Status
Publication
Description
A classic work on gender culture exploring how the women's movement has evolved to Girls Gone Wild in a new, self-imposed chauvinism. In the tradition of Susan Faludi'sBacklash and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, New York Magazine writer Ariel Levy studies the effects of modern feminism on women today. 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, 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 bestseller 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. 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.… (more)
Similar in this library
Media reviews
User reviews
I wanted to like this book more. I wanted to
Now, I am not a cloistered little nun. I knew what a boi was, thank you. I did not need an often erroneous dissertation on the LGBT community. I hope that some bright person of some persuasion sees this book in a store, buys it, and is dissapointed enough to do the subject justice. Show me how to integrate these girls gone wild into the worldplace. Show me how to rechannel their inappropriate measures of self-worth into something that transcends all the four letter words they can stand. Show me how to stop the next crop from going through this breast-flashing notch-carving phase at all. At the very least, show me the "rise of raunch culture" and not just its semi-current iteration. I really, really wanted to like this book. But I clearly do not.
If I dismiss my grammar stickler tendencies, this book still felt sloppy to me. The author brought up some good points, but the book lacked an overall cohesion to it. Instead, it felt like the author was rambling about topics that were related to one another, but she forgot to detail just how they were connected.
I was more than a little put-off by the author's treatment of the transgendered. Although I did agree with how the "raunch culture" has pervaded the lesbian community, she seemed dismissive of female-to-male (FTM) individuals. There are genuinely people who were born with the "wrong plumbing;" they don't want to BE men, they feel that they ARE men. I wish that the author had been more sensitive to that fact.
And for pointing out the problems in our society, which I agree do exist, the author offers precious little in way of solutions. She does make some good points throughout the book, but I'd like to think that many Americans are already aware of them. I suppose that I was expecting more ideas and discussion-inspiring points.
I sometimes had the feeling the author wrote down my own thoughts.
Additionally, I think that the author was spot on when she made the point that people who are too young to understand their own sexual desire are often forced to imbibe the values that the media feeds them for breakfast. In the past two decades, such messages ubiquitously pertain to sex. what's really sad about this is the fact that teenagers have no reference or counterpoint to provide the insight that they need to figure themselves out.
Having worked in the sex industry, I can agree with Levy that many women defend what they do as an act of righteousness and empowerment - these are the same women who pettily base their self worth off of how much money they make and allow crude remarks from patrons to insult them for weeks. This seems to be the whole reason that Levy wrote this book, and with this in mind, I think she did a good job at exposing how misguided these women really are.
This was definitely worth the time that it took it read the entire thing.
It's a scary read. Women are trying harder and harder to be men, rather than women, and are finding the task impossible. The behaviour many are emulating are teenage boys but they're failing to become adults, thus undermining the entire feminist agenda.
Women's roles have become more constrained, more trivialised and this book asks many of the deep questions about why and how we've accepted this from the constant battering of our psyches by media.
One point really struck me, when Levy declared that porn stars are "giving up the most private part of their being for public consumption". Are they? Because the impression that I got was that they are having sex on camera, and that this needn't mean them bearing their soul. Yes it would feel that way for some (no doubt Ms. Levy included) but it needn't be the same for everyone.
This is where I stand, that Levy makes some interesting sounding arguments, but often based on false premises. I have only covered one are of this book, and I would hate to suggest that I disagree with everything she says, as I do not. I think there is a problem with women sometimes waving a banner of feminism without realising some of their actions compromise their situation. However overall I found Ariel Levy's arguments flawed and based upon her own normative judgements.
Yet Levy completely discounts personal choice in her discussion of these topics. She takes a men-as-enemy stance as often as not. EVERYONE has a choice. Even those girls who drank too much and were "convinced" to take their clothes off in front of cameras. They had a choice to drink and a choice to take the high road. No one would have faulted them. That they chose to get naked is their perogative. If they regret it later, then they have learned something. Please, they are NOT victims.
Much of this book hit me as narrow-minded propaganda. And it had such potential.
I saw an interview ith Ariel Levy on The Colber Report. The premise of her book sounded noteworthy--Feminism has brought with it a backlash of women who strive to be like porn stars. Yes, women are now sexually liberated, but why do you want to emulate someone who fakes an
As I read this book, I asked myself the question, what will I want to impart to my daughter about womanhood and her sexuality? Using this book as a premise left me hanging.
Her descriptions of some sexually liberated women are VERY frightening and the culture of lesbianism, especially in New York and San Fransisco, is disturbing.
Levy's chapter "Pigs in Training" scares me for our young women. She describes the culture of young teens who intentionally dress like hoes, the more hoe-like you can dress, the better. Being sexy is a popularity status. Girls are having sex, not for the enjoyment of it, but because it was just something you needed to do. The enjoyment of sex and the, for lack of a better word, "specialness" of sex is lost on them.
Levy points to a quote by Paris Hilton to describe this phenomenon: "my boyfriends always tell me I'm not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual." Levy states, "Sexyness is no longer just about being arousing or alluring, it's about being worthwhile."
The premise of the idea of Female Chauvinist Pigs has to do with the women who, in trying to make it in a man's world, act like men. They go to strip clubs, buy into the culture of stupid women, and generally look down on the girly-girls and strippers. These are the Female Chauvinist Pigs. On the other hand you have women who, in their sexual liberation, think it is liberating to be porn stars. Why can't we as women be successful by being women?
A point that I found interesting in her discourses on the problems with Absinence-Only Sex Education is that we tell kids that sex is something special and it should be saved for marriage. What are kids supposed to think about that when there is a 50% divorce rate? Our words and actions aren't aligning.
Ariel Levy's depictions of a sex-saturated culture were troublesome because the fact of the matter is that this is where we really are as a society. All I could do was realize more and more that we are all in need of a Savior. We are in need of Jesus Christ to cover us and heal us.
Most of the time, I felt as if Ariel Levy was rambling on and on as if going somewhere with her point but she never got anywhere. She could never definitively prove to me that her conclusions were right--and I was never sure as to what her conclusions were. Her last portion, titled Conclusion, was short and left me feeling no better.
Here's what I've determined about my experience of reading this book; her arguments are devoid of scripture. The culture she describes does not rely on God's Word to show us how to behave, nor does it rely on the grace Jesus Christ provides for each and every one of us who accepts Him. God created us male and female, and we are different, and it is beautiful.
I finally answered my question, what will I want to impart to my daughter about womanhood and her sexuality, and the answer lies within scripture. A wonderful book to help us understand womanhood and a worthwhile read is Elizabeth Elliot's Let Me Be A Woman.
Female Chauvinist Pigs is a scary rambling that goes nowhere. Don't waste your time.
"This is not a book about the sex industry; it is a book about what we have decided the sex industry means....how we held it up, cleaned it off, and distorted it." (Ariel Levy, excerpt from book page 198)
What is feminism to you?
All these questions are looked at in this witty book written by Ariel Levy. She takes the reader inside behind the scenes to talk to the people who are putting out the images we are all striving to be like. You get a view into the inner sanctums of playboy, girls gone wild, CAKE, old school feminist,Strippers, Porn Stars, Teenagers, Lesbians and much much more. If you think you know feminism and how it equates into a woman's sexuality or just curious about it all, this book is a must read for you.
I have to admit, I have never been stopped and asked by so many strangers "what is that book about" as I have been with this one. It is guaranteed to cause a sensation just from the cover alone. I loved the witty tone it had as the author explained some of the really absurd norms we have these days. I found each chapter a pleasure to read and Ariel posed a tons of questions which set me to pondering the reason behind all the madness these days. One question she did not really address is "why is this happening". We see a big jump from conservative feminism to raunchy feminism; she show a great picture of what it was and what it is now but no history on the between time; how we changed over to what it is. I enjoyed the section she had on the teenage girls and was pleased to a section from a boys perspective. What the male interviewee said made a lot of sense. As I read the statements from the women who were interviewed I couldn't help but wonder why they needed to be so "manly" in their behaviors, why do they feel they need this trade off. I found the book to be a very informative book and will recommend it to may of my friends.
The structure sort of comes undone in the final 50 pages or so but the book's a refreshing and often merciless expose of the rise of raunch culture, where Playboy bunnies, porn stars and pole dancing classes are seen as signs of a post-feminist
Raunch culture and this idea that selling yourself based on your sexuality is something that my mind's battled with since my adolescence and Levy manages to put into words what I spent a lot of my teen years trying to do. I'd love to see an updated version of this book, possibly covering the Disney franchise and their habit of selling sex to little girls in the safe form of silver rings and the child beauty pageants that scare me so much. I highly recommend this book (I'd also recommend Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth - which tackles the abstinence movement Levy briefly touches upon in her own book - for some follow-up reading.)
Levy’s argument can be summed up in one sentence: “Rauch culture is not essentially progressive, it is essentially commercial.” I enjoy her
It's definitely an interesting read if your looking for a hard hitting intellectual critique of a raunch culture.