Deconstructing The Showgirls Next Door

In her book “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,” Ariel Levy decries the extremely sexualized female behavior that today poses as feminism.

Though Levy’s writing style may be more New York Magazine (where she works) than Harvard sociology term paper, the book’s central thesis—that raunch culture has replaced true female liberation—rings incredibly, depressingly true.

Levy posits that women have now come to view other women through a traditionally male perspective.

They strive either to become like one of the boys or an object of male desire. The rationale is that if women are in control of their own objectification, then the practice is no longer degrading, but empowering.

In fact, women have become the key purveyors of raunch culture and female objectification—the “female chauvinist pigs” or “FCP’s” of the title.

Levy writes, “the FCP asks: Why throw your boyfriend’s Playboy in a freedom trash can when you could be partying at the Mansion? Why worry about disgusting or degrading when you could be giving—or getting—a lap dance yourself?”

The ultimate irony, Levy believes, is that American women have lost sight of their own sexual happiness in their pursuit to conform to male desires. Looking and acting like a porn star has simply replaced homemaking as the litmus test for twenty-first century women’s femininity.

To successfully prove her thesis, Levy spends many pages describing facets of America’s sexual culture, including Paris Hilton, the porn star Jenna Jameson, and “The Man Show.”

Levy also interviews an eclectic cast of characters. The book finds Levy riding around South Beach with a “Girls Gone Wild” cameraman, watching him film nubile and willing girls on spring break as they strip or perform sex acts for the camera.

Elsewhere, Levy talks to female CEOs (the female head of HBO now claims to have the “biggest cock in the business”), goes to bars with hip young lesbians, and discovers the sexual politics among wealthy teens.

The anecdotal evidence that Levy collects is meant to demonstrate the fallacy of the FCP’s approach to liberation. For instance, Playboy CEO Christie Hefner claims that the magazine provides a forum for female self-expression and, by extension, is an empowering force.

However, the publication is filled with male fantasies: nude women with blonde hair and enormous breasts. For Levy, this fact alone is enough to refute the claim that posing for Playboy is the equivalent of female liberation.

Levy believes that though it may be fun to be treated as one of the guys, FCPs become inherently complicit in the devaluation of women, because they so easily dismiss other women.

In a particularly moving quote, Levy writes, “as long as womanhood is thought of something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of, too.”

One especially provocative comparison likens women acting like men to “Uncle Tom” blacks, in that “not only does Tom submit to the system that oppresses him, he actively strives for the love of his oppressor and loves him in return.”

Levy uses teenage girls to highlight the destructive effects of our hyper-sexualized culture.

We all remember when girls started to use sex to attract male attention in middle school, but it is still shocking to read about a pubescent girl giving oral sex on a school bus in public.

Especially disturbing is Levy’s interview with a teenage girl from an upscale Northern California high school. The girl bases her self-esteem entirely on the male attention she receives.

She recalls when her boyfriend was looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and she “wouldn’t talk because I...get really upset when guys find girls really attractive. Because I want that attention.” Are current teenage girls’ warped self-image the endpoint of raunch culture?

In an attempt to stretch her thesis into a full book, Levy includes chapters on topics that do not add much to her essential point.

Levy gives short shrift to the history of the feminist movement and focuses too much on feminists’ infighting over the legitimacy of pornography in the 1970’s instead of offering a broader perspective on the movement.

Levy’s portrayal of the lesbian sub-culture in New York and San Francisco as essentially an extension of the male-female dichotomy is voyeuristically fascinating, but too specific to help prove the greater cultural point.

Regardless, “Female Chauvinist Pigs” is a provocative read that provides a much needed re-examination of the raunch culture that masquerades itself as female liberation.

Levy makes a point that all girls at this university need to consider—that female liberation should mean freedom to do as we please, not to be as hyper-sexualized as possible.

Female Chauvinist Pigs
By Ariel Levy
Free Press
Out Now