephanie Harzewski have indicated that chick lit is

born from postfeminist sensibilities. It is stated in Interrogating Post-Feminism that it “is worth

observing, however, that postfeminist representation typically celebrates women’s strength while

lightly critiquing or gently ridiculing” masculinity (Tasker and Negra 21). Upon closer

inspection of these novels and several others, something troubling reveals itself. The portrayals

and representations of men, maleness, and masculinity fall into several categories: men as stand-

ins, mostly negative, men as props or accessories, men in subordinate and possibly emasculating

roles, men as villains, masculine sexuality, and the trope of the nice guy versus the bad boy.

Men tend to be generalized with negative assumptions and marginalization in chick and

chica lit novels. They act as stand-ins, representative of their larger community, and the

language used to describe the male community is largely if not entirely negative. Consider the

following observation by Dirty Girls’ main narrator Lauren:

The only other customers tonight are three young tigres with fade haircuts, baggy jeans,
plaid Hilfiger shirts, gold hoops flashing on their earlobes. They speak slangy Spanish
and keep checking their beepers…I look away, examine my newly French-manicured
acrylic nail tips. (Valdes-Rodriguez 1-2)
Given the tone of the passage, this is not meant to be a flattering description of these young men

at a bar. Lauren illustrates this “type” of guy, and is quickly dismissive of them, checking her

fingernails. This is mirrored in Bridget Jones several times. First, Bridget states in the opening

of the diary that she will not “fall” for any: “alcoholics, workaholics…people with girlfriends or

wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists…or freeloaders, perverts” (Fielding 2). In

another passage in Bridget Jones, Bridget considers Daniel, her boss and lover, and seems to

communicate feelings of resentment towards men in general and in some ways can be viewed as

anti-male. Despite Bridget expressing repeatedly and in varied ways her desire to find a life
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partner, and how much time she devotes to her search for Mr. Right, she and her friends do not

spare verbally the men who have hurt them:

Thinking moodily about Daniel Cleaver, I ventured that not all men are like Richard. At
which point Sharon started on a long illustrative list of emotional fuckwittage in progress
in our friends: one whose boyfriend of thirteen years refuses even to discuss living
together; another who went out with a man four times who then chucked her because it
was getting too serious; another who was pursued by a bloke for three months with
impassioned proposals of marriage, only to find him ducking out three weeks later after
she succumbed and repeating the whole process with her best friend. (Fielding 18)
Through the lens of these female eyes, the men who have abandoned and hurt them are liars,

immature, egotistical, and promiscuous womanizers. This adheres closely to what Bridget

describes in the second page of the novel: men are all “commitment phobics” and “emotional

fuckwits” (2). Men are judged and evaluated, weighed and measured, and consistently found

lacking.

Chick and chica lit texts tend towards regularly featuring men as props, accessories, and

placeholders. The characters are not intrinsically valued or appreciated. For example, Lauren

describes her fiancé Ed in Dirty Girls as “the bigheaded Texican…a speechwriter (read:

professional liar) for the mayor of New York” (Valdes-Rodriguez 2). Lauren stays with him,

despite not manifesting any deep or meaningful attachment to him, because he meets a list of

requirements and she feels that she ought to be married. He is merely a prop—similar to a

handbag or shoes—that she needs to “wear” in society. Lauren’s friend, and another of the

sucias, is Rebecca Baca, who finds herself in a similar situation with “Brad, her moron of a

husband…He’s a tall non-Latino white guy from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, who has been

working on the same doctoral thesis for the past eight years, at Cambridge University” (18).

Rebecca admits later in the novel her primary motive for marrying him was money. She

believed that her accessorized husband would buy her a place in society, only to find herself
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miserably unhappy with him. Moreover, only negative language is associated with Brad and Ed.

These men connote status, and primarily function as means for the protagonists to elevate

themselves. Another example can be found in Life Over Easy by Margo Candela. The

protagonist, Natalya Campos, finds herself very unsure of life when her live-in boyfriend

informs her that he’s leaving. As a result, Natalya decides to find Mr. Right, and the way to do

that is through constructing lists of ideal characteristics. At one point of the novel, Natalya finds

herself dating four men that she compares to each other constantly. Her boyfriends—Jorge,

Paul, Hollis, and Tree—are dissimilar but not complete, constructed characters. They are

placeholders, or what Harzewski refers to as “Mr. Not-Rights,” in a series or train as if on an

assembly line and the “figures of boyfriends who do not turn out to be ‘the Ones’ are, not

surprisingly, characterized by means of a set of negative features, such as authoritarianism and

despotism, extreme egotism, or immaturity” (Smyczynska 32). Relationships are portrayed as

being “just another commodity, more or less indistinguishable from a Lulu Guinness handbag.

The tendency of chick-lit authors to assign the same narrative weight to such disparate and

disproportionate phenomena as peep-toe pumps and marriage makes reading their stories…

confounding” (Jernigan 71).

The male character in a chica or chick lit text can also be assigned to play a role that is

often emasculating or demeaning. There are many critics who call attention to and describe links

between chick lit and women’s fiction of the past, but there also lies a connection to fairy tales.

Similarly to how a fairy tale needs a white knight to save the princess, there can also be a need to

be saved found in the heroines of chick lit. Bridget Jones is saved not once, but several times

throughout the course of the narrative. First, Mark Darcy rescues Bridget from falling apart after

she catches her boss, Daniel Cleaver—who is also her lover and sometime boyfriend—having an
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affair with an American woman who is “bronzed, long-limbed, blond-haired [and] stark-naked”

(Fielding 153). Later in the narrative, Bridget decides to host her first dinner party, and it turns

into a disaster. But Mark takes control of the situation, and the pots and pans, and saves the day

(236). But it is later still that Mark truly plays Hero to Bridget. Her mother decided to give up

her life of housewife and domestic goddess for a lifestyle that more closely resembles her

daughter’s. Bridget’s mom begins a relationship with Julio, a coworker who commits fraud and

flees to Portugal. Mark, the white knight, rescues Mrs. Jones by assisting her in returning to

London to her husband and daughter, and then informs the police of Julio’s location. Bridget,

who tends towards inept and scatter-brained, is the typical damsel in distress. However Mark,

despite his heroics, unfortunately resembles the more traditional part of the fairy godmother.

Bridget herself is never in any real danger or in need of real rescuing. Mark Darcy succeeds in

granting all of Bridget’s wishes: Daniel is a bad boy, and not good for Bridget, and Mark makes

it easier for her to get over him; Mark is able to smooth over the situational catastrophe of

Bridget’s dinner part, and saves her mother and returns her home; and finally, at the novel’s

conclusion, Bridget’s greatest and most important wish is granted: she is able to finally have a

“functional relationship with a responsible adult” (3). Katarzyna Smyczynska said that

“contemporary male protagonists of feminine novels hardly fulfill the heroic aspect of their role”

(31). So instead of being a “knight in shining armor,” Mark Darcy is fitted with a wand and

made to fix all of Bridget’s problems, great or small.

Men are more typically cast as villains in chick and chica texts. In an early description of

her fiancé, Lauren says “According to his voicemail at work (I busted into it, I cannot tell a lie)

he appears to be messing around with a chick named Lola” (Valdes-Rodriguez 2). Her lack of

meaningful feeling towards him does nothing to assuage or mitigate that his cheating is
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malicious. Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones’s Diary is similarly rebuked when it is discovered he

was cheating on Bridget as well. In Life Over Easy, Rick is the villain because he leaves

Natalya, although during their breakup in the third chapter, she cannot focus on the conversation:

When my boyfriend, my very nearly fiancé, starts to tell me that he’s moving out, the
thing that pops into my head isn’t, Oh, my God, he’s breaking up with me…Maybe I
should pay attention to what he’s saying.
Nope.
What I think is: I really need to redecorate this place. Mentally, I begin to rearrange my
furniture. I have already rid myself of the beat-up Pier 1 white wicker from my girlhood
bedroom and family hand-me-downs…And just like my flat, it’s all nicely put together—
home, career and personal life, all in order. (Candela 17)
Rick acts as another placeholder, but because he leaves, is cast as the villain. However, the most

common trope of villainous men features “physically violent men could be seen as chick lit’s

version of the villain figure of the romance, a stock type who serves as a moral foil to the hero”

(Harzewski 37). In Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps by Lara Rios, the narrator, Marcela,

discovers that her biological father is white, meaning that she is not entirely Hispanic, which

distresses her. In order to prove something to herself and her family, she constructs a list of ten

items that are supposed to help her become a “better” Latina (Rios 21). The first item on her list

is to “Date Mexican Men” but she has trouble finding a man that sees as “Mexican enough” (22).

So Marcela talks to her cousin, Pepe, in order to find a “real Mexican guy” and meets one of his

friends, a 24-year-old guy nicknamed Spike (67). But on their “date,” he takes Marcela to a club

and sexually assaults her, even pulling a gun on her. But the most significant representation of a

violent man as a villain occurs in The Dirty Girls Social Club. When Roberto, Sara’s husband,

is first introduced in the novel, he is described as the envy of all the sucias:

I think every sucia has had Roberto fantasies. We all want Roberto, and because he’s
taken, we all want a guy exactly like Roberto, only problem is he appears to be the only
one out there. A guy who’s faithful, dependable, rich, handsome, kind, funny, and who
has known you since you were a goofy girl covered with pimples, accidentally falling
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into the canal behind your parents’ mansion and he jumps in with all those muscles to
save you from yourself…you think—this is it, he’s the one. A wonderful guy who
continues to save you from yourself for the rest of your life. (Valdes-Rodriguez 27)
This is potentially the most flattering description of any man in Dirty Girls. But later in the

novel, the reader is shown the truth: that Roberto is not as perfect as everyone seems to think.

Roberto is in fact very critical of Sara, castigating her for enjoying sex, believing that “Dirty girls

love sex and you seek them out for pleasure. So a wife who is too sexual, too pretty in pubic, too

demanding in bed—these are all thought of as bad things to men like Roberto” and that a woman

is “psychologically messed up” for loving sex (Valdes-Rodriguez 72). He is also critical of her

weight, constantly telling Sara to eat less. Yet, even worse than being too critical of Sara, he is

also violent and abusive. When Sara tried to explain, with diagrams, how it was natural for a

woman to like and enjoy sex, he slaps her (72). He will not allow Sara to have her friends over,

even giving her a bloody lip once because he believed her friends gossiped about him (74). Sara

also details an episode of this violence when they went to New Hampshire for skiing, and

Roberto fractured her collarbone because of jealousy. Sara says, “He was convinced I’d spent

the afternoon in the lodge so I could get it on with the teenager…Roberto thought the red marks

on my neck were from that guy sucking on me in the bathroom, and so he planted his foot on my

chest until the bone snapped” (75). Sara explains the incidents away though, laughing it off or

justifying his behavior because he is a good father and provider. Things escalate, however, when

Liz, Sara’s best friend and one of the sucias, is revealed to be a lesbian and Roberto forbids Sara

from seeing her. Liz comes over to Sara’s house, and though Sara tries to hide it, Roberto finds

out and becomes very vicious, insulting Sara, knocking her into a corner, pushing her to the

ground. Sara tries to explain the pregnancy, and though Roberto doubts her, he starts to relax.

But as he yanks her towards him, she falls, slipping on the ice, and falling down some steps, and

Roberto becomes ferocious again. He slaps her, and then “does something unthinkable: He
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kicks me, again and again, in the side, and I feel the blood coming in cramping waves. Not my

baby…Then he kicks me again, in the head. I hear a crunch inside my face” (199). This is the

most negative and damaging representation of a man and masculinity in Dirty Girls, not just

because Roberto is violent, but also unhinged, cruel and barbarous. “Chick lit, as a beneficiary

of feminism in this respect, falls clear on its judgment of violence…While some protagonists

may have difficulty perceiving that their abuse is inexcusable, the chick lit genre dissociates the

forceful male from the hero” (Harzewski 38).

Last, there are pervasive literary tropes about men in chick lit. Of them all, the most

common and well-known are the ideas of the nice guy and the bad boy, and neither of them are

positive or flattering depictions of men.

The “bad boy” tends to play to what women want, be it the mysterious, stoic guy, the

tough guy that needs to be redeemed, or a troubled man with a tragic past. But it is intimated

that the bad boy is essentially bad, meaning criminally inclined or mentally unstable, potentially

unable to keep a job, and will probably be most interested in the sexual aspects of the

relationships, with little regard for fidelity. Bridget Jones’s Diary features Daniel Cleaver as the

bad boy—sly, witty, and casually sexy, an engaging flirt and quite charming—who also happens

to be Bridget’s boss. The reader is introduced to Daniel by way of flirty and suggestive

messages at work. She and Daniel exchange these e-mails for a few weeks, eventually go on a

date, and Daniel takes her home with the intention of sleeping with her, prefacing the encounter

by saying “‘This is just a bit of fun, OK? I don’t think we should start getting involved.’ Then,

caveat in place, he carried on with the zip” (Fielding 29). Despite this, Bridget forgives him, and

they have sex, after which he ignores her for days, and even reneges on going to Prague with her.

Bridget ignores Daniel for the next three weeks, yet when he shows up drunk at her flat, she lets
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him stay, believing she is in love. Daniel, at first, is charming, but quickly bores Bridget,

preferring to stay home watching television than going out. After he cancels on her for a party

they were to go to where Bridget intended to introduce him to her family, she finds him cheating

on her. Daniel Cleaver is completely representative of the idea of the bad boy, and in some ways

becomes a villain during the course of the narrative.

The “nice guy” is a common trope, going along with the familiar cliché that “nice guys

finish last” and in chick lit, they are portrayed as ineffectual or feeble, undermined and belittled.

The nice guy is friendly, genuine, and morally average if not better, typically passionate and

possibly engaging. For example, Lauren describes her friend Usnavys’ boyfriend:

Juan heads a small nonprofit agency in Mattapan that mainly helps rehabilitate and
employ drug-addicted Latino men. He as an amazing success rate, as many articles in my
own newspaper have documented. So what that he doesn’t make much money…Juan,
who’s actually really good-looking—for a short man. (Valdes-Rodriguez 16-17)
Lauren knows what a good man Juan is, but still offers him an insincere or indirect compliment.

And Usnavys is further guilty of not treating Juan nicely. She pretends she does not know him

because she disapproves of his attire, will not admit to caring for him, and consistently censures

him. When Lauren met Juan for the first time, he attended a formal event for a Democratic

candidate for the mayor of Boston in clothing that was not appropriate (17). Lauren further

describes an incident of how Usnavys treats Juan: “Juan had only come to see Usnavys; he

wanted to show her he sported the candidate she raved about…When he finally approached and

said hello, head hanging down like a whipped dog, she pretended she didn’t remember who he

was” (17). Even the language describing Juan’s behavior is demeaning. Neither trope provides

a flattering or heartening view of masculinity and male characters.

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These exposés and depictions of men, maleness, and masculinity can be read as a

reflection of social change that is resulting in either real or perceived increasing male insecurity

and powerlessness. But these representations do nothing to further feminist causes. These

narrative strategies provide the female protagonists with power, but inverting the gender

representations only serves to eventually disgrace women as well if this power is based on

ridiculing men and turning them into objects of consumption. Lastly, the lack of positive

representation is evocative because it reiterates that a crisis of masculinity may lead to

assumptions that positive males must “remain anabstract dream in women’s lives” (Smyczynska

33).
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Works Cited

Candela, Margo. Life Over Easy. New York: Kensington, 2007. Print.

Ferriss, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. New York:

Routledge, 2006. Print.

Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones's Diary. Picador: Penguin Group, 1996. Print.

Gill, Rosalind, and Elena Herdieckerhoff. "Rewriting the Romance: New Femininities in Chick

Lit?" Feminist Media Studies 6.4 (2006): 487-504. Print.

Gormley, Sarah. "Introduction." Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009): 1-12. Print.

Harzewski, Stephanie. Chicklit and Postfeminism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2011.

Print.

In her novel, Stephanie Harzewski provides an excellent groundwork for understanding

the chick lit genre. Though she does not focus specifically on the portrayal of men in the

genre, her novel and its focus on the genre and its construction will provide the

framework for my essay.

Hoyer, W., & MacInnis, D. Consumer Behavior. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

Jernigan, Jessica. :Slingbacks and Arrows: Chick Lit Comes of Age.” Bitch Summer 2004: 68-

75.

Ríos, Lara. Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps. New York: Berkley, 2006. Print.

Smyczynska, Katarzyna. "Commitment Phobia and Emotional Fuckwittage: Postmillennial

Constructions of Male "Other: In Chicklit Novels." Diegesis: Journal of the Association

for Research in Popular Fiction 8 (2004): 29-36. Print.

Smyczynska article was more than beneficial during the writing and construction of my

paper. Her article was the only overt research I found about the representations of

masculinity in chick lit.

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Tasker, Yvonne, and Diane Negra. Interrogating Post-feminism: Gender and the Politics of

Popular Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Print.

Yvonne Taster and Diane Negra's text provided valuable insight into my topic because of

their exploration of post-feminism which has vast implications on the idea and reality of

masculinity.

Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa. The Dirty Girls Social Club. New York: St. Martin's, 2003. Print.