A couple of days ago, I read an article about the decline of chick-lit. The article tried to give reasons why this is so, and especially one of the reasons was somewhat surprising to me when I read it.
First, the article argues that due to the recession no one really wants to read about spending and shopping.
Second, they argue that the readers who started reading chick-lit when it first appeared are now older and want perhaps more serious issues dealt with like children and career jugling. This is quite clear in the chick-lit series like the Shopaholic-books by Sophia Kinsella. The main character now has husband and baby. This is apparently called mom-lit and deals with these issues in a more light-hearted way.
Then there's the female readers who turned to crime fiction. Especially here in Scandinavia crime fiction is huge. And when I say huge I mean HUGE! In the Scandinavian books with female main characters, they also tend to be about the characters' personal lives, and the argument goes that these readers find a more serious (?) literature along with the subjects of their interests.
However, the last argument was that the classic chick-lit in book form has been swallowed by the blogs on the Internet. At first, I really disagreed and was actually a little hurt, but now I'm starting to see their point.
Some blogs have spending and shopping as their main profile, and I can see why the constantly on-going blog can be compared to chick-lit in this way. Nevertheless, I think to say that blogs have literally ruined the chick-lit genre is going a bit too far. Perhaps only the journal/diary like of the blogs can be called substitues for chick-lit, and that still depends on the voice and style of the blog.
Personally I can still see the possibilities for both mediums for expressing the life and issues of (mostly) young women, however as with everything else, it needs to take it's readers seriously and not trying to be something else.
But the article's arguments did get me thinking of my own blog - what profile am I here? What am I compared to other blogs? Should my blog be more clear profile-wise?
I like writing, and I like the variety of blogs I follow. And I think this blog shows my varied interests but I guess I will think more of what I show and what I really want to say here.
Have you had similar thoughts on the subject? When you started, did you have a clear picture of your blog and what it was supposed to do, or has it evolved over time? Perhaps even completely changed?
I find this question fascinating, are we (bloggers) the new chick-lit? Will perhaps the most popular or clear-cut blogs be published in book-form? And what does it take to be a good blog?
So many questions, I know..
Anyways, here's the link to the article (its in Danish, sorry non-Danes)
