Originally Posted by papayahed
Hey!!! I'm right hear, I can hear you.
Hey!!! I'm right hear, I can hear you.
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
Agree, boy-lit is cooler than chick-lit.
Actually, Gaskell, Austen and (sorry, Jamesians...) Henry James are kinda chick-lit as well, and there are classics, too. Maybe the specific about chick-lit and boy-lit is not a general inferior quality but that it is customized to gender-specific needs.
Kelby Lake
Your right. Hemingway could be viewed as a sophisticated "lad-lit" if only for: the bull fighting, the love of drink, the casual affairs, the big-game hunting & deep sea fishing.
I would agree that Sci-fi and fantasy to a degree is marketed towards males, but there are still plenty of female readers in these genres. And within the genre communities the fact that such a population exists, while most of the marketing is still towards men, has created a lot of heated debate and impassioned argument over these and related issues.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Well, I think the reason is female authors have been undercutting genre conventions for a while, in order to open sci-fi and fantasy up for female audiences - Terry Brooks, for instance, is not so marketable toward females, whereas Monica Hughes wrote specifically for females, or Terry Goodkind I would think would have no appeal to females unless they are some sort of sado-masochistic fetishists, but Mercedes Lackey perhaps does.
If you look at the romance novel though, the people who best undermine the genre are women, writing for other women (since it generally is women who read books and not men), and for critical audiences. So, for instance, "The Beggar Maid" from Alice Munro's Who do you Think you Are? works to undermine the romance, but that doesn't undermine the gender of the genre, merely the genre in itself.
The whole genre of novels, as I mentioned before, is dominated by female audiences, and has a strong history of being so - only the literary novel has shown any real sense of not being "women's literature", historically, and now the emergence of the genre novel, the thriller, and the sci-fi, has perhaps begun to undermine traditional audiences - but lets be honest. IF I were to write a feminist narrative, in a fantasy setting, generally it would either be marketed for females, or for both sexes. If I were to write a feminist undercutting of Chick Lit, then the book would be marketed toward females, generally feminists.
In a sense it has to do with agenda - if I write a book that in essence has equality amongst the sexes in mind during the composition, and therefore does not aestheticize any binary, by featuring the women as damsels in distress, or medusas/succubi, and the men as knights in shining armor/ or cruel women-torturing/women imprisoning villains, then it generally would be a text that is marketed to both sexes, if it is from a male perspective, or to women, if it is from the female perspective.
If I were to write a misogynist romance though, if it featured a female as the protagonist, it would be marketed towards females, and generally if it featured a male, depending on the degree of it, it would be marketed to both sexes, or to males.
This is all a rough generalization, but it is essentially how it works - I can't really construct from memory much, on the popular front, of divergence from the pattern - J K Rowling, for instance, took off the actual first name from her book jacket for the sake of not appearing female, in order to scare away male audiences.
Of course, in literary circles, none of this exists - literary novels feature both genders, writing from both perspectives, in many cases. If I read Jane Austen, it is considered normal, but if I read Nora Roberts, it is considered eccentric - I can read Margaret Lawrence, but I cannot with a straight face read Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. The reason is how women are treated in these books.
Take for instance, Nora Roberts. She said herself, "The books are about the celebration of falling in love and emotion and commitment, and all of those things we really want."
So what exactly is she saying - this romance is exactly what women want, or we are creating what women want to sell them this fantasy?
The plot of the Romance has essentially been boiled down to 3 things. The man, the virgin and the whore. The man is rich, sexually dominant, and good looking, and ends up needing to choose between the two women. The virgin is not interested in the money, is beautiful but doesn't know it, and is ultimately helpless against the power of the man, yet fights to beat the whore, who she beats by being true to her feelings, and being the "virgin". The whore on the other hand, has sex, loves money, and flaunts her sexuality, and as a result, does not capture the eye of the man, even though the virgin may think at one point that he has taken up with her, we always learn that he has been in love with the virgin the whole time.
That is essentially the romance novel in a nutshell - now, add some different sets of scenery, some names, articles of clothing, and some events where the characters meet, and you've got yourself a novel.
So, in a sense, what is being sold is a sort of 1950s gender conception - a dated sort of post-war preoccupation that essentially blew up in the 60s and 70s, yet still forms itself in these books.
The reason they are perhaps so successful then, can be attributed to the removal of time between now and the 50s. Women's issues have become historical discourse in many cases, rather than contemporary issues - Abortion, for instance, which was seen as a women's rights issue, now is seen as a religious/political issue. Birth control is taken for granted, freedom in the workforce expected, yet the fantasy continues, persisting, suggesting that we can return to the past, and it will be all lovey dovey.
The fantasy reconstructs the gender, outside of the real issues, in order to reshape the perceptions of females - how that works, well, it is an old genre, and people are told reading is good, so they read these, and get all sorts of ideas in their heads, then go watch a Julia Roberts film, or whatever, and read their cosmo magazines, and whatnot, and figure this fantasy exists outside of a frame, and that wouldn't it be nice to have this knight in shining armor come with his money, and go for me, the less pretty, virgin type, who goes to church, where, she is told this is the virtuous way to behave anyway?
Now, if we were to look for a male equivalent, what could we possibly find? Well, for one it would need to play into two things - sports, and violence, the two male stereotypes. For sports, well, we have that - a long slew of sports books and movies, especially football ones, and for violence, well, generally that works in fantasy, sci-fi, and militaristic fiction. IF you throw in some women, behaving in a sort of male misogynist fantasy, constructed out of pornography, and "men's magazines" then you probably have found the perfect formula - of course, men have generally been allowed to develop outside of the gender definition than women for longer, so I guess a single formula doesn't work, and you are left with variants, like Goodkind, who I would argue appeals to males who have a sort of sick perverse concept of the female, since they were probably rejected/lack the ability to capture the attention of any women, and are probably loserish sort of people, whereas something like Tom Clancy could perhaps appeal to a sort of person who thinks of himself as some sort of macho man.
It wasn't me you had the conversation with, but it makes sense - like I said, more literary books seem to appeal to both genders (with women reading more), and in terms of genre fiction, books that are not misogynist but have a male protagonist generally appeal to both genders. Female protagonists are harder, it would seem, to market to both genders, and I think incredibly strong female characters are harder to market to males, than strong male characters are to women (I doubt there is much difficulty marketing them to women). IT is cultural, but of course, this only really applies to popular novels. I like to think readers of poetry and drama, for instance, don't really consider gender at all, unless again they are part of the rare sort of "gendered" variants of these genres, like The Vagina Monologues, which generally are deliberately limited to one sex (generally female), though The Vagina Monologues in general have received, it would seem more criticism from females than anyone else because of it.
Yes, this vampire bit is generally targeted to females, as the whole vampire mythos is built around a sort of dark eroticism that is prevalent in much of "Chick-Lit". I personally do not see the appeal, but I wouldn't be caught dead reading one, so I'll admit, in terms of gender, I personally wouldn't pick one up. Poetry rarely has any gender problems, unless again it is on the popular sort of level, where the poet has a deliberate sort of female audience in mind, and generally isn't very good at all. Nikki Giovanni, for instance, I would think doesn't appeal much to any poetry readers, except, because of her politics, manages to get exposure in certain feminist circles. Generally though, I think male poetry readers are more accepting, and would read works by Rita Dove, for instance, who is certainly writing from a very female, personal perspective: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ove/poems/2201
As for sci-fi and fantasy, I would think generally, the ones targeted at women are either done so by accident, or for a young age. Take Mercedes Lackey for instance, who is generally thought to write for females. I generally think the only thing that puts her apart from any male epic/medieval fantasy writer is the fact that she writes with mostly female characters, and touches on themes that pertain to females, such as sexuality, and coming of age.
Tamora Pierce to has just as many male characters as female, but I think her fore fronting more often than not a female character as apposed to a male one generally makes her a "female" writer, since she I guess writes with feminist issues and female adolescence and coming of age in mind as well.
Even someone like Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea books, I would wager, have had a similar treatment. The second one seems all but ignored, because it generally is the only one to really treat female issues, within a frame of male-dominated society and narrative.
Now, the gender neutral ones, again, seem to have male protagonists. I think Robert Jordan is the best example, because, generally, though I don't consider him by any means to have been a great writer, I think he was a respectable one. I think perhaps he began to really open up to female perspective within the grand narrative frame of epic fantasy. Of course, his works are too long, not so well written, and flawed in their own right, but I think it is safe to say he achieved a balance in perspective and imagination, even though arguably his main protagonist is male (the vast amount of secondary perspectives are female, and he recast Merlin as a woman).
Who knows though - I think the genre itself is crumbling down as fast as it is building up, so maybe we'll see finally the destruction of the post-Terry Brooks era happen sooner or later, and move forward, though I can;t help but think all this "paranormal" sort of Werewolf/Vampire junk to be deterring any real positive development.
Who knows, maybe we can finally have a Harriet Potter one of these days, who male readers are accepting of.
OK Im a bit brain numb at the moment should answer before I grab a cup of tea or two but...
the Kelley armstrong ones I was reffering too, the series is called women of the otherworld, all femal protagnists and her duo of books about a vigialti hit woman ( well ive got the second one to read tonight havent read it yet but he first one was good.
Your break down of romancce made me laugh, You pretty much nailed the mills and boons 'pink' series. One of the things I do at work is sort the lists of stock rotation by idetifying the colour and/or location of a book based on its title, as all romances are shelved in romance and then by colour by the computer system doesnt tell us the colour of the book cover ( thank god for photgraphic memories). So yes all the pink ones have what I think of as 'buisnessy' titles. words like Tycoon, bargin, deal, hire, merger, virgin greek, italian, millionaire, Spaniard and sheik all fetaure highly. Some of the titles are so redicouly I just go and stnd in teh romance section if I am having a bad day and read them (the titles) and I am inevitably laughing by the time I look away. Actually Iam suprised no one at work has cottoned on to the main reason Ive had to rearrange the romance Books so I can see them from couter over the shoulder of customers if they are yelling and sweraing at me.
anyway where was my point? Oh yes while that is the one form and actually it shows up more in the older reprints I noticed earlier in the year when I was rating reading masses of romances I genrally wouldnt have gone near that things pre 93 were alot more of the 'you can have a nice little job, voluntary of course I want you to be hme when I get home' deal... ( and I swear that is a quote from a Betty Neels- a woman who was obseesed with Dutch Doctors with aristocratic/wealthy backgrounds.
But there are more plots, ther is the schemeing matchmakers...usually family of somekind, but I did once read one where it was ghosts of two teenagers who had tried to elope hunderds of years ago and neede a match between their familys to be 'freed'. Oh and my flat mate had a book earlier this year where an alligator got it ino its head to match make this couple for some bizzare reason.
Actually nw that I think about it although occasionally you do get the story of the 'whore' as you call it, generally you are right. sweet innocent girl who is ridcioullsy rett meets moody male who in someway needs saving from himself but who protectcs her...phewwy all of it. but thats more than half the fun, laughing at how seriously they all take themselves.
JBI if you do ever decided to try one of those vampy or as I like to call them things that go bump in the night books, I had to catlouge and cross check over 50 authors tis year whihc involved reading a book or part of one by most of them, I could steer you towards the most okis of them.
My mission in life is to make YOU smile
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:
Forum Rules- You know you want to read 'em
|Litnet Challange status = 5/260
|currently reading
I think your last comments head into dangerous territory, not to mention are a bit presumptuous about audience. It's one thing to assume a certain book appeals more to one gender over the other, but it is another thing entirely to start making specific claims that Goodkind "appeals to males who have a sort of sick perverse concept of the female, since they were probably rejected/lack the ability to capture the attention of any women." It is impossible to really infer why someone does or doesn't read something or what their relationship life is like from what they read.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Have you read Goodkind?
Sorry, but that is not correct. The specifications for the chick-lit characters are varying very much depending on the target group. The character a 70 year old catholic villager chick identifies with is not the same a tattooed 17year old goth chick wants to read about.
The female characters my publisher wanted were working single mothers about 30 or childless career women about 25, more or less experienced in relations, good-looking, sympathic. The men successful in job, cooperative, virile but not too dominant.
Ask a professional...
Last edited by amarna; 08-01-2009 at 05:18 PM.
Thinking about it, Mickey Spillane could be the nearest thing to Lads Only lit. Were I a woman I'd hate those books, for their portrayal of women. But then Chick lit often portrays men as pathetic and one dimentional, and certainly as a separate species.
I do not think that boy-lit really exists. Girls that are not really into reading or expanding their intelligence will read Gossip Girl or whatever it is they choose. However, your typical mindless dude trying to play some Halo and get buff in the gym doesn't really have a book for them. And even if there is a book with lots of mindless action and sex, they probably do not read it.
but Star Wars and Star Trek novels, maybe.
Last edited by Mathor; 08-02-2009 at 04:45 AM.
I'm losing all those stupid games
That I swore I'd never play
Just by the way you use terms like "expanding their intelligence" leads me to believe that you could use some expansion yourself.
another thing about Star Trek being boy-lit, many women have written Star Trek books and even series of books. Star Trek is in no way boy-lit!
I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo
If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock
Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire
Yeah, it's certainly pushing it. All science fiction has the possibility of going either way. I think the only books that truly push into the realm of boy-lit are graphic novels
I'm losing all those stupid games
That I swore I'd never play
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
