Michael Blowhard holds that “this review here of a new Lexus is some of the best — the most insightful, daring, and fun — new criticism of any kind I’ve read recently.” It certainly transcends mere automobile review, asking “just what constitutes a ‘chick car,’ anyway?”:
When I drive the Lexus SC430, I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and let’s just leave it at that, hmmm?The SC430 ? as polished as a manor house banister, as smooth as Napoleon brandy strained through Naomi Wolf’s silk stocking ? is that mightily maligned thing: a chick car.
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It’s instructive to note that in Europe, the equivalent term for a chick car is a “hairdresser’s car.” Gay, in other words. A chick car is not only feminine in some ineffable way, but feminizing. It imputes femininity ? or perhaps a kind of gender-preference valence ? upon its owner/driver. Men don’t like having their male credentials called into question; women resist the onus of femininity in the second-sex sense described by Simone de Beauvoir.