BOOK: Female Chauvinist Pigs - Ariel Levy

Title: Female Chauvinist Pigs
Author: Ariel Levy
Genre: non-fiction, feminism
Publisher: Pocketbooks (2005)
Pages: Paperback, 214
Language: English
Rating: 7/10
Summary: Women and the rise of Raunch Culture; why do young women feel the need to look and act like porn stars? Is this the final stop of feminism? Ariel Levy explores this strange phenomenon of female empowerment.

Review
Acting sexy is not the same as embrasing your sexuality. I know this, you know this, but apparently a lot of girls confuse the two.
Levy shows that pornography has become part of the mainstream of American culture. One of the examples she uses is the nude photoshoot for Playboy by Olympic athletes. Apparently they find that looking good naked gives more prestige than their athletic performance. American gyms offer courses in 'cardio-striptease'. Between 1992 and 2004, the number of breast enlargements in the U.S. increased from 32,607 to 264,041 per year.
Levy concludes "This is our establishment, these are our role models, this is haute couture and low culture, this is sport and politics, this is television, this is publishing and pop music and medicine , and -good news!- if you play the game you are a strong and powerful woman. Because we have decided that an emancipated woman openly proclaims her sexuality. As the only sign of sexuality we recognize is a direct reference to red light entertainment, we have the rancid aesthetics of a titty-bar or a photo shoot for Penthouse woven through our entire culture."
Levy here does not so much protest the fact that men sometimes enjoy porn or prostitution, but she (and I) object the fact that women copy this world and base their sense of self and self-esteem upon it.

I liked this book and finished it fast, because I was fascinated by the subject. I felt Levy could have dug a little deeper, but it sure is a good effort to poke all those women who can't tell the difference between having real power and simply getting attention.