Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
by Ariel Levy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ariel LevyEdition: Paperback
Published: 2006-10-03
ISBN: 0743284283
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Book Reviews of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Book Review: Eye Opening...the women behind raunch culture.
Summary: 4 Stars
Like most people in America, I once believed the male sex drive was the soul reason for our society's raunch culture, but Ariel Levy's book, Female Chauvinist Pigs forced me to look past the stereotypes and see that women are as much to blame for the rampant lewdness in pop culture as are men. From Levy's interviews with the female producers behind Girls Gone Wild and Playboy to would be strippers and Penthouse posers it becomes evident that women are not only conforming to stereotypical sexuality--they are inventing it, marketing it, and selling it. And the price men and women are paying for this canned version of sexuality is far too high.
In the words of Paris Hilton "[girls these days] are sexy but not sexual." Levy's book reveals the hook-up culture as a place where women are detached from their own sexuality. Instead of experiencing sex intimately, women in the hook-up culture use it to boost their ego or get what they want. They aspire to be sexually, "like a man" pursuing what turns them on and leaving relationships when the desire wanes--or having no relationship at all. Robert Jensen explores this topic further in his book Getting Off: Pornography and End of Masculinity.
Levy's book is a rebuttal to what the women behind the sex industry have been saying about raunch culture, that it is empowering, liberating and healthy for women. Levy explores the origins of today's trashiness as a confused byproduct of the sexual and feminist revolutions. How did women go from burning their bras to taking stripping lessons and having poles built into their bedrooms? Why is it healthy for women to imitate strippers--women whose job it is to fake arousal? And how is a stripper--a women who is essentially mute and void of humanity--an empowering role model? Meanwhile, women are loosing real power in politics and the workplace. Levy's book proves the work of feminism has yet to be accomplished. Truly empowered and liberating sexuality leaves room for individuality, not the plastic version the sex industry tries to sell us.
I gave Levy's book four stars because it truly opened my eyes to the raunch culture that surrounds me, its origins and the people behind it. This knowledge has empowered me to do what I can to change it. Now I completely detest seeing young girls wearing the playboy bunny charm even more than before because I realize these young girls are buying into an industry that will ultimately rob them of their unique voices and sexuality. Levy's writing style is easy to read and sometimes overly simplistic. The book would have been stronger if it was more intellectual (Levy tended to repeat a lot of dialogue from her interviews and I think this was mostly unnecessary). Statistics, more first hand interviews and an official study would have made for five stars. Nevertheless, it is a quick read and its message is easily understood.
Summary of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Ariel Levy's debut book is a bold, piercing examination of how twenty-first century American society perceives sex and women. Writing vividly, she brings her readers to places she visited to make her assessment; the elevator of Playboy Enterprises with women auditioning to be Playmates in the fiftieth anniversary edition, a Florida beach where sunbathers urge a woman to take off her bathing suit for the camera crew of Girls Gone Wild, a San Francisco Italian restaurant where a lesbian worries she's not dressed up enough for her date, a CAKE party in New York, with women grinding each other's pelvises in time to pulsating dance rhythms, and outside a juice bar in Oakland where a beautiful high school student shares disappointment at her experiences with sex.Levy cleverly leads us to explore the role models women aspire to emulate. We are not pursuing the confident, self-determined, powerful, free ideal the women's liberation movement would have dreamed for its daughters. Instead, our icons are porn stars and strippers and prostitutes. Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson flaunt their successes in the pornography industry, and in doing so seem to earn our adulation.
Levy relates our embracing of this raunchy culture to unresolved tensions thirty years ago between the sexual revolution and the women's liberation movement, and amongst feminists; joy at discovering the delights of our clitoris conflicting with disgust at pornography's objectification of women. She creates a convincing argument by analyzing a diverse spectrum of material; presents a fascinating palette of interviews with revolutionary women's libbers, nouvelle raunchy feminists, and everyday women and men. Detailed facts and recurring names are sometimes cumbersome, albeit worth ploughing through for the `a-ha moments'.
The reality that we model ourselves on images whose "individuality is erased" is harsh, yet Levy's work is imbued with hope - hope that women can celebrate their uniqueness instead of their `hotness', explore their sexuality as delight rather than consume sex as currency, and succeed professionally because of their brilliant minds and personalities, not because of their brilliant bodies.--Megan Jones Ady
Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig -- the new brand of "empowered woman" who embraces "raunch culture" wherever she finds it. In her groundbreaking book, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy argues that, if male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women -- and of themselves. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, 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.
"Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig--the new brand of ""empowered woman"" who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces ""raunch culture"" wherever she finds it. If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women--and of themselves. They think they're being brave, they think they're being funny, but in Female Chauvinist Pigs, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy asks if the joke is on them. In her quest to uncover why this is happening, Levy interviews college women who flash for the cameras on spring break and teens raised on Paris Hilton and breast implants. She examines a culture in which every music video seems to feature a stripper on a pole, the memoirs of porn stars are climbing the best-seller lists, Olympic athletes parade their Brazilian bikini waxes in the pages of Playboy, and thongs are marketed to prepubescent girls. Levy meets the high-powered women who create raunch culture--the new oinking women warriors of the corporate and entertainment worlds who eagerly defend their efforts to be ""one of the guys."" And she traces the history of this trend back to conflicts between the women's movement and the sexual revolution long left unresolved. In the tradition of Susan Faludi's Backlash and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, Levy pulls apart the myth of the Female Chauvinist Pig and argues that what has come to pass for liberating rebellion is actually a kind of limiting conformity. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, 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. "
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