Female Chauvinist Pigs

In the lecture on feminism and media theory, I talked a bit about 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' by Ariel Levy, which came out in 2006. I think we talked about it as an example of third wave feminism or as a response to/critique of the way post-feminism had developed/been trivialised and commercialised over the last decade.

Levy's target in her book is 'raunch culture', the hypersexualised in which, as she suggests, genuine liberation for women has been sidelined by the freedom to be sexually provocative. Post-feminism pushed a view of women as 'sex subjects', not sex objects. It celebrated female desire and pleasure. But Levy argues this has been co-opted and commercialised, that women now feel they have to go along with this attitude or risk being labelled prudes.

There's more to it all than that, of course. You can get a flavour of her argument in a short comment piece she wrote for The Guardian when the book came out. That paper also ran a good interview with Levy, in which she defined 'female chauvinist pigs' as "women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves" and suggested that the big thing driving raunch culture was consumerism. Here's a quote from the piece:

"When you talk to people about raunch culture in terms of a specific company or corporation they just say: 'Oh, well, sex sells.' That's our justification for everything." And Barbie-doll images of women - long legs, fake breasts, blonde hair - are a glossy advertising shorthand that simultaneously appeals to everyone and no one, shifting units in a way that more complex, varied and substantive sexual images never could. "My book is not an attack on the sex industry," says Levy. "It's about how the sex industry has become every industry."

The Observer ran a more critical review of the book and The Guardian commissioned Kate Taylor, who used to write the Sex Life column for men's mag GQ, to argue against Levy. Taylor's argument is that raunch culture is not about feminism; it's about fun and fashon. Another Gurdian columnist, Madeleine Bunting dismissed Taylor as 'naive' and agreed with Levy that money and consumer capitalism are driving raunch culture - we're all sex slaves to the market now, she suggested.

Clearly, there's a debate going on within feminist circles about the arguments of post-feminism, about invididual sexual empowerment vs collective political liberation. Others have picked up on Levy's general point.

Late last year, The Observer's Amelia Hill interviewed Carol Platt Liebau, an American academica and editor of the Harvard Law Review, about her new book 'Prude'. Here's a quote from the beginning of the piece.

"Women have fought for decades to be treated as men's equals. Yet today's girls are being told that female empowerment simply comes from being 'sexy', according to a new book by the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. In Prude: How The Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls, Carol Platt Liebau says popular culture is undermining girls' sense of worth in their most vulnerable, formative years and glorifying destructive behaviour . 'The overwhelming lesson teenagers are now learning from the world around them is that being "sexy" is the ultimate accolade, trumping intelligence, character and all other accomplishments at every stage of a woman's life,' said Liebau, a political analyst and the review's first female managing editor."

If you're interested in feminist media theory, you could perhaps look at Levy's book and the debate it's sparked and perhaps link it to ladette magazines like More or the new lad's mags and the debate over whether they represent something positive for women or just the same old sexist attitudes.