Chick Flicks Contemporary Women at the Movies

From An Affair to Remember to Legally Blonde, "chick flicks" have long been both championed and vilified by women and men, scholars and popular audiences. Like other forms of "chick culture," which the editors define as a group of mostly American and British popular culture media forms focused primarily on twenty- to thirtysomething, middle-class—and frequently college-educated—women, chick flicks have been accused of reinscribing traditional attitudes and reactionary roles for women. On the other hand, they have been embraced as pleasurable and potentially liberating entertainments, assisting women in negotiating the challenges of contemporary life. A companion to the successful anthology Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction, this edited volume consists of 11 original essays, prefaced by an introduction situating chick flicks within the larger context of chick culture as well as women’s cinema. The essays consider chick flicks from a variety of angles, touching on issues of film history, female sexuality (heterosexual and homosexual), femininity, female friendship, age, race, ethnicity, class, consumerism, spectatorship, pleasure and gender definition. An afterword by feminist film theorist Karen Hollinger considers the chick flick’s transformation from the woman’s films of the ’40s to the friendship films of the ’80s and those of the "return to the classics" trend of the ’90s, while highlighting the value of the volume’s contributions to contemporary debates and sketching possibilities for further study.

CHICK FLICKS: CONTEMPORARY WOMEN AT THE MOVIES Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, Introduction: Chick Flicks 1 and Chick Culture Maureen Turim, Women’s Films: Comedy, Drama, Romance 41 Suzanne Ferriss, Fashioning Femininity in the Makeover Flick 67 Carol M. Dole, The Return of Pink: Legally Blonde, Third-Wave 91 Feminism, and Having It All Lisa M. Rüll, A Soundtrack for Our Lives: Chick Flick Music 120 Deborah Barker, The Southern-Fried Chick Flick: Postfeminism 142 Goes to the Movies Margaret Tally, Something’s Gotta Give: Hollywood, Female Sexuality 182 and the ‘Older Bird’ Chick Flick Lisa Henderson, Simple Pleasures: Lesbian Community and Go Fish 201 Myra Mendible, Chica Flicks: Postfeminism, Class, and the Latina 244 American Dream Mallory Young, Chic Flicks: The New European Romance 271 Holly Hassel, ‘The Babe Scientist’ Phenomenon: The Illusion of Inclusion 292 in 1990s American Action Films Kate Waites, Babes in Boots: Hollywood’s Oxymoronic Warrior Woman 312 Karen Hollinger, Afterword: Once I Got Beyond the Name Chick Flick 337 Selected Filmography 355 Selected Bibliography 367 Contributors’ Notes 378

Suzanne Ferriss is Professor of English at Nova Southeastern University. She has co-edited two volumes on the cultural study of fashion: On Fashion and Footnotes: On Shoes. She is also co-author of A Handbook of Literary Feminisms (Oxford University Press, 2002). Most recently, she co-edited Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction (Routledge, 2006) with Mallory Young. Mallory Young is Professor of English and French at Tarleton State University. She has published on a variety of topics, from the Odyssey to Texas women’s literature and, with Suzanne Ferriss, has co-authored several articles on chick culture. She and Ferriss co-edited Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction (Routledge, 2006).