In Defence of Being a Bit Ridiculous: Some thoughts on being unserious in a world that demands efficiency.

Imagination as a pressure valve.

I read somewhere — in a novel that pretended to be about nothing — that certain ridiculous attitudes are not only acceptable, but necessary. It was fiction, obviously. Social commentary disguised as a woman standing in a kitchen thinking about her life while the kettle boiled too slowly. That felt right.

I don’t have a plot. I have habits, reactions, an imagination that refuses to be trained, and a tendency to inflate small moments into something that feels briefly meaningful. This is apparently a problem. We are encouraged to grow out of this. To streamline. To become sensible. To stop romanticising things that don’t deserve it.

But I’m starting to suspect that some forms of ridiculousness are not immaturity at all. They’re equipment. Chic lit has always understood this, even when critics didn’t. The genre has been dismissed as basic, lightweight, unserious — as if seriousness were the same thing as truth. As if interior life didn’t count unless it arrived wearing a suit and holding a thesis.

The women in these books aren’t saving the world. They’re surviving the day. They’re overthinking texts. They’re projecting futures onto strangers. They’re narrating their own lives as if someone might be watching — not because they think they’re special, but because it makes the ordinary feel less punishing. This, I think, is the point.

Nothing dramatic happened today. But my nervous system kept the receipts. The coffee tasted wrong. Someone said something mildly patronising. I imagined an alternate version of myself who handled it perfectly. I replayed the moment three times. I forgot what I walked into the room for. I briefly considered changing my entire life before lunch. This isn’t a failure of character. This is consciousness.

We live in a culture that confuses emotional restraint with maturity. Calm is considered superior. Minimalism is moral. If you don’t react, you are evolved. If you do, you are indulgent, hysterical, or — the worst accusation — unserious.

But seriousness is often just compliance in a better outfit. Imagination, especially the kind that veers into the slightly absurd, is a way out. It’s what you do when the structure you’re inside doesn’t account for you properly. When the day is long, the expectations are narrow, and the reward for behaving well is mostly more behaving.

So yes, I anthropomorphise my moods. I narrate my exits. I dramatise small choices. I build elaborate inner lives around moments that technically don’t matter. I buy unnecessary things and feel briefly reborn. I think in metaphors. I feel too much about things that could be brushed off if I were more efficient.

I’ve tried being efficient. It made me dull and tired. There’s something quietly radical about refusing to flatten yourself. About allowing a bit of theatricality to remain intact. About admitting that you don’t experience life as a neat sequence of rational decisions, but as a series of impressions, feelings, and half-formed thoughts that don’t always behave.

Women, in particular, are encouraged to sanitise their inner worlds. Be warm but not intense. Reflective but not obsessive. Creative but not impractical. Interesting, but only in approved ways. Chic lit was never about handbags and cocktails — it was about interior permission. About saying: this counts too.

The imagination isn’t a childish excess. It’s a pressure valve. Some people survive by becoming serious. Others survive by becoming a little bit ridiculous and refusing to apologise for it. They imagine better conversations than the ones they had. They rehearse exits they never take. They narrate their lives not because they think they’re the main character, but because it helps them stay present in it.

There doesn’t need to be a lesson at the end. No transformation montage. No satisfying resolution. Chic lit doesn’t demand that. It understands that sometimes the achievement is simply remaining intact. I don’t have a plot. I have a working system. Nothing was resolved. But I felt better. And maybe that’s enough.