 Female MSN.com commentator Kim Morgan has written,
The term "chick flick" was not widely used until the 1980s and 1990s.It has its roots in the "women's pictures" of the early twentieth century, which portrays the woman as a victim and housewife, and later the "film noir" of the 1940s and early 1950s, which portrays the threat of sexualized women.In the 1950s, many women who were in the workforce during World War II faced the transition back into the home.