By Faith McQuinn

According to Wikipedia, the term “chick flick” refers to movies that are stereotypically made for women. You know, things like melodramas and saccharin romantic dramas.

I’m here to share with you my favorites among the hundreds of feminine films. Even though I’m more guyish when it comes to movies—I like my fair share of explosions and space exploration—a good chick flick is always a necessity when you’re feeling like crap or you need a good night in with the girls.


1. AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr play two beautiful people who meet on a cruise. They agree to meet up again six months later at the top of the Empire State Building. Alas, horrible things happen, and they both think they’ve lost love forever. The scene when they finally see each other again is the gold standard of chick flicks. If there isn’t at least a lump in your throat when the music swells, you have no heart at all.







2. DIRTY DANCING
The dance routines, the secretive relationship, the sex, the abuse—it’s all one big soap opera in a 90 minute package. Men hate this movie. Women love it. This is my biggest guilty pleasure on the list. I don’t think Patrick Swayze’s much of a looker, but if a guy danced like that with me, I might fall for him.








3. SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
SLEEPLESS gets a foot into this category just by mimicking AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, but with stellar performances by Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, it stands quite well on its own. It’s a perfectly comfortable movie filled with hope and true love and a touch of magic. That sentence alone probably turned off half the guys reading this (if there are any guys reading this). 







4. SAY ANYTHING…
The movie that made every girl in America fall madly in love with John Cusack is, to me, the best teen romantic comedy of the eighties. At first, I didn’t think I should include SAY ANYTHING… on the list because it’s not an truly a chick flick, but when I asked my guy friends what they think of it, they all said, “It’s just OK.” Obviously, none of them understand the power of Peter Gabriel playing on a boom box.







5. STEEL MAGNOLIAS
AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER may be the gold standard, but STEEL MAGNOLIAS broke the mold. This movie isn’t about romance; it’s about women. It’s two hours of mothers, daughters, best friends, and co-workers bonding in a beauty shop. No straight man alive would willingly sit through this, and if he would, he’d deny it until the day he died.








6. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
Billy Crystal has never struck me as a romantic type of actor, but I became a puddle of goo when his character Harry utters, “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”  Who doesn’t want to hear words like that from the love of your life?







7. THELMA & LOUISE
If a movie about two women shooting men, blowing up trucks, and sleeping with Brad Pitt isn’t a bona fide chick flick, then I don’t know what is. In 1991, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis became the embodiment of girl power, and even though they’ve both had their fair share of crappy follow-ups, I’ll always remember that crazy leap off the side of a cliff.








8. SABRINA
I’m talking about the 1965 version with Audrey Hepburn, not the half-ass version with Julia Ormond. Watching a young woman pine after a guy, leave the country, become a different woman, and come back just to have said guy pine after her is enough to qualify as a chick flick. The icing on the cake is when the unexpected love happens. That always makes for wonderful story.








9. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Don’t period pieces just default to chick flicks? Well, this one does. Take one part solid adaptation and two parts strong female actors and add in the king of British romantic comedies (that would be Hugh Grant for those who can’t follow), and you get one pretty wonderful Victorian chick flick.









10. WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
With a wacky supporting cast, this movie doesn’t make men as squeamish as some of the others, but SLEEPING is still primarily a chick flick. Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman are the perfect non-couple couple; plus I got a good lesson in what “leaning” really means.