Category: Book Talk

I am not making this up.

Just in time for my entries on Female Chauvinist Pigs – look what I found in the $1 section at Target. I had to pull out my Treo and take a pic.

That’s right, America. This is what we consider “empowering” for our girls. Our future women.

Wow. How “Girl Power!” of them. Apparently lipstick, hair spray, short skirts, go-go boots, and plunging necklines make us quite powerful, ladies.

Is it any wonder that women feel that they are empowered by acting and looking sleazy? Its taught to us from the time we’re in elementary school

I must say that since my last post on Female Chauvinist Pigs, my search engine hits have been some odd ones. You would not believe how many people search for “hippie p*rn”

But now, continuing my thoughts from my reading of Female Chauvinist Pigs

Ariel Levy talks about an interview that she has with Christie Hefner, Hugh’s daughter and CEO of Playboy. During this interview, Hefner talks about how she views the playboy bunny logo…

…[The bunny logo] symbolizes sexy fun, a little bit of rebelliousness, the same way a navel ring does… or low rider jeans! It’s an obvious I’m taking control of how I look and the statement I’m making as opposed to I’m embarassed about it or I’m uncomfortable with it.

Levy points out in her book that if you’re looking at it in this way, then you will fall into the trap that I spoke of in my last post.

I think that has more to do with the current accepted wisdom that Hefner articulated so precisely: The only alternative to enjoying Playboy (or flashing for Girls Gone Wild or getting implants, or reading Jenna Jamenson’s memoir) is being “uncomfortable” with and “embarassed” about your sexuality. Raunch culture, then, isn’t an entertainment option, its a litmus test of female uptightness.

So then Hefner goes on to talk about how olympic atheletes, lawyers, mothers… all sorts of women appear in Playboy. Playboy, in her opinion, appreciated all sorts of women and helped women to prove they were sexy (one example she gave was that the Olympians proved in their spread that they could be atheletic and sexy).

But Levy responds that as you flip through the pages, the Olympians have been molded into the same look that every other playmate has. Its not celebrating what they do – its making them into what everyone else is.

Why can’t we be sexy and frisky and in control without being commodified? Why do you have to be in Playboy to express “I don’t think athleticism is at odds with being sexy?” If you really believed you were both sexy and athletic, wouldn’t it be enough to play your sport with your flawless body and your face gripped with passion in front of the eyes of the world? Rather than showing that we’re finally ready to think of “Sexy” and “athletic” as mutually inclusive, the Olympian spread revealed how we still imagine these two traits need to be cobbled together: The athletes had to be taken out of context, the purposeful eyes-on-the-prize stare you see on the field had to be replaced with coquettish lash-batting, the fast-moving legs had to be splayed apart.

:nodding:

That women are now doing this to ourselves isn’t some kind of triumph, it’s depressing. Seuxuality is inherent… yet somehow we have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be something divorced from the everyday experience of being ourselves.

I really appreciate the angle from which she is approaching this subject. I’ve been noticing examples of it everywhere in life. Its really fascinating.

Oprah recently aired a show entitled “Stupid Girls” which tackled the role of women in our society. Ariel Levy appeared on that show after Pink talked about her song “Stupid Girls.” Levy wrote Female Chauvinist Pigs – Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture and as she spoke about it I was instantly intrigued.

Levy was on the show along with a girl who was a recruiter for the Girls Gone Wild videos. Levy talked about how if men were male chauvinist pigs before – exploiting women – now women were taking over for them by exploiting each other and ourselves. The girl from GGW talked about how she convinced women to appear on the videos FOR FREE and how it was their own fault if they regretted it. These women were somehow convinced that appearing on these videos was empowering.

Levy and Pink both mentioned on the show that almost anyone could name a sleezy star (Paris Hilton, Jenna Jamenson, etc), and yet we are hard pressed to name an intelligent successful young woman who isn’t getting ahead through sex.

At the same time, our culture is leading us to believe that in order to be sexy, we need to be like porn stars or strippers. Breast implants jumped by about 700% between ’92 and ’04, from 32,607 a year to 264,041 a year. Surgeries are on the rise for vaginoplasty and labia operations that do not increase pleasure, but make it look more like a porn star or stripper’s parts. Are we completely forgetting that their job is to IMITATE arousal? They are a cheap replica of the real thing, and women are now being led to believe that to be sexy we must imitate the imitators! How ridiculous is that?!

Levy says:

This may seem confusing considering the “swing to the right” this country has taken, but raunch culture transcends elections. The values people vote for are not necessarily the same values they live by. No region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. (The divorce rate in these southern states is roughly fifty percent above the national average.) In fact, eight of the ten states that lead in national divorce are red, whereas the state with the lowest divorce rate in the country is deep blue Massachusetts. Even if people consider themselves conservative or vote Republican, their political ideas may be just that: a reflection of the way they wish things were in America, rather than a product of the way they actually experience it.

She talks about how at the same time Bush was elected to his second term, the number one tv show in red areas like Atlanta (which voted 58% for Bush) was Desperate Housewives, which far from promotes family values or great women role models.

She then says

Playboy is likewise far more popular in conservative Wyoming than in liberal New York

Ah. That’s nice to hear.

So why is it that we accept the porn stereotypes as the norm? Why are we considering that to be sexy? Why do women go around wearing Playboy bunnies and “porn star” shirts and consider themselves liberated and sexually free? That is the most ridiculous thing I can think of!

I’ll definitely write more about this later