Why We Love/Hate "Chick Flicks"

By Melissa Silverstein, Women's Media Center. Posted March 23, 2009.

Most women, including feminists, have a love/hate relationship with the chick flick.  A mere mention of the term can send you into a lather bemoaning the disparagement that the entire genre has wrought on womankind.  The current offerings are especially troublesome.  But this was not always the case. 

Back in the 1930s and 40s, during Hollywood's golden era, the chick flicks were called women's films, which were defined by film historian Jeanine Basinger as "a movie that places at the center of its universe a female who is trying to deal with emotional, social and psychological problems that are specifically connected to the fact she is a woman."  While women were the central characters in films like Mildred Pierce, Now Voyager and The Philadelphia Story, to name a few, the audiences were both men and women.

Fast-forward to the late 70s and early 80s when feminism was saturating the cultural landscape of the country and, for a brief moment, also penetrating Hollywood as women moved into powerful positions behind the scenes.  The films of that period show some of the strongest, most feminist women ever seen onscreen and displayed the depth and range of the rising female consciousness.  These films -- including Julia, Norma Rae, An Unmarried Woman, Silkwood, 9 to 5, My Brilliant Career, Yentl, Places in the Heart, Out of Africa, The Color Purple, Children of a Lesser God, Desert Hearts -- relayed women's stories as important and valid to the culture and often appealed to men as well.  But just like the women's film flamed out, by the late 1980s, feminist films began to disappear as the blockbuster mentality grew in combination with the "backlash" documented by Susan Faludi.  Since that time women have slowly and steadily been losing clout onscreen in a disturbing way that belies their behind-the-scenes power positions.

In recent decades, the women’s film landscape has slowly and steadily been usurped by the chick flick, and its dominance makes no one happy. Unlike the films in previous periods, the genre seems to have some sort of embedded kryptonite that repels men.  These films regularly have female ticket buyers at 60 and sometimes even 70 percent of the audience on opening weekend.  Still, the economics of Hollywood don't favor these films, which tend always to be referred to as counter programming.  They are smaller (few, if any explosions), which translates into smaller budgets for marketing and advertising, which in turn guarantees lower box office.  Thus few movies about women break out from the pack, although 2008 had some important exceptions including Sex & the City and Twilight, which both opened with blockbuster numbers.  Even the record-setting Mamma Mia! which has grossed a half a BILLION dollars worldwide, didn't open big here in the United States. Its staying power propelled it into the top 15 grossing films of the year.

Things are not equal in Hollywood and the current incarnation of the chick flick reflects that gender disparity by favoring films with sexist and regressive images of women.  Yes, women have become executives at all levels of the industry -- heads of production and even running studios -- yet for all those individual successes, women are still woefully underrepresented in all facets of the film business.  According to new data released this month, women make up 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.  Directors are a scant 9 percent and writers 12 percent (Center for the Study of Women in TV and Film.) 

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Melissa Silverstein is the writer and editor of Women & Hollywood.