Women on top? Challenging the “mancession” narrative in the 2010s chick flick

Abstract

ABSTRACT The term “mancession” appeared after the economic crisis, spreading the false assumption that men were more affected by the recession than women. This discourse was fuelled across different US media outlets, including film. Some genres, such as the corporate melodrama, supported this rhetoric directly, while others did so more obliquely, as is the case of the chick flick, which pivoted to the trope of the successful working woman during the 2010s. While some contemporary films seem to pander to the myth of the “mancession” by showing women getting ahead in their careers while men fall implicitly or explicitly behind, this article argues that there is an increasing number of chick flicks that highlight sexism and gender inequality at the workplace, challenging postfeminist images of female success and empowerment. The essay analyzes how post-2008 (but pre-pandemic) working woman chick flicks downplay traditional concerns in the genre, such as romance, and open their scope to focus on women’s professional struggles, deploying the “mancession” narrative only to expose its contrivance, thus showing a greater feminist awareness than many of their predecessors often do.