AustLit

'Throughout the first decade of the tri-millennium women have continued to read chick lit and watch chick flicks, a genre of fiction and film first emerging in the mid-1990s. In this article we explore whether the genre's sustained reading is consistent with the main contention in chick lit and chick flick scholarship that its appeal is in the way it reflects messy but accurate aspects of women's contemporary everyday experiences, including sexual experiences. We contribute to this body of knowledge by reporting on an empirical study which forefronts the missing voices of women who may or may not be resolute fans. Following Raymond Williams' (1977, 1979) work on 'structures of feeling', and drawing from a body of knowledge known as the sociology of emotions, we explore the affective space of women's experiences of the chick genre and its feminine sexual representations. The data from an anonymous on-line survey of forty-one women living in Australia reveal that many of them have contradictory emotional experiences. This ambivalence is theorised.' (Editor's abstract)