Is chick lit bad for your love life?

Recently I read an article in the Daily Mail entitled "Read my lips! Love stories are just a con". Written by the enormously successful romance author Josephine Cox, it suggested that "countless young women" remain single "because Mr Perfect didn't appear to sweep her off her feet like he often does in books and films".

Cox continued, "I can't help wondering how much writers like me will be to blame for peddling unrealistic expectations of romance. So many books and films feature main characters who are perfect (heroes strongly chiselled, heroines porcelainlike and perfect in face and figure) that I worry they may give an unrealistic definition of what the perfect partner and partnership SHOULD be."

Just last weekend I found myself discussing this with my cousin who is about to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary. She said she's often disappointed by her husband because he doesn't live up to the men she reads about in women's fiction and sees in chick flicks. And this is after thirty years! And she's not the only one...

I'm guilty of it myself. Jennifer Crusie heroes are the ones who seem to get to me the most often. I finish her books both with a feeling of satisfaction (because her books are so good), but also thinking, "Why couldn't I find a man like that?" And I've been happily married for almost 12 years.

I know that men like Janet Evanovich's Joe Morelli or Jennifer Crusie's Phin Tucker (Welcome to Temptation) or even Sophie Kinsella's Luke Brandon don't really exist - or at least, if they do, I don't know any woman who has found one, but that doesn't stop me wondering if they really are out there and I just haven't found them.

Of course, there's also the fact that we only read about the best of these fictional men. Who's to say that Sophie Dempsey isn't driven demented by Phin's snoring or that Luke Brandon actually has a lapdancer habit on the side?

Or, as Josephine Cox puts it, "Books invariably end as our happy couples often walk off into the distance, hand in hand. They don't continue through the sleep deprivation of a young family, the mounting bills, then the spreading waistlines of middle age and the first grey hairs."

So what do you think? Is chick lit an escape from the tedium of real life so-called romance or are you holding out for a romantic hero?

Related posts: Who are your favourite chick lit heroes?

Anne

Ok, here&#39s my 2 cents:

Yes, Chick Flicks, Chick Lit, and Disney have all given me unrealistic expectations about men, but I DO live in the real world, and when my husband does the laundry, that&#39s good enough for me. When you&#39re single, it&#39s probably different, but as a married woman, all the chick stuff just gets me in the "mood." So, my husband gets some action and I feel all happy inside because of the cute love story I just read or watched. Really, it&#39s a win-win.

Keris

What a great comment, Margay, thanks!

Margay

I think it&#39s a slap in the face to women to imply that we can&#39t separate fact from fiction and that we&#39re holding out for the perfect man who remarkably resembles our favorite hero in a book. This is not the reason why some women are still single. A lot of us are single by choice because the alternative didn&#39t work out and we decided that we could do it on our own, after all.

Something I think is interesting is that it&#39s okay for men to hold unrealistic expectations about the "perfect" woman and it&#39s okay - no one seems to blink an eye at the amount of cosmetic surgery that&#39s performed on them to give them the look that men seem to want. But if a woman doesn&#39t marry because she&#39s holding out for the perfect guy (for her), it&#39s because her mind has been poisoned by chick lit and chick flicks. Doesn&#39t that seem a little sexist to anyone but me? I mean, really, when was the last time you heard anyone say that a man&#39s mind was rotted by images in Playboy and even Sports Illustrated Swimsuit addition and that those things combined with the body image produced by Hollywood was responsible for him holding out for the "perfect" woman? Men are just as influenced by what they read/see as women are and it&#39s time to stop bashing one genre of writing and blaming it for why so many women are single. It&#39s not the genre, it&#39s the age we live in. The age of Choice, where some of us like the single life.

Next thing you know, they will be blaming Chick Lit for global warming. Then again, some of the books can be pretty hot, so they might be on to something there.

An Unrepentant, Single-by-Choice (okay, and by divorce), Chick Lit Reader/Fan (and Phi Theta Kappa alum, so I learned somewhere to separate fact from fiction)

Keris

LOL, Brenda. Funnily enough, I&#39ve just given my husband a hug for washing a pan I thought he&#39d ignore. It&#39s not a villa on Lake Como, but it&#39s something.

As for Clooney being a "confirmed bachelor", I&#39m not sure he&#39s a commitment-phobe, I think he might be, you know, something else.

Brenda Janowitz

Oh, Keris, let&#39s face it-- if your husband really *were* like Clooney, you never would have made it down the aisle since the real Clooney is a "confirmed bachelor" (read: commitment-phobe). So, I say, go give your hubby a hug!

Is chick lit bad for your love life?

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