Book review
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel Levy.
In brief, Levy documents the rise of a certain kind of hyper-(pseudo-)sexualized culture for women in the past couple of decades. She looks at such things as Girls Gone Wild, the lesbian scene in San Francisco, the wardrobe choices of high school girls, and Sex and the City, and observes women aspiring to a singular, pornographical ideal of someone who revels simultaneously in the objectification of others, and of herself-and all this in the name of freedom and feminism.
Ultimately, Levy's major thesis-that "sexual power is only one, very specific kind of power...[and] looking like a stripper...is only one, very specific kind of sexual expression", and marching mindlessly down that one narrow road with no thought as to what might make you as an individual happy is the very opposite of liberation-is well supported. However, through much of the book I felt somewhat adrift in a sea of anecdotes: though they are organized by theme, the various vignettes are supported by neither a broader (let alone a statistical) context, nor a clear theoretical framework. But neither are they presented as pure reportage: the author's voice is interleaved throughout, tut-tutting in slanted language ("darkest impulses", "most private part of their being") that is distracting and moreover seems to partially contradict her stated position. Namely, while she says in some places that using (this particular version of) sex for money/power/status isn't bad in itself-the bad part is that every woman feels forced to do so-elsewhere she says or implies that it is bad, and this tension is never really resolved.
I would also liked to have seen this "raunch" trend put in the context of earlier modes of status-seeking, since in many of the anecdotes that seems to be exactly what it is: women seeking to gain status with men and (perhaps moreso) with each other by the degree of their conformation to some arbitrary social standard. Pale or tanned, demure or slutty, women (and sometimes men also) have undoubtedly altered their appearances and behaviors for centuries if not millennia to gain status, but Levy doesn't comment on that.
So to conclude: a collection of stories interesting enough to make it worth reading, but too vague on the theory side to be worth seeking out specially.
In brief, Levy documents the rise of a certain kind of hyper-(pseudo-)sexualized culture for women in the past couple of decades. She looks at such things as Girls Gone Wild, the lesbian scene in San Francisco, the wardrobe choices of high school girls, and Sex and the City, and observes women aspiring to a singular, pornographical ideal of someone who revels simultaneously in the objectification of others, and of herself-and all this in the name of freedom and feminism.
Ultimately, Levy's major thesis-that "sexual power is only one, very specific kind of power...[and] looking like a stripper...is only one, very specific kind of sexual expression", and marching mindlessly down that one narrow road with no thought as to what might make you as an individual happy is the very opposite of liberation-is well supported. However, through much of the book I felt somewhat adrift in a sea of anecdotes: though they are organized by theme, the various vignettes are supported by neither a broader (let alone a statistical) context, nor a clear theoretical framework. But neither are they presented as pure reportage: the author's voice is interleaved throughout, tut-tutting in slanted language ("darkest impulses", "most private part of their being") that is distracting and moreover seems to partially contradict her stated position. Namely, while she says in some places that using (this particular version of) sex for money/power/status isn't bad in itself-the bad part is that every woman feels forced to do so-elsewhere she says or implies that it is bad, and this tension is never really resolved.
I would also liked to have seen this "raunch" trend put in the context of earlier modes of status-seeking, since in many of the anecdotes that seems to be exactly what it is: women seeking to gain status with men and (perhaps moreso) with each other by the degree of their conformation to some arbitrary social standard. Pale or tanned, demure or slutty, women (and sometimes men also) have undoubtedly altered their appearances and behaviors for centuries if not millennia to gain status, but Levy doesn't comment on that.
So to conclude: a collection of stories interesting enough to make it worth reading, but too vague on the theory side to be worth seeking out specially.