Of Bridgets, Rebeccas, and Carries: Chick Culture Defines Woman Vivian Ruíz
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2011 Of Bridgets, Rebeccas, and Carries: Chick Culture Defines Woman Vivian Ruíz Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES OF BRIDGETS, REBECCAS, AND CARRIES: CHICK CULTURE DEFINES WOMAN By VIVIAN RUIZ A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2011 Vivian Ruiz defended this dissertation on October 24, 2011. The members of the supervisory committee were: Celia Daileader Professor Directing Dissertation Delia Poey University Representative Leigh Edwards Committee Member Donna M. Nudd Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii DEDICATION I dedicate this To my mother Vivian Limonta And my father Francisco Ruiz iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..v INTRODUCING THE CHICKS……………………………………………..........1 1. DEFINING TERMS—DOING GENDER: DEFINING FEMININITY….......6 1.2 DEFINING FEMINISM/DEFINING POSTFEMINISM……………......19 1.3 “AIN’T I A WOMAN?”: DEFINING THE UNDEFINABLE…..............................................................................32 2. SO, WHAT IS CHICK-LIT?: HISTORY, MARKET, AND CRITICS……..46 3. THE EDGE OF REASON: IS BRIDGET JONES A FEMINIST HEROINE?...........................................................................................63 4. “MERELY SUCCUMBING TO THE WESTERN DRAG OF MATERIALISM”: THE GLAMORIZATION OF PATHOLOGICAL SHOPPING AND SPENDING IN SOPHIE KINSELLA’S CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC……………………………...84 5. SATC ♥s NYC: CHICK-LIT AND THE CITY……………………………105 6. “WILL PERSEVERE WITH RESOLUTION TO FIND A NICE SENSIBLE MAN”: CARRIE, BRIDGET, AND REBECCA MAKE IT TO THE BIG SCREEN………………………………………….124 CHICKS JUST WANNA HAVE…BEER?...……………..................................146 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………….150 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………...155 iv ABSTRACT Chick-Lit is a fairly young literary genre that is widely popular among female readers and holds an important place within the publishing industry. For this reason, I have chosen Bridget Jones’s Diary, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Sex and the City (three culturally significant Chick franchises) to approach said genre from a critical perspective with the aim of exposing and challenging its primarily traditional, conservative content. The present work will examine the perpetuation of such oppressive ideologies as patriarchy and heteronormativity in the aforementioned Chick texts while also challenging their equation of femininity with commodity consumption, childbearing, and ditziness. v INTRODUCING THE CHICKS It was a calm, ordinary, sunny Sunday afternoon the day I went to the movies with my friends to watch The Proposal (2009), one of many Chick-Flicks with Sandra Bullock. In this movie, Bullock plays the role of Margaret Tate, an editor who lives in, where else but, New York City. Margaret is the epitome of the New York woman. She is the prototype that modern women aspire to be: attractive, stylish, professional, successful, determined, and assertive. When we first meet Margaret, she is dressed all in black, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, stilletos clacking as she makes her way through her office. Margaret’s black suit inspires respect and her demeanor fear. Her coworkers pretend to be busy when she walks by. They do not want to attract her attention because they know the outcome will be bad. You already know the kind of woman Margaret is. You have seen her in many other movies and you have read about her in a myriad of novels: she is Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Jenna Rink from 13 Going on 30 (2004), Andie from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Miranda Hobbes from Sex and the City (2008), and Abby Richter from The Ugly Truth (2009). The aforementioned characters are all representative of the common vilification of women in film, especially in films produced for and marketed to a female audience. For example, Andie Anderson is assigned to write an article on how to lose a guy (referring to one romantically involved with) in ten days. She is forced to perform the how-to-lose-a-guy-in-ten-days experiment on an unsuspecting man so as not to be fired. In the process, she lies and ridicules him. In like manner, Andrea (Andy) Sachs is portrayed in the popular summer blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada as a young, single woman whose work obligations cause her relationship with boyfriend Nate to fall apart. Like Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes, she is portrayed as negligent when she prioritizes her career over her romantic partner. The film 13 Going on 30 also presents the image of a cold-hearted, conniving working woman named Jenna Rink, who completely disregards and abuses all of her friends and coworkers. This way, the plots of the aforementioned movies portray young women (especially working, professional, single women) as cold-hearted, selfish, cruel, and conniving. Of course, in true Chick-Flick and romantic comedy fashion, the heroine and her love reconcile by the conclusion of the narrative. The heroine recognizes her wrongdoing and the couple either gets married or happily remains together. 1 The happy ending of romantic comedies and Chick-Flicks is a double edged sword because within a resolution based on heterosexual union and romantic love lay complex issues of representation that must be addressed. The formulaic ending of a happy couple in love is standard in Chick-Flicks. It is very rare to find a Chick-Flick in which the romantic relationship between the heroine and her boyfriend is not consolidated. Customary endings of heterosexual happy love in said films leave little room for alternate endings and their acceptance in the imagination of their audiences. For example, the representation of the single, working woman as an inconsiderate, coldhearted bitch who finds happiness and balance in her life only when she is in a relationship with a man limits the possibilities for the conceptualization of the chance for happiness in other circumstances that do not involve a heterosexual relationship, such as singledom or being in a same sex relationship. Chick-Flicks and the Chick-Lit novels from which many of them originate need to be analyzed for their content. As popular, widely-consumed texts, they have tremendous influence on their mostly female audience. Their content and its implications should not be taken lightly and certainly should not be ignored. I have chosen three Chick-Lit novels and their film adaptations to analyze the predominance of an overall negative, derogatory, portrayal of women as ditzy, conniving, materialistic, and overtly concerned with romantic, committed relationships. The three novels I will be analyzing in this study are Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (2001), Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (1997), and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996). I will include the film adaptations of these novels as examples of contemporary Chick-Flicks in which women are wrongly portrayed. I have chosen the aforementioned Chick-Lit novels and their film adaptations for this project because of their popularity as books and as films and because they are all great examples of texts that put forward an inaccurate representation of young single women. The aforementioned novels are definitely not canonical literary works. In like manner, their film adaptations do not figure as part of Hollywood’s best ever film classics. Nevertheless, these cinematic and literary texts are certainly not banal or irrelevant. They represent a good example of a myriad of popular texts that contain a problematic representation of single, young woman at the turn of the 21st century. In addition to examining the representation of young, single women and the perpetuation of heteronormativity in the aforementioned Chick texts, I will address other equally 2 relevant issues such as the representation of the female body as a battleground, to borrow Barbara Kruger’s phrase, where issues of health, image, objectification, and consumption, just to name a few, are contested.1 I will also address issues of marriage and reproduction put forth in Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sex and the City, and Confessions of a Shopaholic, both the novels and their film adaptations. It is common to find that Chick-Flicks and Chick-Lit novels portray marriage as a holy grail of sorts, one which the heroine must reach before it is too late, meaning before her egg count drops due to her age, even if she is only in her 30s. I find terribly disturbing the emphasis that Chick-Flicks and Chick-Lit place on marriage and coupledom as gateways to happiness. I will also examine closely the representation of women in Chick-Flicks and Chick-Lit novels in order to take a close look at issues of inclusion and exclusion within the female community in popular culture. The following pages will address the widespread urgency to marry and the emphasis on “compulsory heterosexuality,” borrowing from Adrienne Rich, present in Chick-Lit and Chick- Flicks from a feminist perspective so as to put forward a critique that challenges not only traditional views of femininity but also of sexuality 2. It is also my aim to contest the predominant definition of femininity as authentic, good, and valid only if male- dependent and retail-obsessed. I strongly believe that heterosexual marriage, with the aim of reproduction, and retail dependence are two of the most oppressive forces for women in contemporary times. I would like to go back now to my anecdote about watching The Proposal at the movies that Sunday afternoon the summer of 2009. I remember savoring the salt and sweetness of my super-sized Coke and popcorn combo when Margaret, Bullock’s character, is kindly offered help with her heavy luggage by one of the male characters.