Fiction and Females: The Pitfalls of Chick Lit

Plagiarizing the Plot

The Harvard Gazette broke the story on April 23, 2006: Numerous passages in Kaavya Viswanathan's novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life are suspiciously similar to passages from Megan F. McCafferty's books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.

One example: McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts includes the line "He's got dusty reddish dreads that a girl could never run her hands through. His eyes are always half-shut. His lips are usually curled in a semi-smile, like he's in on a big joke that's being played on you but you don't know it yet." A passage in Opal, similarly, reads "He had too-long shaggy brown hair that fell into his eyes, which were always half shut. His mouth was always curled into a half smile, like he knew about some big joke that was about to be played on you."1

For her part, Viswanathan's denied that she intentionally plagiarized. She said that any similarities between her work and McCafferty's are completely accidental. Nonetheless, her publisher, Little, Brown, pulled the book from stores, and announced that it would not publish the second book, for which Viswanathan was under contract.

We may never know if Viswanathan intentionally lifted passages from McCafferty's novels, or whether, as she claimed, she subconsciously channeled McCafferty as she was writing Opal. (For what it's worth, my money's on the former. All writers who love to read — which is most writers — are a bit worried that they might subconsciously repeat a phrase or two from a book that they love and have read a million times. But the phrases that I worry about repeating, the phrases I know have lodged themselves inside me, are beautiful, poetic, alliterative, rhythmic, memorable phrases, not banal lines about jokes and shaggy hair.)

Whether or not Viswanathan plagiarized is a big deal.

But what the Opal controversy reveals is that, whether or not Viswanathan plagiarized, there is a clear formula for chick lit. Viswanathan followed the formula literally to the letter. But most people come to chick lit as readers, not writers. And we readers absorb the formula too, only we aren't in danger of too closely basing our novels on chick lit: We are in danger of basing our lives on chick lit.

Life According to Chick Lit

There's some variation in the chick lit world, of course, but the formula is as follows: Girl is guy-less; girl is miserable because she's guy-less; girl meets a seemingly unattainable guy (let's call him Prince Charming) whom the reader realizes is wonderful, but whom our heroine thinks is a prideful jerk; girl meets a second guy (let's call him Cad) whom she thinks is wonderful, but whom the reader realizes is a prideful jerk; girl gets romantically involved with Cad; Cad kicks girl to the curb; girl is rescued by Prince Charming. They live happily ever after.

Along the way, girl has sex with both guys. Girl swims in a sea of alcohol. Girl worries obsessively about her weight. Girl spends too much money on fabulous shoes. Girl has funny, tense interactions with her quirky brother, her overbearing mother, and her emotionally-absent father. She has a gang of girlfriends who console her (with martinis) when things go wrong. And things go wrong quite often.

Sit down at your computer, follow that formula and you will have yourself a chick lit novel.

But what happens when you follow that formula with your life?

Good Girlfriends

One ingredient in the chick lit novel is essential for good, sane, godly, fun living: the cadre of devoted, supportive friends. Millions of martinis notwithstanding, chick lit novels offer a pretty good model of life in community, friendship through thick and through thin, other-directed unwavering love. The heroines of chick lit novels have close friendships, and they treasure those friendships.

Consider the role of friendship in Bridget Jones's Diary, the novel that virtually defined the chick lit field. Bridget would be utterly lost without her two dear friends, Sharon and Jude. Those girlfriends are wise ladies — they know when to coo sympathetically and tell Bridget what she wants to hear, and they know when to speak prophetic truth to her, even if it's truth she'd rather not face. They hold her hand through all sorts of woe, heartbreak, and other melodrama. They're not Christians, but mutatis mutandis.2 Sharon and Jude offer a pretty good picture of what Christian friendship and community can look like. Bridget Jones's Diary is, among other things, about inviting our friends into the ugly, messy parts of our lives. It is about truly opening up to people. It is about living life together.

Ditching the Friends, Catching the Guy

Frankly, I think the element of friendship is the only life-lesson in chick lit worth following. In most other ways, a life patterned on chick lit would be, well, full of anxiety, dissatisfaction, and brokenness, not to mention hangovers.

What chick lit tells us to do is to make the pursuit of a boyfriend or husband our highest aim. Chick lit tells us to get the guy at all costs. It also tells us to have premarital sex at the drop of a hat; to devote more thought and time to our wardrobe than to our spiritual life; to drown our deepest longings with alcohol.

Even Christian chick lit recapitulates some of these problems. Of course, in Christian novels, no one's fornicating (even though, sadly, we know that churches are full of Christians who are), and people tend to drink Orangina™ rather than wine. But even the heroines of Christian chick lit often seem to think the end-all be-all of life is hooking a man.

When I was in college, I led a chick lit life. (Though I didn't know it was called that at the time: Chick lit itself was just coming into its own — I read Bridget Jones the year after I graduated.) I was, above all, obsessed with Catching The Right Guy. My emotional life completely revolved around this quest. I was absolutely convinced that I would be miserable until this happened, and I was equally convinced that if and when it happened, life would be perfect.

At least Bridget realized that her friendships were every bit as important, if not more important, than her dating life. My college self, unfortunately, was not so wise. I prioritized dates above friends. If a guy I was interested in called and asked me out, I would cancel a long-standing dinner date with a friend at the drop of a hat. Indeed, several friends — people I treasured, but just not as much as I treasured my fantasy Mr. Right — bowed out of our friendships after I stood them up once too often.

In short, I was like a chick lit heroine, only not as clued in about the importance of friendship. And I was miserable.

Life according to Bridget, it turns out, is not a good way to get a life after all.

A Better Book: The Good Book

Fortunately, Christian women don't have to pattern their lives around chick lit. We have a better book to rely on: the Good Book, the Bible.

The Bible tells us that there is, of course, a place for eros and marriage in our lives (though the Bible makes it clear that some people are called to lifelong singleness). But the Bible also tells us that a relationship with a man is never supposed to be our highest aim. We are never to think that we will be fulfilled by erotic love or marriage. We are never supposed to think that catching a guy, for a first date or a wedding date, is going to make us endlessly, blissfully happy.

The Bible tells us that the deepest longings of our restless hearts are for God. We are to pattern our lives not around our relentless pursuit of a guy, but around our response to God's relentless pursuit of us.

*(Note: Referrals to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)

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