So I had all these grand plans of blogging last night (and had even promised Michelle that I would), but all of that went by the wayside because come midnight last night, I wasn't sitting in front of my computer - I was chanting "An-dre! An-dre!" along with 23,000 other fans at the US Open.

I've been going to the Open every year since I was a kid.  Part of it is that tennis is the only sport I can play halfway decently.  Truthfully, though, I didn't really become a fan until Andre Agassi came onto the tennis scene. With the bleached blonde hair, earring, and jean shorts, Agassi was exactly the kind of poster boy a fourteen year-old girl in the eighties would plaster all over her room (and yes, if you go to my old room in my parents' house, the posters are still there). Putting aside the whole rebel persona and the killer groundstrokes though, what I really loved about Agassi was how imperfect he was.  Ever since he burst onto the tennis scene, that's what Agassi's done: he's publicly crashed and burned over and over again, and yet despite all that, he's managed to rise from the ashes, a phoenix reborn.

It's this same imperfection that has always drawn me to chicklit books.  A lot of naysayers have dismissed chicklit as nothing more than a catalog of brand name clothes and designer shoes, but that has never been the appeal of chicklit books for me.  Remember, chicklit began with Bridget Jones' Diary - a hilarious tale of a heroine who smoked too much, drank too much, struggled with her weight, and had a penchant for self-destructive decisions.  There was nothing glamorous or perfect about Bridget; if anything she was an unmitigated mess for a good portion of the novel.  But in the end, that was what we all loved about her - that she was a celebration of the flaws in all of us.  She gave us all hope that if Bridget could make it - despite all her problems - all of us could somehow come out in the end on top too.

I like thinking about Bridget Jones because it reminds me of where all this began.  As some of you know, chicklit has been the subject of hot debate in the publishing world recently, sparked by a group of women writers who have labeled themselves as "anti-chicklit."  I've got strong views on this subject (which I'll expound on in my next post), but I think what's been lost amid all the accusations of chicklit as being shallow and fluffy and stupid is what made chicklit such a success in the first place.  In many ways, chicklit was very much an overnight phenomenon, but what made it so wasn't the pink covers or the designer name-dropping.  Sure, it's fun to read about beautiful clothes and exotic jobs, but the reason why chicklit became such a smash success was because it spoke to women - it filled a need in them to be understood and accepted even if their lives didn't fit some white-picket-fence ideal.

I guess that's why, for me, the flawed characters are always the most interesting.  That's why I love chicklit, and that's why I love Agassi.  There's no other player I would have stayed until almost one in the morning (on a work night) to watch, knowing I still had another hour on the train before I'd get home.  Watching Agassi last night was painful at times, especially in the beginning of the match, when he seemed tired, slow, old.  But even though he's lost a step and his groundstrokes don't sizzle like they used to and he looks positively geriatric at times, he still came through in the end - and once again, he made imperfection seem divine.

 

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