Eve-olution?

Work has floored me for the last two weeks, leaving one weekend dedicated to complete recovery as I could not read anything heavier than popular novels, merely for the escapism it offered....and the last weekend was...well...better...even went out to have a beer at a pub...something I hardly do when in Malaysia (not that I've gotten out of it much in the last 1 1/2 years). Speaking about popular novels...in case you wanna know...they were grouped under the category "chick-lits". I used to read them in between writing my thesis or reading heavier stuff...coz they were pretty quick pick-me-ups. For a person who could never read a romance without skipping all over the place to fastforward the "soap-opera" or glazing over after the first chapter (and the only time I tried to read romances was when I was going through my aunt's collection of books as a young teenager), I surprisingly read a mills and boons novel without realising it was one, all because I was reading the Bahasa Indonesia version (haha, and I was 10!), and I was so taken by the quantness of a Malay language that I didn't learn in school (but understood enough to follow the story, though not remembering a thing of it at the end). Later on, at an undergraduate, I started flipping through women's magazines, though not exactly a faithful reader, usually preferring to buy them second hand at a highly discounted price, if I buy them at all , which of course, would have spelt the death of the industry if their readers were like yours truly. And sometime in 1999, while moshing about a bookshop at an upscale part of town (I think I went to that area to get something else, and decided to visit the bookshop) and lo and a behold, I saw, bought and read my first chick lit. The book was called "Bridget Jones Diary". I shant say how old I was then, other than the fact I had skipped pass the gates into early adulthood and my reason for being attracted was because I wanted to see how it was like to be a woman, from another woman's viewpoint.

The second time I bought a chicklit novel was at a second hand bookshop in a dangerous part of London (where rival gangs indulge in shoot-outs after 6 pm). By then, I was a graduate student. By then, I had outgrown reading most women's magazines, except when at hair salons or when doing a quick scan for trend-spotting. Of course, as a copywriter, I have to read these, AND, other lifestyle-like magazines, as it s my job to be in touch with what is hip and happening in my country, so I started reading British Vogue, which has little to do with Malaysia, but the trends will certainly come to the shores, at least in the 'big', slick, city of KL. I have a lot to say about the differences between the "haves" and "have-nots" in terms of metropolis/small city divide, but this is a complicated story meant for the next time. Maybe because a friend unwittingly threw a "Shopaholic" (chick-lit reading girls will know what I mean) in my direction, the interest to read chick-lit reignited and I started reading chicklits about single British women, a single Italian woman, and single Jewish women. Seeing that my collection of chicklit did not yet exceed 8 (seems like I read one chicklit a year on the average, since 1999, though one of the copies I owned is actually a review copy), I haven't been able to explore a wider range of this genre (which, having done the research recently, found that there were very many) and I hope that I could soon, because of my interest in feminist stylistics . I suppose, the fact that a majority of the characters were career women, or have a semblance of a career (even if they moaned about being stuck in dead-end jobs), I started being able to identify with them as I started having a "real" career, which was I suppose, late last year. Prior to that, my main focus was on my academic work, with my so-called "careers" being taken up to butter the bread. And back then, little of my life resembled the characters to any degree. But this year, I realised how my life has become like the life of many average woman with a job/career. And I shudder to feel it. And basically, chick-lits appeal to many women because, even in those that are badly written (in terms of plot or even writing itself), the author is borrowing from what she knows, from her life, or the life of those around her, this injects a kind of fictionalised realism (no, it is not an oxymoron) that is reminiscent of the "How-to" articles not very different from that in the movie "How to lose a guy in 10 days" and "I-am-providing-you-council -and-solicitation" tone of many women'ss magazines. Of course, a majority of these novels are about women living in big cities (even if they'd originated from small towns) with "glamarous", or close to "glamarous" jobs in entertainment, media, advertising (I'm in this and it ain't glamarous, at all, unles s maybe if you win a major award or is a big-shot CD), publishing (tried this before, but maybe because I was involved in trade books publishing production involving very dry subject matters, I didn't quite enjoy my stint as much, though of course, they proved very useful in my current position) or fashion. A bigger city like KL will have more of such equivalents but women leaving in smaller towns in Malaysia devoid of such industries (unless you count the small, press offices found in small towns) will not identify with such roles as closely, though they might sometimes think these characters have "exciting" lives. Of course, as a study in "Reading the Romance" (I have to thank my supervisor for asking her students to read this book) had shown, small town women read Romances, especially Romances involving the upper-middle or upper-classes, and especially if they are aristocratic, in order to continue a fantasy world which they've been fed on from the time they were little girls, whether by the story books they read, the toys they played with or the magazines they saw their mothers reading. A lot of these notions were filtered down to non-Western girls by way of cultural import. If one was to write a chick-lit based on a life of, let's say, an Ethiopian woman, how would it be like? Many of the styles of chick-lit writing in the West had found their way to Asian cities, and you will not be surprised to find Chinese or Indonesian or even Malaysian version of the chick-lit, with the same navel-gazing or tongue-and-cheek style of narration, though customised to meet the approvals and needs of local socio-cultural conditions (an example would be to look at a Malay chicklit/romance -the two genres tend to be blurred slightly, and lo and behold, sometimes even written by men! - where the sexy-looking girl about town will sometimes be replaced by a demure-looking hijabed woman). And in all these stories, it is all about looking for romance, the right man and a sort of "hidden" wish to settle to a life of a "lady who lunches"/"happy-homemaker", though of course, some do want the "excitement" of a dream-career.

What started me on this non-sequential diatribe was becaue I happened to come across an article in a trade magazine, which I'd also found online, on how the women of the future will be represented by this creature of suburban creation called the fulltime nurturer and part-time everything else. I can understand if they think that women are moving towards careers or management styles that are more nurturing but the analysis of the article seems to say something else. While I agree that there are many incompetent women, and men, out there who should be relieve of their position so that they will do less damage, should there be such a manner of generalization from interviewing a 100 women who say that they would rather be fulltime homemakers than career women (actually, seeing all things I have to put up with at work, I would rather not have to work in the kind of position I am now, but instead do the things I would really love, and with greater beneficial results. But that does not mean I want to be a stay-at-home mom whose sole purpose in life is to serve my family). I think the simplistic proclamation made here, that women are now more confident of themselves, and thus they are returning home, is unjustified. Firstly, what facts back that up? Have women really achieve such a standing that they are really confident, or is that they have never been taught that they have to be as strong, if not stronger, than most men, and so, they would love to run back to a Martha Stewart and Homes and Gardens -like environment when the going gets tough, and when they have had enough of the tough bosses and sexist promotion practices. Or maybe they are asking women who are seeing the lives of their grandmothers through rose-tinted glasses? Taking up knitting as a hobby is different from having to constantly knit to supply the family's knitwear. Cooking is of course a fun thing to do (Hey, I like it too) but I suppose these women would not be enjoying it so much if they have to do it all the time, 3 times a day, WITHOUT a maid. Are they only asking the urban women who had the privilege of growing completely unaware of the struggles of their foremothers (maybe they were never asked to go to the kitchen and cook for the entire family all by themselves) or did they even try asking the rural woman who has to do A LOT of the work by hand (yes, that still happens in this day and age). But then, if this is consumer research, why bother bout the women who can't afford? Just bolster the dreams of those women with degrees and comfortable lifestyles who thought Betty Friedan is an old crank who should be ignored (if they have even heard of her) that their aim in life is to recreate their homes in the likeness of Ladies Home Journal (the 1950s kind, not the one you see today) or Martha Stewart Living. As marketeers would say, it is all about selling a dream. And I am guilty of attempting to create that gimmick everyday, though I've not really worked on consumer products targeted at women beyond some baby formula. And women, and I can attest to that, are the developed and semi-developed world's most avid consumers. Betty Friedan saw that coming in the 1960s, as she analysed the advertisements targetted at the homemakers.
There's nothing new with what Faith Popcorn is saying.

Anyway, if you want to read that article for yourself and offer your suggestion, you are most welcome

How does chick lit tie with it? Well..it is all about the act of identification, memories and shared beliefs. Maybe, savvy marketeers would start using popular novels such as these to start selling their products in the future. That is if people are still reading that much by then.Who knows, it might all be holographic. Speaking of which, I just started reading "The Holographic Universe" more than 6 years after I bought that book. :D