Why the Term Chick Flick is Sometimes Problematic

      I was on a date a few years ago with a decent guy. I remember asking him what kind of movies he liked since we were both into movies. His reply was “I love all genres except chick flicks.” At the time, I didn’t really think about his comment but when I was home watching a chick flick movie the next day, it hit me. The term chick flick is often associated with movies that have females as their main character and the female in the movie is often dramatic and emotional. The main theme of her life is finding true love and settling for that one guy she thought she did not consider at the beginning of the movie. From comedy movies like “Bridesmaids,” to romantic movies like “The Notebook,” chick flicks are either too dramatic or too ‘cool’ for the non-female audience. Why is that? When did movies about women started to be called chick flicks? Do we call movies about men something else? Do they have a name? Or do we associate them with different genres because we respect them and take them more seriously? Because no matter how much I sit here and think, I cannot think of a name that we assign to movies that have males as the main character. They are simply called movies with different genres.

      As long as I remember, chick flicks were always my favourite type of movies growing up. They were funny, lighthearted, often dramatic, and added that romantic element to my teenage nonexistent love life. But now, I see them differently. I see them as movies that portrait women as emotional, dramatic and always seeking love, even obsessing about it. When I look at the lives of women around me, I know this is not true. We are not any more dramatic than our male counterpart. We are not always seeking love. In fact, we are often seeking an education and a career that will give us independency in the future. We are often seeking ways to improve gender equality. This is not to say that we do not want love or we are never in romantic relationships. This is to say that our lives do not revolve around love or around competing with other women for that one guy (or girl, even though the representation of LGBTQ2+ love stories is almost nonexistent in chick flicks). 

      We need the term chick flick to represent all women and not just a societal stereotype of what a woman should look like and how she should act. We need the term chick flick to focus on women’s struggles in finding the right career and challenging societal norms. We need the term chick flick to represent the beautiful friendships and sisterhoods that most women have with each other and how they are each other’s biggest fans. I don’t think we’re asking for a lot. We’re only asking for a representation of reality.