"Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture"

"Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture"
Ariel Levy
Free Press, $25





If Ariel Levy is making a suggestion for how to truly equalize men and women in American culture, it's stuck somewhere in between her complaints about the sexually liberated, the lesbians, the high school girls who will do anything to be "cool" and the men who reinforce all of this behavior as acceptable.

In "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture," she questions if our mothers' generation spent time fighting for equal rights so the new generation could disregard the concept of self-respect in favor of doing whatever is sexy to catch a man's attention — or another woman's attention, as described in the chapter "From Womyn to Bois."

Why has this become so socially acceptable? When did it go from equal rights to flashing a camera to get a trucker hat with "Girls Gone Wild" stamped across the front?

Levy attempts to investigate this and seems to come to the conclusion that the women of today who become involved in this type of behavior see it as liberating. Yes, their mothers fought for equality, but the equality came to them in the form of the ability to do what they want to do — even if what they want to do is wear skimpy clothes to tease boys.

The older women Levy talks to (mid-20s through late-30s) seem to jibe with the idea of being liberated and doing what they want to do — especially the lesbians and bois. Their biggest concern is being happy with who they are and what they are doing. But when Levy is talking to teens and young collegiates, their concerns are focused on keeping up with the other girls — specifically when it comes to attracting boys.

Levy brings a fresh perspective to the idea of strippers and porn stars — many are in those positions because they feel they are sexually liberated and that's how they would like to express themselves, while Levy seems to prefer they not compromise their bodies and their self-respect just because men would like them to. But if you're not against them, you're for them, and that's the type of attitude Levy casts against society. Of course women have the right to be strippers if they want to but they shouldn't be, seems to be what she is saying.

The attitude of those who support a woman's free choice to do with her body what she will is the same attitude of "Sex and the City," which, for some reason I still don't understand, is immensely popular among women in my age group. Levy brings up the show in her chapter "Shopping for Sex," and I was worried she was going to champion it and its characters as role models for young women who want to truly be liberated from men and enjoy the equality between sexes that should exist but doesnt. I was pleasantly surprised with Levy's take on the show:

Sex and the City was great entertainment, but it was a flawed guide to empowerment, which is how many women viewed it. (175-176)

The same females who are viewing "Sex and the City" as a guide to women's empowerment are the ones who are flashing Girls Gone Wild, competing with their girlfriends to see who can "go the furthest" with the most boys and allowing themselves to be harrassed and looked upon as sex objects because they think it is empowering.

The book jacket says "Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come, it only proves how far they have left to go." And that's true. Levy talks for 200 pages about how women are going in the wrong direction, but she fails in pointing us in the right one.