Chick flick
They generally tend to appeal more to a younger female audience and deal mainly with love and romance.
Brandon French notes that the women's films of the 1950s "shed light on a different cluster of issues and situations women faced in their transition from the forties to the sixties: romance, courtship, work, marriage, sex, motherhood, divorce, loneliness, adultery, alcoholism, widowhood, heroism, madness and ambition.
In the United States in the 1980s, a succession of teenage drama pictures also labeled as chick flicks were released, many by director John Hughes.
These often had a different and more realistic tone than previous chick flicks, with dramatic elements such as abortion and personal alienation being included.
"Chick flicks" often began with single characters, who soon after unexpectedly meeting a suitable and charming significant other, their lives took a turn for the better.
[12] Iconic films of the genre such as Clueless (1995), The Princess Diaries (2001), and Mean Girls (2004) act as evidence of such.
In all of them, buying feminine clothes, makeup, or shoes is portrayed as a large part of women's identities.
The representation of women in noticeable male-dominated professions and/or positions is seen in films such as Legally Blonde (2001) and The Proposal (2009).
The industry has evolved the genre from solely portraying soapy romance stories to a focus on more realistic hardships.
[15] Additional greatly successful "chick flicks" in the box office are Love Actually (2003), Notting Hill (1999), and Mamma Mia (2008).
[17] "Chick" was used to demean women, casting them as childlike, delicate, fluffy creatures in need of protection from men.
Natalia Thompson states that chick flicks are "an attempt to lump together an entire gender's interests into one genre".
[20] There is evidence from Russian social scientist Natal'ia Rimashevskaia that gender stereotypes further perpetuated by the media can lead to discrimination against women and limit their "human and intellectual potential".
Some say that chick flicks are micro-aggressions actions or exchanges that degrade a person based on their membership in a "race, gender, age, and ability".
More issues with the genre emerge from the opinion that chick flicks play to every woman's "patriarchal unconscious".
Researcher Sarah-Mai Dang acknowledges that the films can be "criticized as threatening backlash to the achievements to feminism"; however she contends that they can be celebrated for their representation of female freedom.
[24] Dang further proclaims that it gives space for the female voice to be present or heard in contemporary work like chick flicks.
