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Linda Kelsey |
Chick-lit designed to make women over 50 sit up
With her first novel, former Cosmopolitan magazine editor Linda Kelsey is aiming to exploit an age gap in the market, writes Dan Carrier
Fifty is not a Four-Letter Word. By Linda Kelsey. Hodder Paperback £6.99 order this book
LINDA Kelsey is in a prime position to write chick-lit: she has spent her 30-year career producing women’s magazines for the same market and the publication of her first novel, Fifty is not a Four-Letter Word, is a natural progression.
It seems easy: use your contacts to bag a good agent, knock out a few thousand words on the sort of topics that make three-page features in the glossy mags, and away you go.
Not so, says the former editor of Cosmopolitan who lives in West Hampstead. She says the genre needs redefining: “Chick-lit is a bad title: there is a snobbishness about it and people say it must be rubbish.”
She first got the bug when the magazine In Style was launched and she took on the challenge of producing a books page for them.
“It was an insignificant part of the magazine and it meant I was given a free hand to write about the books I was interested in. I started reading chick-lit. Before, I had dismissed it – apart from Bridget Jones. I suddenly woke up and realised there was good stuff there.”
Linda picked up novels by Marion Keyes and her eyes were opened: “They tell great contemporary stories, they are easy to read, they are funny, moving and touching.
“I understood the voices I was hearing in the books and I thought: maybe I could do something like that.”
It had come after a difficult period of her life in which she had suffered from depression and had quit her job. The experience gave her material for the story.
“I did not want to write about 20-somethings or yummy mummys in their 30s,” says Linda. “I wanted to write something that was relevant to me. It occurred to me that there was not a lot of fiction written in a contemporary voice for women of my age.
“A woman of 50 today does not think of herself as a woman of 50 did in my mother’s generation. I feel at least 20 or 30 years younger. I wanted to imagine a feisty and funny heroine.”
So she created Hope, a woman who seemingly has it all but who comes to reconsider her life when she reaches her 50th birthday.
Linda’s own story would seem to have sprung from the aspirational pages of the magazines she worked for: editor of Cosmo when she was aged 33, with all the trimmings such a position carries; and a settled domestic life with a husband and young son. But things were not good. A heavy work burden and the pressure of being at the top of her trade meant she needed a break – and her body told her so. In 1995 she had a breakdown: it started with difficulty sleeping and was eventually diagnosed as depression.
She worked through it and now sticks to a daily walking regime across Hampstead Heath with her dog Cuba to keep the blues at bay. She found that walking to and from hospital appointments helped her come to terms with her depression and Cuba, who has been a member of the family for four years, has become a valued companion.
Linda says her own problems came from a constant quest for perfection – the kind of lifestyle peddled by the magazines she ran.
A high achiever from a young age, she was the first in her family to go to university, but her time at Warwick, where she read history, was not a success in academic terms.
“I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she recalls. “I got there, went to lots of parties and got involved in student politics. I was academically minded, but emotionally immature. It was a great place to be – Germaine Greer was teaching at the university. I had read The Female Eunuch and was very impressed by her.”
But Linda did not stay long: “I failed my end-of-year exam and had some boyfriend trouble. I came home.”
Aged 19, she blagged a job at National Magazines and it kick-started her career. She moved after two years to Cosmo, eventually rising to editorship, and had stints at other big sellers such as She and In Style.
It has given Linda a unique take on the women’s magazine industry. She dismisses the idea that they are damaging to the cause of equality. Philosopher Naomi Wolf called it ‘The Beauty Myth’ and suggests the media sexualises women and peddles images that create a pressure to look a certain way. Simply not the case, claims Linda.
“When I was working for Cosmo it was aimed at girls in their 20 and 30s,” she says. “They are not searching for youth, they are youth.”
She recalls losing Cosmo money after refusing to take advertising she did not agree with – something she would not get away with now.
“Magazines are more advertising-led now,” she says. “At Cosmo I refused to take adverts for cosmetic surgery. Why are they advertising these procedures to 25-year-olds, implying that they need bigger boobs?
“I said firmly: ‘I am not having these ads, and the publishers said OK’. Today, I’d get fired on the spot for that.”
But what about the airbrushed fashion shoots that attract the advertisers in the first place? People are so media savvy,” says Linda. “They know the difference between celebrities and ordinary people. They know models have been airbrushed. It is accepted.”
And she dismisses the idea that publications like Cosmo are partly responsible for illnesses such as anorexia.
“Anorexia is a problem that has been around for a long time,” says Linda.
“It is much more complicated than saying it is because of the media’s image of young women. And isn’t obesity the real problem? For every one incredibly skinny girl there are six who are overweight, and that’s unhealthy.”
Linda is already in the midst of her next novel, but what it’s about she won’t say: “I don't want to talk about it. It feels like bad luck to do so. All I shall say is this: it is rather more darker and more serious than Fifty is not a Four-Letter Word.” |
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