Abstract
This article reviews the use of fiction as a qualitative research method. The article focuses on the feminist academic novel as a means of representing qualitative research, raising feminist consciousness, accessing hard-to-get-at dimensions of social life, opening up a multiplicity of meanings, tapping into empathy and resonance as ways of knowing and reaching diverse audiences with feminist social research knowledge. The article centers on the construction of the two lead female characters in the feminist arts-based novel, Low-Fat Love.
After blowing off her friend with a text message to spend the rest of the weekend with Pete, Prilly floated into her office Monday feeling exhilarated. Even though she knew Pete was probably not terribly successful, all she could think about was how sexy he was and how lucky she was to have met him. Filled with thoughts of seeing him that evening, and wearing her lucky bronze-colored sling back heels, she barely noticed Janice pop into her doorway before having a chance to turn her computer on.
“It’s 9:15. You’re always here right at 8:00. I was concerned. A little bit longer and I would have called you just to make sure you were ok.”
Considering they had almost no relationship whatsoever, she wondered why Janice was feigning this concern for her. That thought temporarily distracted her from wondering why Janice was keeping tabs on what time she got into the office.
“Oh, I had a late night. So I decided to come in a little later today,” Prilly said, suddenly realizing it was none of Janice’s business.
Too focused on her own agenda to recognize an opportunity to prod for more information, Janice simply asked, “Well, what do you think?”
With no idea what Janice was talking about, Prilly asked, “About what?”
This caused Janice to roll her eyes, flip her hair, and sigh all at once. Prilly was worried she might hurt herself. She plopped down into the chair facing Prilly and responded sharply, “About the memoir series.”
“Oh, right. I’m so sorry Janice but I was really busy this weekend and I didn’t have a chance to look over the materials. Can I get back to you later in the week?”
“Prilly, this is really an excellent opportunity. And it’s time sensitive. We need to get moving on this.”
“Time sensitive?” Prilly wondered to herself. It wasn’t time sensitive. But she realized that Janice was fixated and would be relentless. If Prilly ultimately turned her down, Janice would be out to get her in ways that may no longer be so subtle. If she agreed to work with Janice she would probably end up suicidal. It was a toss-up. Feeling invincible from the two orgasms she had the night before, Prilly decided that with her personal life taking this wonderful unexpected turn, it wouldn’t be such a bad time to take on a new work challenge. Maybe the series would be a hit; memoirs were interesting. Best yet, Pete would be impressed.
“Well, I still want to review the materials to understand what kind of commitment we’re talking about, and what the compensation will be, but I think it’s a good idea and I’d like to do it with you.”
“Great. This is a terrific opportunity for you. I mean I don’t really have time for it either but I think it will really strengthen our line and help your career.” As Prilly was contemplating this last remark, Janice stood up and smiled. “I’ll let Stu know. Let’s set up a meeting later this week to go over the details and draft our work plan.” And with that Janice left her office, closing the door behind her. Prilly worried about what she had just gotten herself into. (Leavy, 2011, pp. 29-30)
The preceding is taken from my academic novel, Low-Fat Love. I selected this passage as an entrance into this article for a few reasons. First, it introduces the lead female characters in the novel, intimating at the nature of their imbalanced working relationship. Second, the passage demonstrates the two techniques that can make fiction so powerful for communicating social science knowledge: dialogue and access to the “inner worlds” of characters through “interior monologue.” Finally, the excerpt reveals several important insights into the main character, Prilly, and her romantic relationship with Pete. In this short excerpt we learn that Prilly has both blown off a female friend to be with Pete and is making what seems like a questionable professional decision based on wanting to impress him. Low-Fat Love centers on issues of self-esteem, the psychology of negative relationships, and the social construction of femininity—all of which are woven into this passage—demonstrating how many layers of meaning can be communicated through fiction.
Introduction
In this article I review the use of fiction as a qualitative research method. In particular I focus on the feminist academic novel as a means of representing qualitative research, raising feminist consciousness, accessing hard-to-get-at dimensions of social life, opening up a multiplicity of meanings, tapping into empathy and resonance as ways of knowing and reaching diverse audiences with feminist social research knowledge. The article centers on the construction of the two lead female characters in my feminist arts-based novel, Low-Fat Love.
The Arts and Qualitative Research
Artful forms of research having exploded over the past two decades (e.g., see Bagley & Cancienne, 2002; Barone & Eisner, 2012; Knowles & Cole, 2008; Leavy, 2009; Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, & Gouzouasis, 2008). These genres of research are signified by many terms including but not limited to arts-based research (ABR), arts-based educational research (ABER), arts-informed inquiry, and a/r/tography (a/r/t). It is well accepted in the qualitative research community that these genres occupy a space within our field of practice, so I will not attempt to outline their history or legitimate their place within our researcher’s toolbox (for a full discussion of arts-based research please see Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice). This article focuses exclusively on the value fiction holds in qualitative research, emphasizing the potential fiction has for feminist research practice.
It is important to briefly note some of the strengths of arts-based research practices that come to bear on the usefulness of fiction as a research strategy. Artistic enterprises offer a different lens onto social experience (Richardson, 2001), promote reflection and negotiation, open multiple meanings, and make social research more accessible to diverse audiences (Leavy, 2009). Thomas (2001) notes, “Art as inquiry has the power to evoke, to inspire, to spark the emotions, to awaken visions and imaginings, and to transport others to new worlds” (p. 274). Perhaps more than anything else, the products of arts-based research have the potential to tap into emotions and build resonance (Leavy, 2009).
Fiction as Method: A Brief Literature Review
Creative nonfiction arose in the 1960s and 1970s to make qualitative research reports less boring, while remaining truthful (Caulley, 2008). Fiction as a qualitative method has been on the rise since the 1990s (Leavy, 2009). However, the reality is that writers both beyond and within the academy have been blurring the fiction-nonfiction divide for centuries.
Throughout the 300-year history of what we term “novels,” the fact-fiction dichotomy has always been a winding road where each category slips into the other (Franklin, 2011). Ben Yagoda asserts that novels began as fake memoirs (Franklin, 2011). He notes Daniel Defoe’s (1719) Robinson Crusoe in which the title page makes the book seem like an “authentic” account (Franklin, 2011). The entire array of genres such as “nonfiction novels” and “historical novels” point to the persistent blurring of fictional and nonfictional modes of representation. Consider, for example, Holocaust “novels”—a much contested terrain. For example, Thomas Keneally’s “nonfiction novel” Schindler’s Ark. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965) has long been held up as an example of the blur between fact and fiction, as some suggest the book could be considered a qualitative research project (Norris, 2009).
The explicit use of fiction as a method of qualitative inquiry over the past two decades is linked to the primary goals of qualitative research and artistic researchers seeking the most effective methods for achieving those goals. Qualitative research aims to portray lives (Cole & Knowles, 2001, p. 211), build empathetic understanding across differences, and promote resonance. In this respect Banks and Banks (1998) insightfully suggest that traditionally social science writing tells us who we are and fiction shows us who we can be. Banks writes,
The natural history of conventional social science is that of a real world being articulated in imagined details; the natural history of fiction is that of an imaginary world being articulated in real details. The former helps us understand what people are, while the latter helps us understand who people can be. (2008, p. 162)
Dunlop (2001), therefore, suggests the novel is a way to illuminate “human experience” and thus becomes “exploratory, explanatory, hopeful and generative” (p. 12). Moreover, in recent years there has been a major shift within the social and behavioral sciences toward extending public scholarship. Fiction is well suited to all of these goals.
If our goal is to illuminate and connect with readers then fiction brings its own unique and powerful contributions to the researcher’s toolbox. In this vein, it is important to acknowledge two things: (a) Fiction is not entirely fictional (Banks, 2008), and (b) The processes for writing fictional and nonfictional work share many commonalities.
First, as Banks (2008) notes, fiction is only somewhat fictional. All fictional works draw on the “real” world. Put differently, “real life is the material of fiction” (Banks & Banks, 1998, p. 26). This is vital as readers must be able to recognize, identify, and relate to the world or worlds presented in the fictional rendering. As Abbott (2008) notes, the “actual” world plays a huge role in fictional worlds. Commenting on the blur between social science and fiction Viswesaran (1994) notes that fiction attempts to create a believable world, as does ethnography. Interestingly, Marcel Mauss asserted that the anthropologist has to be a novelist to write effectively (Visweseran, 1994). Similarly, Faye Harrison has suggested that ethnography is a kind of fiction and fiction is a kind of ethnography (Behar, 1995). Primo Levi has asserted that fictional characters are never “either wholly true or wholly invented” (in Franklin, 2011, p. 16).
Iser (1997) offers a model for the generation of fiction that clearly illustrates the overlaps between that which we call “fiction” and that which we call “the real.” According to Iser the fictionalizing process is threefold. The first two phases, selection and combination, occur simultaneously. Selection is the process of selecting elements from the “real world” to include in the fictional work. Iser explains that elements are selected from the referential world, which is ultimately overstepped in the fiction. These elements may be taken from “social, historical, cultural and literary systems” (Iser, 1997, p. 2). Barone and Eisner (2012) suggest researchers use the term “empirical” world instead of “real” world. In short, empirical details are selected for inclusion in the fiction (and thus others are excluded). Simultaneously the second phase occurs as elements are combined through the compositional/meaning-making process. The third and final act of fictionalizing is self-disclosure. During this phase the author employs conventions to signal the fictional nature of the text (Barone & Eisner, 2012).
Second, in addition to the use of “the real” in the creation of “the fictional” (through the selection and combination of empirical details), the world of novel writing, even traditionally, draws on many social science practices. To begin, most novelists conduct extensive research (historical, document analysis, field research, interviews, etc.) to write effectively—depicting times and places authentically, using cultural expressions appropriately and so forth, ultimately creating believability—a hallmark of effective fiction. As Banks (2008) notes, novelists seek verisimilitude just as social researchers. Roiphe expresses this as follows: “the basic talent of the novelist is to observe social behavior—the way a person furnishes his house or makes love or reacts to death or folds an envelope or constructs his sentences or plans his career” (1988, p. 840).
It is important to note that although fiction and nonfiction share many commonalities, there are three distinct features of fiction, beyond its accessibility to broad audiences, which make the form particularly attractive for qualitative researchers. First, drawing on the strength of the arts-based research movement many qualitative researchers are interested in pursuing creative license to make their work more evocative—fiction allows fro this. Second, fictional narratives draw on literary conventions including “masterplots” (storylines that reemerge in the culture such as “quest” plots), genres (recurring literary forms) and character “types” (recurrent types of characters; Abbott, 2008). All of these fictional devices have the potential to carry great “emotional capital” (Abbott, 2008, pp. 46-49). When qualitative researchers tap into these narrative components they have the potential to get deeper into the minds of readers. Finally, perhaps the biggest distinction between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction allows readers into the minds of characters through “interior monologue” (Caulley, 2008). Put differently, fiction allows us to get at and express interiority (Banks, 2008) which is arguably a goal in all research, though seldom achieved. The value of getting into the minds of “characters”—their feelings, motivations and beliefs, can not be underestimated. In this regard historian Inga Clendinnen has said that fiction has taught her most of what she knows by giving her access to the inner thoughts of characters (in Franklin, 2011, p. 15).
When I embarked on writing a research-informed feminist novel I was working in a tradition well established by others. Some well-known examples of feminist novelists that clearly draw on social science practices and highlight the slippery slope between fiction and nonfiction include Maya Angelou, Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Ruth Landes, Ruth Underhill, Alice Walker, and Virginia Woolf. Who is to say that any of their works are “just” fiction, or social research—might they be both at once?
The Case of Low-Fat Love: Exploring Self-Esteem, Attraction, and Identity-Building Through the Academic Feminist Novel
In fiction, like other arts-based research formats, it is impossible to separate form and content—they are inextricably bound. Therefore, it is inappropriate to try and separate my discussion of methodology from the content I produced. This section includes a review of the creative process I used for constructing the main characters in Low-Fat Love as well as a discussion of those characters.
Before penning Low-Fat Love I had spent nearly a decade interviewing young women about their relationships, sexuality, body image and overall identity issues. I had also spent more than a decade teaching a range of sociology courses including courses on gender, sexuality and popular culture. These courses prompted many rich conversations about the experiences, struggles and perspectives of my college students. Moreover, given the nature of the courses I teach which, at times, can be quite personal for students, I have sat in my office countless times as female students have poured out their experiences to me, often in tears—experiences including but not limited to devastating breakups, infidelity, body image struggles, depression, domestic violence and sexual assault. At the crossroads of my research, teaching and mentoring experiences I gleaned many insights into the identity development of young women, the role of romantic relationships in their lives and their struggles to find their voice. As a sociologist who also specializes in popular culture I have always thought about these micro-level, highly personal experiences, as occurring in a larger, macro-context—a context that includes gender socialization, compulsory heterosexuality, and the prevalence of simplistic media constructions of femininity and relationships in our daily lives. All that I learned within the academy linked up with my own informed observations of social life and my autobiographical experiences. Over the years I have learned invaluable lessons from the women in my life—family and friends who have struggled with these issues in their own unique but highly resonant ways. Based on my own hard-fought battles with self-esteem when I was younger, including painful failed relationships and now a successful and supportive partnership, I had my own insights into issues surrounding women’s identity development in relation to the men and women in their lives. I had a story, or rather, many stories to tell. A close friend, and sociologist herself, once told me, “The best thing any professor can do is to teach them what you know.”
Despite all of these experiences, including systematic interview research in the traditional qualitative sense, I did not intend to write a research-informed novel when Low-Fat Love began. As I began writing, what at the time I thought might be a short story, the stories I had to tell, which had lived in me for years, began to emerge. I realized quickly that in writing a feminist novel inspired by a range of research, teaching and personal life experiences, along with pure “fiction” (if such a medium exists), I could in fact best “teach what I know” and communicate it to young women—an audience very difficult to reach and relate to through traditional academic writing. The beliefs of fiction writers permeate their work, and in my case, Low-Fat Love could only be a feminist undertaking influenced by 1. my belief in theories on the social construction of gender (see Lorber 2008), and 2. my desire to expose dominant forms of femininity for the purpose of subverting them, and in the process, empowering female readers. Through Low-Fat Love I express the values of feminism as I understand them—my goals are to expose and subvert gender stereotypes, suggest the macro context in which women develop their identities, and ultimately empower readers. Moreover, the “chick-lit” genre offered a form familiar to my target audience, and one in which they may find pleasure. Barone and Eisner stress the importance of employing methods and compositional design elements that are likely to achieve your intended purpose (2012, p. 120). By employing the chick-lit genre, and drawing on the pleasure and emotional capital college-age women in particular find in this form, I was best able to pursue my objectives. All of this was important in terms of making the novel “easy to enter” for readers—a primary reason for using fiction in the first place. Further, fiction is a way of getting at the “inner worlds” or psyches of characters (de Freitas, 2003), in ways that hopefully resonate with readers and that is what I wanted to tap into, which no other medium would allow. And so is the backdrop for my fiction writing which bears similarities to de Freitas writing process which also does not begin with traditional data collection (de Freitas, 2003, 2008).
The Construction of Female Characters
I created the fictional character, Prilly Greene—the unlikely heroine of my novel, to explore young women’s insecurities, how those insecurities affect identity formation and the role male partners have in women’s identity building. I knew from the outset that Prilly lives in between who she is and who she longs to be. She is insecure and overly focused on her perceived shortcomings. In particular, she compares herself to other women and fears she falls short. She also inundates herself with the images and stories in women’s pop culture. When she looks in the mirror, she is haunted by what she is not. Here is an excerpt:
Remote in hand, she flipped between her usual stations and landed on “Access Hollywood.” They were featuring a story about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. She always bought tabloids when they were on the cover. Although she despised the idea that they were mostly adored for their good looks, she too was fascinated. Sometimes she would fantasize about what Angelina’s life was like. Of all the celebrities, Angelina seemed to have it all. She was ridiculously gorgeous, the kind of beauty that doesn’t seem to go out of style, or to age . . . Somehow she had managed to be both an artist and a commercial success, or at least she could reasonably claim to be both. People admired her. People like Prilly. As Prilly watched the story, she felt a familiar storm cloud of envy, longing, and self-loathing. (Leavy, 2011, pp. 3-4)
Prilly is intended to illustrate that envy spawns jealousy (outwardly) and self-loathing (inwardly). Moreover, she invites readers to consider that without self-acceptance we have little to give others. These content goals led me to employ third person narration as a way of accessing the “inner world” of the character, which is how I was able to “get at” and give readers access to her beliefs, values, and cycles of self-scrutiny. Therefore, I employ what de Freitas terms an “unrelenting interior monologue (2008, p. 3).” Moreover, through the narrator voice I build myself a clear place in the text as author. The narrator voice is my space and allows me to weave my feminist interpretations throughout the novel, often appearing in the forms of humor and irony.
Initially I was focused on writing about Prilly’s roller-coaster romance; however, as I developed the character I realized there was a conceptual structure to the writing that could not be fully explored through Prilly’s romance alone. It required the creation of additional prominent female characters. Through the process of writing Prilly, and eventually the other characters, I developed the multidimensional concept of “low-fat love.” In turn, Prilly and the other characters in the book became vehicles for exploring different dimensions of low-fat love.
Low-fat love is a concept about settling for that which cannot fulfill us. It is about settling in relationships because women don’t believe they deserve more or they try to convince themselves that it is enough. I am interested in using fiction to explore how women are often drawn to people who withhold their support (which can be in romantic relationships, friendships, work partnerships, etc.). This can produce a multitude of negative consequences—when drawn to those who withhold it plants seeds of doubt and self-scrutiny. This causes low self-esteem to flourish and the cycle continues with the woman becoming even more drawn to those who can’t give her what she really wants.
Prilly Greene aspires to have a “big life” and thinks that finding the right man is the key. This mirrors the stories of many of my interviewees over the years who have repeatedly spoken about “getting a guy” to be happy, or, who talk about their happiness and identity only in relation to their male significant other. Moreover, in my interviews I have found that “getting thin” and “getting a guy” are often priorities for young, heterosexual women. Therefore, I decided Prilly would be focused on her own physical appearance, constantly comparing herself to other women she deemed more beautiful and wondering how men see her. The following excerpt is illustrative.
She was convinced that beautiful people have a much greater shot at a big life. Ugly people have no shot. People somewhere in the middle, which is where she was firmly located, had to work hard for it, but it was possible. So ever since Prilly was about seven years old and she figured out that she was regular looking at best, she blamed God and her parents for her lot in life. As a teenager she admired the beautiful, popular girls. To her, they had been graced with the best gift of all, the gift of possibility. When you were beautiful, all you had to do was add on to that to get what you want, to be who you want to be. When you weren’t beautiful, you spent your life making up for it, filling in what was lacking. Compensating. At times Prilly even envied the ugly girls. If you were ugly and knew it, there was no hope of a big life and so ultimately that would be very freeing. You could focus on being content with your life as it was. Ugly girls didn’t have to waste time or money with makeup, hair care, exercise, beauty treatments and fashion. What was the point? No one fabulous would ever get close enough to reject them, so they must be free from disappointment too, she thought—at least once they accepted their situation. The ones who had it the worst were those in the middle; the girls who, with enough work could be considered pretty, but never beautiful. Those girls had it the worst because they could taste the big life, they could see it close enough to want it, to reach for it. Prilly was in the middle. (Leavy, 2011, pp. 4-5)
Interestingly, as Prilly is overly concerned with her own appearance I never describe what Prilly in fact looks like, allowing readers to imagine Prilly as they see fit, perhaps seeing themselves in her.
Prilly is constantly attracted to people who feed her insecurities. She tries to gain their approval to feel better about herself, which is disastrous for her self-image. She is drawn to Pete Rice—an archetypal male “player” with whom she has an on-again-off-again love affair. Prilly’s entire identity is based on her relationship status with Pete and she is desperate for affirmations from him. Prilly’s relationship with Pete shows how unhealthy relationships bring out insecurities and how these negative relationships are based on the concepts of “power” and “exchange” rather than partnership. Moreover, Prilly’s desperation in her relationship with Pete illustrates the danger when young women rely on external approval as a measure of self-worth.
Prilly is also drawn to working with Janice—a feminist-in-name-only, who belittles her. Janice Goldwyn was created as an archetypal counterpoint to Prilly. Janice, established in her career, appears not to let anything or anyone get to her. She values control and discipline above all. However, we come to learn that her life, too, is all about appearances. She is living in an isolating marriage of convenience. Moreover, we come to learn that her identity is also based largely on a central male figure in her life: her father. She has been seeking her alcoholic father’s approval her entire life—approval she was never able to receive. The following is a description of Janice’s childhood, which readers learn has profoundly shaped her view of herself and her interactions with others.
Growing up Janice didn’t have much. She lived on the outskirts of Detroit. Her father was a nasty drunk. Janice desperately wanted his approval; so she worked her absolute hardest in school and came bounding into the house where she found him half reclined in his old sky blue Lazy Boy, drinking a beer and watching the Family Feud. She gently tapped him on the shoulder (after learning not to jump right in front of him thus obstructing his view). He always ignored her. Unable to contain her enthusiasm she happily said, “Pop, Pop, guess what? I got an A on my geography test” or “Pop, Pop, guess what, Miss Murphy hung my painting up in art class” or “Pop, Pop, I beat my obstacle course record in gym class, maybe I can be a Marine like you someday.” To all of these her father had the same response: “Biiiig nothing. Scatter. Scatter you piss ant.” Unlike Janice’s younger sister Marge who always despised their father and didn’t care what he thought, Janice never stopped trying. Day after day, year after year, this scene played itself out. During this time Janice came to resent her mother, Myra. Somehow she came to see their situation as her mother’s fault. She thought her mother must be inadequate, weak, a loser. When she hung all of Janice’s crayon drawings on their refrigerator, Janice concluded that she was too easily impressed. After long days at a factory clear across town, four bus rides, two there and two back, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and countless other acts of sheer survival, Myra inevitably had to face a pathetic drunk’s lifeless eyes and the scorn-filled eyes of her daughter who looked at her as if it were she who was pathetic. A quiet devout Catholic who believed her duty to her family disavowed her of the perils of wants of her own, she took it. She took it all, without request or complaint. (Leavy, 2011 pp. 31-32)
Like Prilly, Janice seeks the approval of a chronic withholder. Janice, who embodies another side of self-loathing, represents another array of experiences associated with attraction to those who can’t give us what we need. Myra, Janice’s mother, represents a different female archetype that thinks only of her family and as a result, readers learn, she has put her own dreams up high on a shelf.
As a sociologist, even when I am focusing on the psychological profile of a character—their “inner world”—I also pay attention to the larger context that has shaped their identity. Therefore, women’s pop culture is used as a series of signposts throughout the novel to show the pop culture context in which women develop their identities and their ideas about relationships. To begin, Prilly and Janice are book editors publishing a line of women’s memoirs and are often reading those books. Also, Prilly routinely watches “women’s television,” home shopping and entertainment tabloid shows. Books, music videos, films, plays, and even celebrities are referred to throughout the book to further highlight the larger context in which these women have come to think about themselves and their relationships. For example,
The entertainment tabloid shows and movies of the week that she usually relied on immediately brought Pete to mind, and she knew she wasn’t equipped to think about him without tumbling down a dark hole. So instead she turned to the home shopping networks, which provided comfort. Over a period of a few weeks she started to feel as if the “home shopping ladies” were all members of a community that she was a part of. She knew the hosts; she knew their styles and senses of humor; she knew when they were exaggerating or even lying (although she didn’t care); and she knew that they were always there smiling and complementing their viewers. She could count on them. Although she was routinely tempted, she only bought a couple of items (a new set of sheets for her bed that promised to be as soft as a favorite old T-shirt and a beige patent leather work bag that gave her a rush in her heart as she opened the box and tore away the bubble wrap; the sheets turned out to be thin and cheap-feeling but she kept them and tried to convince herself that they were better than they were; she loved the bag that she felt paid for itself when Janice remarked on it during one of their lunches at Nicos saying it was “very cool”). (Leavy, 2011, p. 138)
Through employing pop culture references I was able to offer a feminist reading of women’s pop culture within the narrative, influenced by theories on the social construction of gender (see Lorber, 2008). Moreover, I used Prilly’s purchases to mirror her two major relationship mistakes: settling for less than she wants and seeking external validation to feel good about herself.
Ultimately each character is pushed to confront her own image of herself, her insecurities, her attraction to men who chronically withhold their support, and the reasons she has settled. In these ways the novel format is consistent with feminist commitments as noted by Behar as follows: “If, indeed, the only narrative traditionally available to women is the love or marriage plot, to try to live out the quest plot, as men’s stories allow, is a radical act—even an ungendering . . .” (1995, p. 16). In this respect, I invited readers into a traditional chick-lit love plot, only to subvert it, unravel and expose it, as the women in the book ultimately are seeking their own self-actualization. The fictional narrative follows the characters’ inner journeys with the intent of helping readers to identify with aspects of the characters and reflect on their own self-image.
Conclusion: Fiction and Transformation
My goal in writing Low-Fat Love was to help readers, particularly female readers, think about their own self-concept and how their image of themselves affects their relationship patterns and choices. In this respect, I hoped to raise feminist consciousness in readers. I also wanted to account for the ways in which our macro environments, in this case popular culture, help inform our social psychological profiles. To do so, I needed a form that would resonate with young women; the novel format, and chick-lit genre, uniquely suited my goals. After using the book in several undergraduate sociology and gender studies courses—which inspired very rich and powerful conversations—the benefits of this format for reaching college students, both female and male, are clear to me.
Footnotes
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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