A supplement to the Bath Chronicle will include Jane Austen among 101 People To Make Bath Proud.

“We have tried to cover all the bases and included people who everyone will have heard of such as Jane Austen, Roger Bannister, Peter Gabriel and the scourge of young journalists everywhere - shorthand king Isaac Pitman. Just as importantly, however, we have also featured those who just work really hard in Bath on a day to day basis to ensure the city is as successful as it is.”

Oh! who could ever be tired of Bath! (besides Jane herself, that is)

Two articles on the same website discuss the return of the Empire waist in the latest fashions; interestingly, the writers have opposite opinions on its suitability, though both articles invoke the name of Jane, and with good reason, as the empire waist dress was in style during the period that all her books were published, so we are accustomed to seeing and imagining her heroines wearing such gowns.

The first apparently agrees with Joe Wright, the director of P&P3, who said that empire waist dresses make women look like “marshmallows.”

Still, it’s not a look I would wear today, even though you’ll see empire tops and dresses in all the shops right now (a reflection of our current ’60s fascination, says Style.com).

And if I needed any reminding why it’s a silhouette only a few women can wear, I had to look no farther than the 59th Cannes Film Festival last month.

At least eight actresses crossed the red carpet in dresses that cascaded from the bust, and all but a couple looked - to put it kindly - pregnant.

[. . .]

Now, most women I know don’t want to wear clothes that add pounds. Most of these actresses are rake-thin.

And most of them still looked fat.

Think twice before you buy an empire dress - unless, of course, you are pregnant. In that case, it makes total sense for the times.

Actually, it depends upon the cut of the dress. If it is full and gathered in the front, and the wearer has poor posture as so many young celebrities seem to these days, yes, you will look pregnant. The second article has something else to say.

In fact, the empire shape is one of the most flattering known to women. It frames the face and flatters the breasts and decollete. And these are the parts that are easiest to enhance. All you need is makeup and a good bra (which Miranda Richardson was clearly lacking at Cannes).

Moreover, worn properly, the empire hides the parts that are most difficult to mask - the flabby belly, jiggly thighs, big bum.

Get it cut on the bias in a flowy fabric without gathers in the front and you’re golden. And make sure it fits! That’s ninety percent of the problem that celebrities have when they look stupid in an outfit–because it doesn’t fit.

We are on record as becoming cranky when Jane Austen’s works are blithely called “chick lit,” usually in order to justify much less interesting works, but really we have nothing against the genre or those who read or write it; we simply find the comparison sloppy and specious. Now it looks like we’re not the only ones.

“Even the term ‘chick lit’ embodies the conflict: happily embraced by students, it grates annoyingly on the sensibilities of feminist professors, who see monikers like ‘chick’ as a way to demean women,” Ferriss and Young note. “As one student told us, her professor refused to use this term without making quotation marks in the air as she said it.”

“As members of an older generation of women ourselves, we do not generally identify with the chick-lit protagonists.”

Perhaps that’s why the comparison makes us cranky. It’s just our dried-up humorless spinsterism rearing its wizened head again. Or perhaps…

Interestingly, the authors find, what the younger readers might be looking for in chick-lit is something feminist writers rarely produce—actual literature. For a sample of feminist literature, try reading some of Sandra Cisneros’ charming poetry about breaking beer bottles over the heads of barflies.

Chick lit, then, will do until genuine literature comes along but when the real thing arrives, Bridget Jones is gone. “In recent courses on classic women’s fiction and chick lit, our students came to a surprising conclusion: they overwhelmingly preferred the classic fiction,” Ferriss and Young conclude. “They weren’t completely certain if that was because of the older novels’ intricate plots, subtle characterizations, memorable language or some other factor.”

“But they were convinced that although chick-lit raises fascinating cultural issues, it can’t compete with the work of Jane Austen, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, and Zora Neale Hurston.” And most of their achievements predated modern feminism.

Most likely that’s it.

They just NEVER learn.

In the more gracious days about which Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer wrote, ladies and gentlemen never spoke about themselves, their ailments or their achievements or possessions.

It was simply not done.

Let’s review, shall we? (more…)