Chicklet Lit?

Natasha Walter totally disses on yet another sub-genre of chick lit (I'm thinking there must be a million of them because this one is new to me) - chicklet lit - in an article today called, "In the world of Princess Perfect, boys aren't welcome" in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Can someone explain to me just exactly what this is?

She says,

This is chick lit for the under-12s: chicklet lit, you could call
it.

Chicklet lit is a boom area. It starts with tales for teeny girls, and in a
way these are just traditional stories about fairies and ballerinas, but they
have a twist: the heroines have to keep being reminded to put on pretty clothes
and do their hair nicely, and the story has to end with a lovely party. Once I
started reading them, I realised I'd never met such boring fairies. Even
Tinkerbell was stroppy, while E. Nesbit's sand-fairy was positively grumpy and
unpredictable.

But these fairies just twitter about how pretty their knickers are, how
nice their perfume is and what fun they are going to have at the party. When
human girls get into fairyland, it's all about makeovers rather than magic.

The book she is referring to is FAIRYDUST by Gwyneth Reese. Here's the pretty cover:



Actually, it does look quite chick lit'ish, doesn't it?

Why don't people realize that chick lit is evolving from this mindset and is more about women finding themselves than how pretty they are?

It might just be me. Maybe I haven't read enough chick lit to be an expert, but frankly I don't think those kind of books could keep my interest. And that's exactly what chick lit writers today know and that is the very reason why they are struggling to get away from this image. And I predict that as time goes on, we are going to see more of these stories where the protags don't give a rip about which designer shoes they wear. And that to me is when chick lit is going to boom. I can say this because I just so happen to write hen lit - yet another chick lit sub-genre.